It's Never Too Soon to Prepare for the Worst
00:12:
(JVL)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Next Level.
00:15:
(JVL)
I'm JBL, here with my best friend, Sarah Longwell.
00:18:
(JVL)
Welcome back, compadre, and my other very close-to-being-bestie friend, Timothy Miller.
00:25:
(JVL)
Hey, guys.
00:27:
(Tim Miller)
Hello, JBL.
00:28:
(Tim Miller)
Hey, Sarah, I missed you.
00:29:
(Tim Miller)
We did like a 21-minute green room where we used all the good material before that.
00:33:
(Tim Miller)
Sorry, paying listeners, but it is good to see you again, Sarah.
00:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
It had been a while since we caught up, so we did too much pregame talking.
00:43:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I missed you guys a lot.
00:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I'm sorry.
00:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
It sounded like things got dark while I was gone.
00:50:
(JVL)
Did they?
00:50:
(JVL)
On the show?
00:51:
(JVL)
I don't remember.
00:52:
(JVL)
I mean, Tim used the word dildo in front of Mona.
00:55:
(JVL)
That was amazing.
00:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know what I missed?
00:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
I missed the...
00:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
So people hate our intro music?
01:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
Mona hates our intro music?
01:01:
(JVL)
No, not people hate it.
01:02:
(JVL)
Mona hates it.
01:04:
(JVL)
And you know, so I forwarded Mona all of the emails that said not to change our intro music.
01:10:
(JVL)
I kept from her all the emails that said, Mona hates your intro music.
01:15:
(JVL)
Has she listened to her intro music?
01:18:
(JVL)
People do not like her intro music.
01:20:
(JVL)
They're like, what is this, Masterpiece Theater?
01:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
You guys, I could not pick out the intro music to any of our podcasts out of a lineup.
01:29:
(Tim Miller)
I thought that my use of dildo around Mona was me kind of dialing it back.
01:35:
(Tim Miller)
I didn't use vibrator.
01:38:
(JVL)
Oh, I'm just glad that you were not asked to provide a definition.
01:42:
(JVL)
What were you talking about?
01:44:
(Tim Miller)
I think transvaginal ultrasounds.
01:48:
(Tim Miller)
No, no, no.
01:48:
(JVL)
We were talking about, no, we were talking about terrorism.
01:51:
(JVL)
And I meant, so I brought up the human rights campaign because their current building was the site of an act of terrorism back in the 70s.
01:59:
(JVL)
But Tim didn't realize that's where I was going.
02:01:
(JVL)
And he thought terrorism and human rights campaign.
02:03:
(JVL)
And so he conjured up some gay terrorist, like, you know, planting dildo bombs.
02:10:
(JVL)
It was a whole thing.
02:11:
(JVL)
All it was like, I sat there.
02:13:
(JVL)
Thanks for listening, Sarah.
02:14:
(JVL)
And I was like, wow, right in front of mom.
02:17:
(JVL)
He did it.
02:17:
(JVL)
He said the word in front of mom.
02:20:
(JVL)
I don't know what that's potty mouth.
02:21:
(Tim Miller)
I think it's totally fine.
02:23:
(Tim Miller)
I don't know what you're worried about.
02:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
Well, I'm glad that I really appreciate Mona sitting in for me.
02:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
I missed you guys.
02:30:
(Sarah Longwell)
I missed doing podcasts.
02:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
I have really hot takes about a bunch of stuff that happened two weeks ago.
02:35:
(JVL)
Oh, should we do a lightning round?
02:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
No, we should start with the thing I'm angriest about right now.
02:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
Okay.
02:41:
(JVL)
Donald Trump has a turnkey operation ready for 2024.
02:46:
(JVL)
Sarah, go.
02:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
That wasn't what I was going to say.
02:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
I was going to say J.D.
02:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
Vance.
02:51:
(Sarah Longwell)
Oh, I thought you wanted to.
02:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
No.
02:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
Okay.
02:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm not angry about Trump's thing.
02:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
That's a thing we need to unpack because that has big implications.
03:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think J.D.
03:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
Vance is just...
03:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
This tweet has now come and gone.
03:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
It was bait.
03:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's blue-check bait, right?
03:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
When he does things like, say...
03:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
Alex Jones is a more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow.
03:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
And he was doing it by quote-tweeting Glenn Greenwald, who was, I think, actually correctly criticizing Maddow for the fact that they had that Rolling Stones story up that had then been thoroughly debunked.
03:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm not sure why, after that piece was completely debunked, anybody kept that up.
03:35:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so it was like a fair – it's a fair critique –
03:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
of maddow but jd vance decided to just go nuclear uh nuclear take with um uh alex jones of info wars is a more reputable source of information than rachel maddow okay that was bait
03:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
I should not go in for bait like that.
03:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so the thing I am most angry about is the fact that, like, I felt inclined to engage.
04:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I just, because obviously, like, that's an insane thing to say, right?
04:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
You've got Alex Jones.
04:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I tweeted about it.
04:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, the thing I know very little about Alex Jones other than...
04:14:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, some of his most famous conspiracy theories include the thing that I find the grossest.
04:22:
(Sarah Longwell)
And Marjorie Taylor Greene does this, too, where he says Parkland.
04:27:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm sorry, not Parkland.
04:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
Sandy Hook was a false flag.
04:32:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, it's both.
04:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, right, he says these shooters, like he says that they're false flags, they're written.
04:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so the reason these kinds of things made me crazy is not only, I don't know if you guys have ever heard, there's an NPR piece, I think it's This American Life, where they talk to one of the dads of the Sandy Hook, of one of the Sandy Hook kids, who is just harassed endlessly by Alex Jones listeners to tell him that his child was a crisis actor and didn't die.
05:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's so revolting and horrible and
05:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
J.D.
05:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
Vance, because he is sucking wind behind Josh Mandel, decides to say that this person is a credible source of information.
05:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it's such a sad commentary, not just on human beings who are terrible and right-wing media ecosystem things that are terrible, but the fact that I saw something today where he says, oh, I was just trolling people, where J.D.
05:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
Vance said that.
05:35:
(Sarah Longwell)
But the way that you excel in Republican politics today is by saying things like, Alex Jones is a better source of information than whatever, a lefty I don't like.
05:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
Those are my feelings.
05:52:
(Tim Miller)
J.D.
05:52:
(Tim Miller)
Vance is a big meat puppet, for starters.
05:55:
(Tim Miller)
And second, I do think that Sarah is not fully describing.
06:00:
(Tim Miller)
The other reason why it made her so mad is because he did come after the queen of the lesbians, Rachel Maddow.
06:06:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe it wouldn't have cut it deep as if he had compared Alex Jones to Don LeMond, for example.
06:14:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
06:14:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe.
06:15:
(Tim Miller)
Just throwing that out there.
06:16:
(Tim Miller)
Might have cut.
06:17:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, no.
06:19:
(Tim Miller)
It is bait.
06:21:
(Tim Miller)
And, you know, it's pretty...
06:24:
(Tim Miller)
I'm starting to pivot, though, from anger at J.D.
06:27:
(Tim Miller)
Vance into sadness.
06:29:
(Tim Miller)
Obviously, there's a long campaign ahead, and he could yet become a senator.
06:33:
(Tim Miller)
But, man...
06:35:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, if he fails, he's really like put himself into a really sad place where I'm sure that Peter Thiel will dump him and find another new hot thing like Blake Masters.
06:49:
(Tim Miller)
Have you met Blake Masters yet?
06:51:
(Sarah Longwell)
Is he a golfer?
06:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
Who is that?
06:52:
(Tim Miller)
Is that a porn star name?
06:54:
(Tim Miller)
You would think it's – and he looks like a porn star, and you'd think it's a porn star name.
06:58:
(Tim Miller)
Blake Masters is Peter Thiel's little mini-me that is running for Senate in Arizona.
07:06:
(Tim Miller)
And he has, like, washboard abs and –
07:13:
(Tim Miller)
And is checking all of the populist nationalist troll boxes.
07:20:
(Tim Miller)
But just not doing it as ostentatiously as JD and Josh.
07:25:
(Tim Miller)
So you guys haven't just caught them on your Twitter yet.
07:27:
(Tim Miller)
But keep an eye out for Blake Masters.
07:29:
(Tim Miller)
um more handsome and and it seems like he probably has some other skills when it comes to the vc world than meet puppet vance and so i think that you know jd would probably get eschewed but you know get sort of tossed aside by by peter teal and and i mean what does he do then he like goes on the villages tour he's lost all of his he's lost all of his friends you know from when he was sucking up to the elites and you know going on the today show and he was the person who is who um can explain
07:59:
(Tim Miller)
to these coastal elites what's happening in akron and and he will have lost his ability to be that translator to the elites who he really wants to hang out with deep down and boy i just i don't know i think um you know he'll be doing like the hillsdale tour given doing being a guest professor at hillsdale i think it would just be a tough turn for him um obviously still has time ahead of him but uh but it's not the shtick just isn't landing really the shtick doesn't seem to be landing
08:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
Because he's a fraud and everyone knows it.
08:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, he's got that like Rubio kind of stench where everyone knows this isn't who he really is.
08:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, you can smell it.
08:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, whereas Josh Mandel is like full-blown MAGA crazy and people are like, yeah, I guess that, I guess sure.
08:44:
(Sarah Longwell)
Him.
08:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
And you're right.
08:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
I actually think, because this is, it really is about Ohio politics, right?
08:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's about the Ohio Senate race, which right now is between Josh Mandel and J.D.
08:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
Vance.
08:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it doesn't look like Jane Timken, also perfectly MAGA, but who was a Republican normie for sure before she had to do just enough MAGA to get by, right?
09:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
But she's not even, so I was interested.
09:11:
(JVL)
She's like 4%.
09:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, and I'm not sure.
09:14:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think Vance just broke double digits.
09:17:
(JVL)
Yeah, he just broke to 12.
09:19:
(Sarah Longwell)
I don't know if we talked about my Ohio focus group that I did a couple weeks ago, but one of the things that just jumped out when you asked them is they'd all heard of Josh Mandel.
09:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
They had not heard of Vance, and one person had said, oh, the woman.
09:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
I got a mailer from her.
09:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
That's kind of good news for JD, sadly.
09:40:
(Tim Miller)
It means he has some room to grow, maybe.
09:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I do think, well, this is to me, this is the whole reason, right, is that if you're a consultant for Vance and you're looking at Mandel and you're doing these focus groups in Ohio, you know that what it's not that people loved Josh Mandel in the group.
09:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
They were kind of like, I don't know.
09:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, but like they all knew who he was.
09:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
And there's a phase where that's much more important, like getting to at least the name ID phase.
10:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so, I mean, that's what Vance is doing right now.
10:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's fighting for enough name ID that people could even make a value judgment for him against Mandel.
10:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so what he needs is to be hated by the right people.
10:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
He needs to have news cycles that belong to him, that elevate his name ID.
10:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
And he does it by saying disgusting things and speaking positively about Alex Jones.
10:31:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, by the fact that he's given away the game by the fact that he says that it's trolling.
10:35:
(Tim Miller)
you know by the way um uh in that like like josh mandel is also faking it uh but he kind of inhabits the character to a much greater degree you never hear him back away from something like that and say that it was just trolling right i mean if you if you if josh mandel fires off a tweet saying that alex jones is more reputable than jd vance
10:54:
(Tim Miller)
and he gets asked about that in a follow-up, if anything, he would expand on it and say much, much more reputable.
11:01:
(Tim Miller)
More reputable than J.D.
11:01:
(Tim Miller)
Vance.
11:01:
(JVL)
He's more reputable than the New York Times.
11:04:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:05:
(Tim Miller)
Or more reputable than Maddow, I meant.
11:06:
(Tim Miller)
But yeah, he'd expand on it, go over and over and over the top.
11:10:
(Tim Miller)
Though he did give away a game a little bit during that clip that Jim wrote about, which is where he was talking to the reporter, and he's like, you know, this is just part of a deal.
11:17:
(Tim Miller)
Why are you taking this personally here?
11:18:
(Tim Miller)
This is just I'm playing my role, you play yours.
11:20:
(Tim Miller)
Did you see the Medium post on Mandelman?
11:22:
(Tim Miller)
about his uh his genealogy he had like a great aunt in auschwitz he's going hardest on you know the refugees about how you can't bring these the these these people to my neighborhood you can't bring these people to toledo and all the elites are gonna are gonna force it and they're just gonna be terrorists and and you know we can't you know we can't have them screwing up our judeo-christian culture
11:45:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, what do you think?
11:48:
(Tim Miller)
You do know that there are some Mandel family members who just are filled with shame.
11:56:
(JVL)
I don't know.
11:58:
(JVL)
We don't think so?
12:00:
(JVL)
My boy is running for Senate.
12:02:
(JVL)
He's going to be a United States senator.
12:03:
(JVL)
I think it I am amazed by Josh Mandel because the job he has been doubled up on J.D.
12:12:
(JVL)
Vance the whole way, despite working with like he's got, I don't know what, 70,000 Twitter followers, no money, no institutional support.
12:22:
(JVL)
In fact, he's got anti-institutional support.
12:24:
(JVL)
The Republican Party wants no part of him.
12:26:
(JVL)
kicked out of one of the RNC meets in Florida.
12:30:
(JVL)
And on the other side, you've got finance money and tech money flowing like a river into J.D.
12:38:
(JVL)
Vance.
12:40:
(JVL)
Tucker has basically all but endorsed him on his show.
12:43:
(JVL)
All of Fox is all in on J.D.
12:46:
(JVL)
Vance.
12:46:
(JVL)
The whole conservative inc, right?
12:49:
(JVL)
From the Hugh Hewitt's of the world to the...
12:52:
(JVL)
Who's that dumb asshole for the Washington Post who works at EPPC?
12:56:
(JVL)
Mark Thiessen.
12:58:
(JVL)
Henry Olsen.
12:59:
(JVL)
Oh, Henry Olsen, right.
13:00:
(JVL)
The guy's wrong about everything.
13:01:
(JVL)
He is super.
13:03:
(JVL)
They're all super into J.D.
13:04:
(JVL)
Vance.
13:05:
(JVL)
And they I don't quite understand it because, as you said, it's he's Rubio.
13:11:
(JVL)
He's Rubio with a beard.
13:12:
(JVL)
I mean, everything about him.
13:14:
(JVL)
I just don't understand why they didn't understand the problems.
13:17:
(JVL)
He's a New York Times contributor.
13:18:
(JVL)
He's super friendly.
13:20:
(JVL)
Ron Howard made a fawning movie about him.
13:23:
(JVL)
His main patron is a gay tech oligarch whose big company is called Palantir and which is literally creating the AI-driven surveillance state.
13:38:
(JVL)
And the idea that you're going to be able to position him as the authentic voice of MAGA in Ohio in 2021 is...
13:47:
(JVL)
When he voted for Evan McMuffin?
13:50:
(JVL)
Yeah, it just strikes me as nuts.
13:53:
(JVL)
And so here's the thing.
13:55:
(JVL)
I do not buy the you should not be angry about him.
13:59:
(JVL)
You should not be sad about him.
14:00:
(JVL)
J.D.
14:01:
(JVL)
Vance is here to provide us with joy in this dark moment in American history.
14:07:
(JVL)
Because the idea that we're going to get to watch a D-bag like this fail so publicly when he wants it so badly, it's just delicious.
14:17:
(JVL)
Let's enjoy it.
14:18:
(JVL)
This is the one thing we can all come together with.
14:20:
(Tim Miller)
I still have PTSD from 2015.
14:23:
(Tim Miller)
I can't enjoy until it's happened.
14:25:
(Tim Miller)
It is sad.
14:28:
(Tim Miller)
Tim Ryan, it's too bad.
14:31:
(Tim Miller)
And this will kind of go to our next topic a little bit about what the Democrats need to do.
14:34:
(Tim Miller)
And in a different situation, I feel like Josh Mandel is beatable.
14:43:
(Tim Miller)
maybe in the Trump first midterm in 2018.
14:47:
(Tim Miller)
Tim Ryan does kind of fit the bill for Ohio and is doing as good of a job as I think you can do so far, sort of from what I see from him and his brand positioning and how he's trying to wedge them on economic cultural stuff, which I think is exactly what you have to do in Ohio as a Democrat, sort of run the Sherrod Brown playbook and he looks the part and
15:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
um but it is it's going to be really tough in the first biden midterm for for a tip for a tim ryan to win in a place that trump won by what eight nine i forget where it landed and this is why i can't sort of get to where jbl is on i mean i'm not excited i i would be horrified by either of them um jd vance is completely debasing himself and um in order to win this and so it's not like i'm like oh well vance would be better than mandel but like
15:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
If you thought that the Democrat had zero chance, would you rather have it be Vance versus Mandel as a United States senator?
15:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
Which is worse?
15:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
Which is worse?
15:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
The more authentic, insane MAGA or the total fraud MAGA?
16:02:
(JVL)
No, you're not thinking about it the right way.
16:03:
(JVL)
It's not a question about which is worse.
16:06:
(JVL)
The question is, which one of them would it hurt more to lose?
16:10:
(JVL)
I don't care about their souls.
16:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
I don't care whose ego it hurts the most.
16:15:
(JVL)
Oh, that's what I care.
16:16:
(JVL)
I care about the pain in others.
16:19:
(JVL)
And with Josh Mandel losing, he's like Laura Loomer, right?
16:22:
(JVL)
It'll just be on to the next race.
16:24:
(JVL)
For J.D.
16:25:
(JVL)
Vance to lose...
16:26:
(JVL)
When other people have been whispering in his ear about, well, maybe you should just go right to the White House.
16:31:
(JVL)
You could run for president.
16:32:
(JVL)
For him to lose, the little golden fuck boy.
16:35:
(JVL)
Delicious.
16:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, I do think I will.
16:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
So, OK, so let me just I'll play that out for one second.
16:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
I do think you're right in the sense that.
16:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think that it's important for Republicans to understand that the J.D.
16:51:
(Sarah Longwell)
Vance's are going to lose to the Josh Mandels.
16:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
Because I think, you know, we had that great Ross Douthat piece in The Bulwark by Nick Grossman.
17:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
There is a whole subset of sort of these elite Republicans.
17:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
who are not sufficiently alarmed, who make all kinds of excuses.
17:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
And they think that, okay, so J.D.
17:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
Vance says a bunch of this crazy stuff to get elected, but he's a reasonable person, acceptable by the Republican establishment.
17:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
But when Herschel Walker...
17:22:
(Sarah Longwell)
and josh mandel emerge despite mitch mitch mcconnell's best efforts uh it seems like then i mean whatever i i don't know that i can say like oh well then they're gonna really realize but it does it does it is it is a good it is an important lesson for them to see that their voters
17:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
want josh mandel want herschel walker and that they can no longer control this frankenstein that they've built i will say though i hope tim ryan tim i agree with tim that tim ryan um is one of the best positions you could possibly have in ohio but man has ohio been getting red it's like uh it's like an r plus nine now and so this would have been this would tim is exactly right this would have been winnable as a midterm with a republican incumbent i think
18:10:
(Tim Miller)
you know a close a close run thing and not a short thing but maybe you get to a one in three chance if if the environment is the other way where the the r's or the incumbent party um i i want to just give a serious answer to sarah's question um after thinking about it for a second i did enjoy jvl's desire for schadenfreude above all things um but uh if this was a race for president
18:36:
(Tim Miller)
I guess on a scale from 1 to 100, J.D.
18:41:
(Tim Miller)
Vance would be like a .9 and Josh Mandel would be like a .2 for me.
18:48:
(Tim Miller)
So I guess I would rather have J.D.
18:49:
(Tim Miller)
Vance as president because I do think inside that little squishy belly of his, he just wants to be loved by the New York Times editorial board.
18:59:
(Tim Miller)
He kind of pretends like he doesn't, but deep down he still does.
19:01:
(Tim Miller)
And I think that that would sort of
19:04:
(Tim Miller)
soften the edges of his of his presidency shutter um uh versus being in the senate i don't know i think that they're the same in the senate i don't see any difference between the two of them in the senate like whatever i don't know maybe i'll like one of their votes one vote more than the other vote but i don't it's not like i can imagine a lot of scenarios where jd is casting a tie-breaking vote that i think is super important like over josh over what josh mandel would have done so i just don't know that it matters that much i think that they're both
19:32:
(JVL)
uh you know thirsty ferrets and both potential vp material for uh the trump 2024 campaign i'm ron burgundy nah i don't i don't think so tim this is me teeing up you to talk about the politico sorry do miss that transition smooth transition effort that just kind of uh you know the lose just fell off the track there um
20:01:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, so here's why I wanted to talk about the 2024 piece, because I know that art and graphic design is your passion, JVL.
20:09:
(Tim Miller)
And so I'm hoping for a triad graph at some point in the next week or two, which maybe helps some of our readers understand the...
20:20:
(Tim Miller)
I would almost call it sheer panic that I have towards the lowering Joe Biden approval number at the moment, because I think that there is a direct relationship between the Biden approval number and the likelihood that Donald Trump turns the key on that turnkey operation that he was bragging on to Biden.
20:41:
(Tim Miller)
to Politico and I think that if you looked at the Politico story this was you know you can only you can't really trust anything that anybody in Donald Trump's circle says I mean they're all full of shit but Jordan was on the secret camera
20:59:
(Tim Miller)
saying that he thinks that after the Afghanistan thing, Trump is 99% to 100% to run.
21:05:
(Tim Miller)
I think that's a little bit higher on the honesty scale since it was on a secret camera than these others.
21:11:
(Tim Miller)
But his pollster, Tony Fabrizio, said to Mark Caputo at Politico that he thinks that Biden's recent downturn has made it even much more likely that Trump will run.
21:20:
(Tim Miller)
There's an anonymous quote in there saying the same.
21:23:
(Tim Miller)
And I just think that's obvious on its face.
21:25:
(Tim Miller)
Like Trump, and I think I've brought this up on this one of the other pods, but Trump...
21:29:
(Tim Miller)
has an instinctual sense for narrative and for what the medias is saying and for what is happening what what you know the strength or weaknesses of his opponent like for all of his flaws like this is this is an innate skill that he has deep in his heart that was honed in him by the fact that his father didn't love him and that um he's became a brand man in the tabloid era
21:51:
(Tim Miller)
he understands narrative he understands when someone's weak in the public eye and versus strong and and if if biden seems weak uh you know he he will convince himself that he can do it right uh he is he does not want to run again and lose he does not want to be the only he'd be the only two-time loser right now i guess adlai stevenson so i guess he wouldn't be the only two-time loser but he does not want to be one of the rare two-time losers
22:16:
(Tim Miller)
And so if Biden was seeming strong, I think it would be less likely for him to run.
22:23:
(Tim Miller)
And so I think that there's this direct relationship.
22:25:
(Tim Miller)
What is happening with, you know, in the fall from Afghanistan, potential economic concerns, Delta rising, like all of this stuff is compounding to make Trump run.
22:36:
(Tim Miller)
And my other main takeaway from this political article is that everyone is going to go along with it.
22:42:
(Tim Miller)
Of course the Republican senators.
22:46:
(Tim Miller)
Of course the Republican party.
22:48:
(Tim Miller)
What I'm talking about is even the media.
22:51:
(Tim Miller)
People are just going to pretend like this is just a normal dude running.
22:54:
(Tim Miller)
There was nowhere in this 2,500 word Politico article that was like...
23:01:
(Tim Miller)
And to be sure his candidacy might be hampered by the fact that he tried to steal the last election and become an unelected autocrat and end our democracy.
23:10:
(Tim Miller)
Like there was not even a sentence about that.
23:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
There was like a little bit.
23:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
There was like a cause the insurrection.
23:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
It was like it was because I was looking for the same thing because it was like this piece.
23:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
Look, we should just back up and talk about the piece a little bit like the political because it's long.
23:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it's a pretty well-reported piece where they talk to basically everybody in Trump's orbit to get the over-under on whether Trump was going to do it.
23:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so Jason Miller and everybody – and they're all putting it at the odds at extremely high that he's going to run it.
23:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
And they talk about the fact that he's raised $82 million into – like he has to spend that money on –
23:43:
(Sarah Longwell)
you know, candidates, his candidacy, somebody else.
23:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
But he's like he's a fundraising juggernaut.
23:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
And the other thing that I think is they talk about in the piece and that we should maybe even spend some time unpacking is like the prospect of Trump running again and him just letting it be believed that he's running again.
24:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
That is a crazy thing to do to the Republican field.
24:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
And to JBL's earlier point about vice presidents, like Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Nikki Haley and everybody else, they basically all said, like, well, we'll sit it out if Trump's going to do it again.
24:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so if Trump just none of them can go to Iowa.
24:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
like they talk about how trump has this operation basically set up in iowa so that they can keep an eye on who else is making trips there uh and so he freezes the entire republican field out of this he's the only one that can really fundraise he puts him i mean if he decided to pull out at the last minute uh or like ultimately decide not to run in like 2023 sometime
24:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
that is a wild thing to do to the republican party like i can't believe there's not more outcry
24:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
over the idea that he would do this and so he sort of boxes himself in at some point where he's got to run he'd be 78 uh as the piece points out but yet the piece reports it very much as like let me tell you about this operation that he's building and all of the people in his orbit who says he's going to run again because of joe biden's weakness and because he genuinely thinks that the election was stolen from him and the fact that he was impeached historically for a second time after
25:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
helping to propel an insurrection um you know would be an interesting little twist but like they don't they don't see it as a disqualifying element like this guy couldn't possibly win quick over under on the impeachment question of the 17 people that voted to impeach him how many people will support donald trump in 2024 i'm saying over under 11. oh i said it at 14. the over under at 14. you guys a bunch of those people are going to be gone
25:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
Sure.
25:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
They're going to lose because they voted to impeach him.
25:49:
(JVL)
And even once they lose, they will, when a reporter buttonholes them at the Elks Club, they'll say, no, look, I've always been a good Republican.
25:59:
(JVL)
I'm going to support the Republican nominee, whoever it is.
26:02:
(JVL)
So I have a question for you.
26:05:
(JVL)
used to be that the party had a bunch of diffuse power structures and these power structures included things like uh long-standing local officials in key places uh money bundlers uh party alumni um
26:33:
(JVL)
are all of those people just dead or co-opted because you would think that if for whoever you know whoever is involved in team elephant who wants to maximize the chances of team elephant winning
26:49:
(JVL)
would not want donald trump to be the nominee and you there are i can answer this there's a living republican president he's not infirm right i mean they have all of their money people there's condoleezza rice sitting out at hoover like all that nobody is gonna lift a finger to try to signal that if the guy runs uh they'll blow up the railroad tracks and he will lose again in
27:16:
(JVL)
even if it means denying Republicans' power in an effort to prevent him from running?
27:20:
(Tim Miller)
I can answer this.
27:21:
(Tim Miller)
I know this one.
27:21:
(Tim Miller)
I know the answer to this one.
27:22:
(Tim Miller)
Me, pick me, pick me.
27:24:
(Tim Miller)
It's the same answer to Sarah's question, actually, which is why nobody's mad about the fact that he could blow up the party by delaying and waiting until 2023 and not running, which is a good point for a logical person, a strategist like Sarah to make.
27:39:
(Tim Miller)
That's a logical point.
27:40:
(Tim Miller)
Why aren't people more concerned about this?
27:41:
(Tim Miller)
He's freezing everything.
27:42:
(Tim Miller)
Other people can't.
27:43:
(Tim Miller)
It's because a conventional wisdom has congealed in all of those power centers.
27:52:
(Tim Miller)
And that says that the party cannot win without them.
27:58:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe they cannot win with them, but they definitely cannot win without them.
28:01:
(Tim Miller)
And and and this has over the course of the last eight months, you know, there were some people who thought that maybe thought this was true.
28:12:
(Tim Miller)
Some people who who didn't know if it was true or not.
28:14:
(Tim Miller)
Some people who are certain it was true.
28:16:
(Tim Miller)
And they've all been been brought along to the to this mindset by, you know, Lindsey Graham getting shouted down in an airport.
28:25:
(Tim Miller)
None of them believe that the coalition can be held together without it.
28:28:
(Tim Miller)
um all of them are secretly hoping that he dies um but uh no descent will be broached or else you're immediately outside the circle and so it is a combination of groupthink along with fear of losing status and and you know at this stage at this juncture
28:49:
(Tim Miller)
there's no reason to go against the groupthink or to lose your status because who knows, maybe you'll have one too many double cheeseburgers from White Castle and drop over and keel over.
29:02:
(Tim Miller)
I suspect that come this time next year, you'll have two or three brave new soldiers, just like we picked up two or three brave new soldiers in 2020 from 2016 who will be like, this is going to be my moment.
29:16:
(Tim Miller)
And I'm going to step out and say it, and they are going to go the way of Tim Miller and Stuart Stevens and then Adam Kinzinger and then Liz Cheney and then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
29:29:
(Tim Miller)
We can go all the way down the line.
29:33:
(Tim Miller)
We are in Groundhog Day in the bad place together.
29:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
Well, I would just add one thing to that, which is that, like, that calculation happens to be more or less true.
29:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, when I started doing the MAGA focus groups, or just Trump 2020 voters, right?
29:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I was no longer isolating for people who thought Trump was doing a very bad job, you know, so that you could think about who's persuadable.
29:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
You just basically say, OK, give me people who voted for Trump in 2020.
29:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
And you ask those groups, who do you want to see run in 2024?
30:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
vast majority say trump and every poll bears that out and so like there it's not that it's just congealed out of nowhere i mean right it's true like there's been no consequence uh i tell the story sometimes about how shortly after the insurrection i was saying to people this guy's not done you gotta go gotta go finish him gotta go put his gotta gotta gotta gotta give cover for people who are gonna impeach him gotta go hard right now everybody's like you know what
30:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
this is the first time I've slept great in months.
30:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know why?
30:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
Because I know Donald Trump is done.
30:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's done after this.
30:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I was just like, no.
30:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so, like, here, and I'll tell you another thing.
30:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
When I read that, JBL, you may remember, we did a secret podcast at one point, and we called it Panic.
30:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, it's time to panic or something.
30:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it was not, it was like in...
30:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
March, I don't know, or it wasn't that long ago, but it was or wasn't that long after the election.
31:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
And people kind of wrote in being like, can you guys give it a rest?
31:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like, we can't be in a constant state of panic about Trump and losing or whatever.
31:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think not only is he very likely to run again, not the least of which is the number one telltale sign, which is that he's dropped about 25 pounds, which is what people do when they're serious about it.
31:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's dropped a bunch of weight.
31:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
Not only do I think he is likely going to run again, I think he could very well win.
31:30:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like his calculation about Biden's weakness and what are the Democrats going to do in 2024?
31:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
So the way that I just talked about the Republicans being boxed in, let's think about the Democrat side.
31:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
So you've got an incumbent who's got to decide whether he's going to run again, who in no way wants to signal that he's not up until that point.
31:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
But Biden is going to be how, what, 82?
31:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
And potentially, and I'm not, look, lots can change.
31:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
This particular moment is not set in amber.
31:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
Lots in the political universe can change.
32:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
But is his vice president going to run, Kamala Harris?
32:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
Do you think that Donald Trump wants to run against Kamala Harris?
32:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
I bet he very, very badly would like to run against Kamala Harris.
32:14:
(Sarah Longwell)
But could somebody else emerge?
32:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
Could Pete Buttigieg or Amy?
32:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
How are they going to do it with Joe Biden in off like what do the Democrats do if Donald Trump tries to run again?
32:29:
(Tim Miller)
So that was sad.
32:30:
(Tim Miller)
I want to bring up something happy in a second.
32:32:
(Tim Miller)
But go ahead, JBL.
32:33:
(JVL)
So here the plain fact of the matter is that it has been obvious since November three or six or whatever election day was last time around.
32:44:
(JVL)
Joe Biden will have to run again.
32:46:
(JVL)
I'm sorry, but that is the only answer is that Joe Biden has to run again.
32:52:
(JVL)
He is the only Democrat within the circumstances of him being an incumbent president who could win the presidency again.
33:00:
(JVL)
There is no other option.
33:02:
(JVL)
So it's not even worth thinking about other options because there aren't any at this moment.
33:09:
(JVL)
And I think, Sarah, you're not even selling that.
33:13:
(JVL)
When we say Trump could win,
33:16:
(JVL)
I think it's a coin flip, honestly, because when you're running as an insurgent, you know, Biden is now running against an actual record in the real world where things are not perfect.
33:28:
(JVL)
I think he has governed on the whole pretty well, but, you know, nobody ever gets credit for pretty.
33:34:
(JVL)
People looked past 500,000 deaths and said, yeah, things are basically OK for Donald Trump.
33:39:
(JVL)
Like, you know, people are going to reelect him.
33:42:
(JVL)
He's an incumbent president.
33:43:
(JVL)
And somehow the narrative for Biden will be like, oh, everything is terrible.
33:47:
(JVL)
And I don't understand how these narratives happen, but they're real.
33:51:
(JVL)
And it's because everybody grades this stuff on a curve, right?
33:54:
(JVL)
Donald Trump is an insane person.
33:56:
(JVL)
Therefore, we have to have insane standards.
33:59:
(JVL)
And Joe Biden is a normal politician.
34:01:
(JVL)
Therefore, we have normal politician standards.
34:05:
(JVL)
And he could absolutely lose to Donald Trump, except for one thing.
34:16:
(JVL)
I truly believe that people are not quite taking into account how just the numbers of Trump voters in some key states are going to be smaller than they would be even naturally through attrition.
34:35:
(JVL)
And you look at Trump's margin in Arizona versus the number of people in Arizona who have died of COVID and
34:40:
(JVL)
And lots more people have died of COVID than voted, than were Biden's margin, rather, in Arizona.
34:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
Not since Biden was elected, though.
34:51:
(JVL)
No, but again, we don't know whether or not COVID is impacting in an adverse way certain types of voters.
35:04:
(JVL)
But just thinking it through, it's hard to understand how it wouldn't be.
35:08:
(JVL)
Right.
35:08:
(JVL)
I mean, when you look at the data that Kaiser's done on who got vaccinated and who didn't.
35:14:
(JVL)
And I'm not being foolish here.
35:16:
(Tim Miller)
This is just a bad version.
35:19:
(Tim Miller)
I'm sorry.
35:19:
(Tim Miller)
This is just a this is just a weaker version of demographics or destiny.
35:23:
(Tim Miller)
A lot of things change in the electorate over the course of four years, and that is going to be a certain number of people who have died, many of whom might be low-income non-voters.
35:37:
(Tim Miller)
If you look at the unvaccinated, a lot of them are non-voters.
35:40:
(Tim Miller)
I hear where you're at on that, but I don't think it's a weaker version of demographics or destiny.
35:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
Okay, let's take JVL's macro point, which is that, well, no, look, I don't agree with this COVID thing.
35:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
So let's go back to the point where Donald Trump, if he runs again, stands
36:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
a extremely good chance of winning like can you imagine can you get into the headspace this the politico piece put me in the headspace of imagining an actual rematch between a 78 year old donald trump and an 82 year old joe biden weakened jbl's point about the the the way that standards are applied i 100 agree with that but a weakened joe biden uh i am just
36:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
I am not confident that Donald Trump couldn't win.
36:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
And also going into 2022 with a weakened Joe Biden, whether for better or for like, or whether you think that's true or not, or fair or not, like Donald Trump smells blood and water for a real reason, which is that Joe Biden's approvals are now under water.
36:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
And if that translates into a massacre in the House and to a draw in the Senate,
36:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
or even a picking up of one Republican seat.
37:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like Trump will think he has the pieces in place.
37:07:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, you got Jody Heist now running the election in Georgia, who's gonna move from being a Congressman to, I mean, like we're talking, just can you get there in your head about- You know some stupid rich dude will run a centrist third party ticket also in 2024 and cleave away from Joe Biden, because they'll be like, we can't have these two old options.
37:26:
(Tim Miller)
So I'm just going to run and draw more votes from the suburban voters that Joe Biden needs to win.
37:33:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, I know.
37:33:
(Tim Miller)
I know.
37:35:
(Tim Miller)
It's dark.
37:36:
(JVL)
And yet everybody will proceed as though it's just another election year.
37:40:
(JVL)
Just another crazy election.
37:42:
(JVL)
There won't be any like, hey, this guy who attempted an authoritarian takeover is running again.
37:47:
(JVL)
And now he's got his shit locked down at the state level.
37:52:
(JVL)
You know, nobody will.
37:54:
(JVL)
Yeah, let's let's have the League of Women Voters conduct a debate because we always have presidential debates.
38:01:
(JVL)
Right.
38:01:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, what would what would the point of any of this even several people, by the way, on the left and other never Trumpers?
38:08:
(Tim Miller)
I won't out them like doing tweets and commentary.
38:12:
(Tim Miller)
It's like, I hope he runs.
38:13:
(Tim Miller)
He's the weakest.
38:15:
(Tim Miller)
We can beat him.
38:16:
(Tim Miller)
And I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you people?
38:18:
(Tim Miller)
What is wrong with you people?
38:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
We're talking about 10, just like, yes, in Michigan, it was 100,000 votes.
38:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
But in Pennsylvania, it was like 20,000.
38:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
Those margins are too close for us to chance this.
38:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
Look, I know everybody wants to live in a constant state of panic, but I think we are underreacting to where this moment is.
38:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah.
38:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
You're looking at a scenario where like, okay, so he doesn't run.
38:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
So then what does he get to do probably?
38:44:
(Sarah Longwell)
He probably gets to anoint somebody, right?
38:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
Where he like hands over, okay, Ron DeSantis, I've decided I'm not going to run.
38:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm going to hand pick you and be the kingmaker, puppet master.
38:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
Here's the money.
38:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
That's like the only other option.
38:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
But if he thinks he can win again, because he wouldn't do it if he thought he would lose.
39:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
But like if he thinks he could win again and he would be right to think he could have a real shot.
39:06:
(JVL)
Okay, so serious question.
39:08:
(JVL)
If I asked you to set the over-under on the chances that Trump wins, the over-under meaning, so I can define for people who do not gamble, the point at which you don't quite know which side of the bet you would take.
39:23:
(JVL)
Where's the over-under for you, Timothy, on percentage chance that Trump runs in 2024?
39:29:
(JVL)
Runs or wins?
39:31:
(JVL)
Runs.
39:34:
(JVL)
So the point at which you go, eh, I don't know, could be either way.
39:38:
(JVL)
I think 75.
39:41:
(JVL)
Sarah?
39:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, that's about where I'd be.
39:45:
(JVL)
I think you guys are way low.
39:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
You think it's like 90%?
39:49:
(JVL)
Yeah, I do.
39:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
You take the over on 90%?
39:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
Boy, you're...
39:53:
(JVL)
No, at 90 is where I would say I'm not sure.
39:56:
(JVL)
At 75, I'd pound the over.
39:59:
(JVL)
The thing is just his psychology.
40:02:
(JVL)
Once somebody else is the nominee and there's a chance that they could win and become president, if somebody else is president and they're a Republican and he is off of Twitter, he's absolutely, I mean, at that point, he's nobody.
40:19:
(JVL)
He'd be much, much in terms of his own personal risk.
40:23:
(JVL)
There's a much lower downside to running again and winning, at which point you'll just say, I was cheated again, and 85% of your people will believe you.
40:33:
(JVL)
Versus you hand the baton to somebody else like Ron DeSantis.
40:36:
(JVL)
Ron DeSantis wins and becomes president, and all of a sudden you're the sad old guy from the old-timers game.
40:43:
(JVL)
And you have no juice anymore, nobody's afraid of you anymore, because you have no real power.
40:49:
(JVL)
Can we talk about something sad, though?
40:51:
(Tim Miller)
Let's do it.
40:51:
(Tim Miller)
I thought you wanted to do something happy.
40:54:
(Tim Miller)
No, no, no.
40:55:
(Tim Miller)
Well, it's sad in a good way.
40:57:
(Tim Miller)
Where you get to have some pleasure from other people's sadness.
41:02:
(Tim Miller)
That's what I'm talking about.
41:04:
(Tim Miller)
And this is part of the reason it has me at 75 as well.
41:07:
(Tim Miller)
Did you see how Donald Trump is going to be ringing in the 20th anniversary of 9-11?
41:13:
(Tim Miller)
sure did catch that sure did um yeah he is going to be um broadcasting uh a pay-per-view boxing an old-timers pay-per-view boxing match uh between evander holyfield and someone named belfort i don't know belfort i've stopped watching boxing about 15 years ago so maybe belfort is relevant and
41:38:
(Tim Miller)
But the interesting factoid that I saw about this as well is how he's going to be doing it with his failed son, Don Jr. And this was a line from the article about it.
41:48:
(Tim Miller)
The Trumps will call the entire four-fight telecast that also includes Anderson Silva versus Tito Ortiz and David Hay versus Joe Fournier.
42:00:
(Tim Miller)
They don't even list what the fourth match is.
42:02:
(Tim Miller)
So the former president is going to be sitting ringside calling the under, under, undercard of basically a celebrity, quasi-celebrity old-timers boxing match this weekend.
42:16:
(Tim Miller)
At the Hard Rock.
42:18:
(Tim Miller)
At the Hard Rock in Tampa or something, right?
42:21:
(Tim Miller)
Which Hard Rock?
42:22:
(Tim Miller)
It's not even in Las Vegas.
42:24:
(Tim Miller)
I think it's in Tampa.
42:26:
(Tim Miller)
Excuse me, in Hollywood, Florida.
42:29:
(Tim Miller)
which is you know the hard rock hollywood that's a that was a coveted t-shirt back when i was in high school um and uh this this is a person that that needs attention or needs money i think this is kind of a an open question i mean think about this somebody replied to one of our friends of our listeners i think replied and said oh you know joe rogan couldn't take this gig
42:53:
(Tim Miller)
You know, Joe Rogan was sick that day.
42:55:
(Tim Miller)
I was like, they didn't even call Joe Rogan for this.
42:58:
(Tim Miller)
Like, Joe Rogan, you would laugh in your face if you said to him, hi, I would like you to call the David Hay versus Joe Fournier boxing match at the Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida.
43:09:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, this is like, this is not prime time material.
43:14:
(JVL)
what do you think the odds are he actually sits there and does commentary for the whole thing because i gotta say about the rigged election no no versus versus he stays there for 15 minutes and then walks off because the idea of him sitting still for 15 minutes with this stuff i i can't imagine that what is he doing you notice on the on the uh the flyer for it how he is identified
43:43:
(Tim Miller)
I did not notice that, no.
43:45:
(JVL)
President Trump.
43:48:
(JVL)
Of course.
43:48:
(JVL)
Not former president.
43:51:
(JVL)
As if he's still the president.
43:56:
(JVL)
Amazing.
43:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, I don't know.
43:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
I would normally say like, yes, this is insane.
44:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's like officiating boxing matches or whatever it is he's doing.
44:04:
(Sarah Longwell)
I don't even really know what calling boxing matches.
44:06:
(Tim Miller)
I don't even know what that is.
44:07:
(Tim Miller)
It's like Ortiz, jab.
44:09:
(Tim Miller)
Ortiz, hook.
44:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
I don't know.
44:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
Is that any stupider than the fact that this guy became well-known as a consummate businessman because he fired Gilbert Gottfried on The Apprentice?
44:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's not any more ridiculous than that.
44:22:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's all ridiculous.
44:24:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
44:24:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
44:25:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, I do think that it signals that he needs cash, right?
44:30:
(Tim Miller)
And he's trying to sell the hotel.
44:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I was just going to bring this up.
44:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
So somebody made an interesting point on Twitter, I can't remember who it was, that why would he sell his hotel if he was going to run again, since the whole point of the hotel was, you know, you're president, you force people to stay there, you know, as they come to see you.
44:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
And like, that's the whole business model.
44:51:
(Sarah Longwell)
But it strikes me that actually, he just needs cash.
44:55:
(JVL)
The hotel's a money pit right now, I think.
44:58:
(JVL)
It became so polarized.
45:00:
(JVL)
Nobody wants to stay there, and there aren't enough Republicans in power to make it worth anybody's while.
45:06:
(JVL)
So he's got to just stop the bleeding on it, I think.
45:10:
(JVL)
I don't even know that he's going to make a ton of – because he's not selling the hotel the way – I mean, it's a complicated thing about the leases.
45:16:
(JVL)
So, you know –
45:17:
(JVL)
He has a lease with the U.S. government on what is U.S. government property.
45:23:
(JVL)
He's going to sell that lease to somebody else to pick it up.
45:27:
(JVL)
I don't know.
45:29:
(JVL)
I think you're right, Sarah.
45:31:
(JVL)
You look at this and you think, oh, it's crazy.
45:34:
(JVL)
Why is he doing that?
45:36:
(JVL)
But on the other hand, he was on Alex Jones all the time.
45:39:
(JVL)
He was president of the United States.
45:41:
(JVL)
Didn't hurt him.
45:42:
(JVL)
Never hurts him.
45:44:
(JVL)
The rules don't apply.
45:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, so I guess I just, you know, something that I think it was Donald Rumsfeld once said of 9-11, that it was a failure to imagine.
45:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
There was a failure to imagine that this could happen to us.
45:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I think that for anybody in the political space...
46:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
We should not allow ourselves to fail to imagine as horrible as it is, as much as you don't want to go to that place in the part of your mindset and as much as you sort of feel like, am I just addicted to like talking about Trump or thinking about Trump?
46:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so you're like, you know, give it a rest.
46:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, I wrestle with this.
46:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
You cannot fail to imagine that we are entering into the next phase.
46:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
It is September of 2021.
46:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
2022 cycle is going to start very shortly.
46:30:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's already in full swing in a lot of these primaries, like Ohio, as we were talking about.
46:35:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's going to set the stage for a potential return for Donald Trump, who is actively building.
46:43:
(Sarah Longwell)
The the ability to walk back into a campaign for 2024 and against a president who will just he'll be 82 and who will have to run on a record as opposed to.
46:58:
(JVL)
I don't want to toot my own horn, but I think part of my value add here at The Bulwark is that I'm the guy whose capacity to imagine the worst happening is essentially infinite.
47:17:
(JVL)
I have never once in my life suffered from a failure to imagine the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen.
47:24:
(Tim Miller)
So, you know, I feel like I'm helping out.
47:27:
(Tim Miller)
I'm still enjoying my first summer of Joe Biden.
47:30:
(Tim Miller)
Can I just have another month, Sarah?
47:33:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, can my mind rest for one more month?
47:37:
(Tim Miller)
Is the democracy so in threat that my mind cannot rest until Halloween?
47:42:
(JVL)
Well, I mean, you can't do anything practically yet anyway.
47:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, that's fine.
47:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I'll just say, that's fine.
47:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
Wait until you can grab a hundred grand.
47:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
And by that, I mean the candy bar.
47:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
And then you can freak out.
47:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
But like, I'm just, we are slow walking ourselves into a scenario that is very much worst case, it seems like to me, where it's just not over yet.
48:07:
(Tim Miller)
It seems like maybe you can't imagine what the worst case is.
48:10:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe it's even worse than this.
48:13:
(JVL)
All right.
48:13:
(JVL)
Before we get out of here, Tim, would you fly back here to go to a concert with me and Sarah?
48:22:
(JVL)
You're a concert guy.
48:23:
(Tim Miller)
You love music.
48:24:
(Tim Miller)
I do love music.
48:25:
(Tim Miller)
I'm going to go see Big Frida tonight.
48:28:
(Tim Miller)
Going to see Big Frida.
48:30:
(Tim Miller)
And I do like music.
48:33:
(Tim Miller)
It depends on what the show is.
48:34:
(Tim Miller)
Will there be guitar solos?
48:38:
(JVL)
There will be some acoustic guitars.
48:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
Acoustic guitars.
48:42:
(Tim Miller)
Acoustic guitars.
48:43:
(Tim Miller)
Okay.
48:44:
(Tim Miller)
Is it a singer-songwriter?
48:45:
(Tim Miller)
Is it a male singer-songwriter singing about his feelings, singing about what it's like to have his heart broken by a woman and get down on his luck?
48:55:
(JVL)
it's a it's about getting a heart broken by women it's uh it's about the it's about the rich interior lives of women which is the best kind of music i am told and and i believe that the indigo girls and with very special guest ani de franco will be coming to like a miniature lilith fair will be coming to dc at wolf trap and i think that sarah and i should go we'll both wear flannels
49:21:
(JVL)
We'll, uh, we'll pack, I don't know, I don't know what a good Indigo Girls picnic would be, and we'll just hunker down and just, just enjoy Amy, and I don't even remember the other Indigo, I used to be like someone of the Indigo Girls, but, uh,
49:36:
(JVL)
What's the other Indigo Girls name?
49:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm blanking on it.
49:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
I actually don't remember.
49:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I will tell you, not only would I go to this concert, I've been to this concert.
49:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
The only people that I have seen consistently in concert is Ani DeFranco and the Indigo Girls.
49:51:
(Sarah Longwell)
Throughout my life, I would never miss them at Wolf Trap.
49:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
In fact, I wore my first, I came, I rolled into my flannel yesterday and some people on my team said, oh, it's September.
50:04:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I was, they were like, you know, it is 80 degrees outside.
50:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I was like, I don't care.
50:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
As soon as September hits, it's flannel time.
50:11:
(JVL)
Well, I will either send you with my wife or I will send you and your wife to this show at Wolf Trap.
50:17:
(JVL)
I will probably not go.
50:19:
(JVL)
Okay, no one needs to be sent.
50:20:
(Tim Miller)
Why won't you go?
50:21:
(Tim Miller)
You're the one who knows the Indigo Girls catalog the best.
50:27:
(Tim Miller)
No.
50:27:
(JVL)
She doesn't know it better than I do.
50:28:
(JVL)
I'm sure that Sarah knows it better than I do.
50:30:
(JVL)
Now, you know, people forget that before the Indigo Girls were like the iconic lesbian band, they were on the front edge of a really cool scene from Athens, Georgia, when it was, you know, Michael Stipe and R.E.M.
50:46:
(JVL)
coming out of there and Husker Du and Bob Mould.
50:49:
(JVL)
And so there's this whole alternative rock scene happening in the late 80s, early 90s.
50:55:
(JVL)
And I don't know when they went from being part of like the cool, hip, new alternative rock scene to being just like the earnest lesbian band.
51:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
First of all, they could be both.
51:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
Number one.
51:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
Also, it's Emily.
51:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
Emily was the other one's name.
51:11:
(Tim Miller)
Emily.
51:12:
(Tim Miller)
Yes.
51:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
And they're great.
51:13:
(Tim Miller)
There are only two of them?
51:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
They're the two main ones.
51:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
I thought it was like a four piece.
51:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
No, no, no.
51:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's just the two.
51:20:
(Tim Miller)
There's a new Athens.
51:21:
(Tim Miller)
Speaking of Athens, just really quick, a little tip.
51:22:
(Tim Miller)
If you made it all the way to the end at this point.
51:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
You're really hanging in there.
51:26:
(Tim Miller)
Mine is the late aughts kind of indie rock.
51:31:
(Tim Miller)
You know, kind of a spacey sort of indie rock vibe with some guitar solos and with some males singing about their feelings.
51:39:
(Tim Miller)
And there's a new Athens band called Low Talker that fits that bill that I highly recommend.
51:43:
(Tim Miller)
Is it a shoegazer band?
51:47:
(Tim Miller)
No, no.
51:48:
(Tim Miller)
I would say it's just kind of a lush and spacey kind of indie rock with a little bit of, you know, with a few ballads mixed in there.
51:55:
(JVL)
Where were you on Smashing Pumpkins?
51:58:
(Tim Miller)
Who hated Smashing Pumpkins.
52:00:
(Tim Miller)
Hated Smashing Pumpkins.
52:00:
(Tim Miller)
Hated Smashing Pumpkins.
52:02:
(Tim Miller)
Why?
52:02:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
52:03:
(Tim Miller)
I don't know.
52:03:
(Tim Miller)
It was maybe a little bit too heavy for me.
52:12:
(Tim Miller)
I didn't like them.
52:13:
(Tim Miller)
I kind of put the Silver Sun pickups in their little bucket.
52:17:
(Tim Miller)
And I was not a Smashing Pumpkins man.
52:19:
(JVL)
Those are wildly different groups.
52:21:
(JVL)
But that's okay.
52:22:
(JVL)
Not really.
52:22:
(JVL)
They have a similar sound.
52:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
interesting and Sarah you didn't do any of the grunge rock you just went right for lesbian folk music yeah I mean I basically like if you check my current like what's on shuffle in my car it is just every American musical plus the British ones plus Ani DeFranco Indigo Girls and then a lot of Eminem Eminem for whatever reason I did a lot of Eminem and then there's like you know I can I got some I got some hits the hits Tegan and Sarah are you a Tegan and Sarah girl too
52:53:
(JVL)
uh no i'm not i actually played pool once with tegan and sarah in california and didn't know who they were uh then somebody had to tell me really that must have been pretty cool i didn't know though they were so how cool could it have been uh that's interesting so m&m can we just before we i mean we should give the people something for making it this far how did you get into m&m eight miles
53:19:
(Sarah Longwell)
I, well, no, before 8 Mile, I mean, Eminem was, you may remember this.
53:24:
(JVL)
You an OG Slim Shady type?
53:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
Pretty, yeah, he was a pretty big deal.
53:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
And here's the thing.
53:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I'm just going to tell you this observation.
53:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
I've never said it out loud, but it is true that in my college years, if you listened to all of Eminem and all of Ani DeFranco, and those were basically two of the people that you listened to,
53:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
The amount of rage and the sort of way they talked about their grievance, they were so similar.
53:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I think I might have just been a little, maybe right around my 20s, might have been like, I might have had a little anger deep down.
53:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
I might have been trying to work through some things.
53:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I loved them both so much.
54:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
Although I will tell you, I have caught, I hadn't listened to Eminem in a while and I revisited recently and I was like.
54:09:
(Tim Miller)
Through Dido.
54:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
No, I don't know.
54:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
It was like, you know, we're going to ask some ladies, please stand up.
54:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like I was, you know.
54:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
But if you listen to some of the tracks that I remember singing to, they are breathtakingly awful.
54:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like scary, dangerous, dark.
54:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, whatever.
54:30:
(Sarah Longwell)
I still loved them, but I like wouldn't put them in front of my kids.
54:34:
(Tim Miller)
Tipper Gore has entered the chat.
54:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
Man, dude, the violence against women, against...
54:42:
(JVL)
I was going to ask you, there's a lot of anti-woman stuff, and I'm surprised that you were able to stomach that.
54:51:
(JVL)
You must have been very angry.
54:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
I need to Franco made me that way.
54:58:
(JVL)
Oh, your 24 flavors of awesome.
55:02:
(JVL)
Bye, guys.
55:03:
(JVL)
Peace.