Victory Lap
00:07:
(Charlie Sykes)
Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast.
00:08:
(Charlie Sykes)
I'm Charlie Sykes.
00:10:
(Charlie Sykes)
Just a note here.
00:12:
(Charlie Sykes)
Late Saturday night, we all did a live stream with the Bulwark staff where we talked about our reactions.
00:18:
(Charlie Sykes)
And you'll be able to hear the last 11 minutes of that.
00:21:
(Charlie Sykes)
We're going to tack it on to the end of the podcast.
00:23:
(Charlie Sykes)
And this is the raw history.
00:25:
(Charlie Sykes)
This is what we were thinking when it was very, very fresh, very...
00:29:
(Charlie Sykes)
We were adapting to the final call of the presidential election, and it came after, I think it's safe to say, a certain amount of celebration.
00:38:
(Charlie Sykes)
So you get to hear this raw, raw history.
00:41:
(Charlie Sykes)
So stay tuned for the end of this, and you'll hear not just JVL, but Mona Charan, Amanda Carpenter, Jim Swift, Sonny Bunch, Tim Miller, Bill Kristol.
00:49:
(Charlie Sykes)
And I reacting sort of summing up our reaction to this election.
00:57:
(Charlie Sykes)
But because, of course, that was for Bulwark Plus, we wanted to sort of get the band back together again this morning.
01:02:
(Charlie Sykes)
And so joining me now on this Monday morning.
01:05:
(Charlie Sykes)
I won't say hangover, but it doesn't feel like a hangover.
01:09:
(Charlie Sykes)
Joining me on this Monday podcast, we have JVL, Bill Crystal and Sarah Longwell.
01:14:
(Charlie Sykes)
Thank you all for coming back and joining me.
01:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
Thanks, Charlie.
01:18:
(Charlie Sykes)
OK, I just want a couple of things here.
01:20:
(Charlie Sykes)
I just want to once again remark that I can't get over the fact that this all ended really at the Four Seasons Landscaping Company.
01:29:
(Charlie Sykes)
I mean, I just this is the best story ever.
01:31:
(Charlie Sykes)
And every historian of 2020 has to have this detail.
01:35:
(Charlie Sykes)
And can I just read the lead in the Philadelphia Inquirer?
01:39:
(Charlie Sykes)
Please.
01:40:
(Charlie Sykes)
What began five years ago with a made for TV announcement of Donald Trump's presidential ambitions from the escalator of his ritzy Manhattan high rise.
01:48:
(Charlie Sykes)
Ended Saturday ended Saturday with his aging lawyer shouting conspiracy theories and vowing lawsuits in a northeast Philadelphia parking lot near a sex shop and a crematorium.
02:01:
(Charlie Sykes)
This is just so perfect that did you did you have all of it comes to to in it.
02:06:
(Charlie Sykes)
OK, so let's talk about where we're at here.
02:09:
(Charlie Sykes)
We have the Dow Jones is up sixteen hundred points.
02:12:
(Charlie Sykes)
which has really got to be making Donald Trump's day.
02:14:
(Charlie Sykes)
Republicans are continuing to not say anything about the election.
02:20:
(Charlie Sykes)
Trump is refusing to concede and planning various legal efforts.
02:25:
(Charlie Sykes)
But I have to tell you guys, since we talked on for on Saturday, one of the things that really strikes me is how fast and decisively the sense of political reality has shifted in this country.
02:38:
(Charlie Sykes)
That I think that Donald Trump thought that we were going to go into this period of real confusion and everything was going to be like Florida 2000.
02:46:
(Charlie Sykes)
Instead, I'm looking at the front pages of all the newspapers and everything's Biden, Biden, Biden, the world leaders who came forward, including Bibi Netanyahu, which had to hurt the prime minister of.
02:56:
(Charlie Sykes)
of India, who was kind of a buddy of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson congratulating him.
03:03:
(Charlie Sykes)
So it's like the world has just moved on in a very decisive way.
03:08:
(Charlie Sykes)
And I'm just guessing that that must be very disconcerting for Donald Trump.
03:12:
(Charlie Sykes)
who probably thought that he could play this string out.
03:14:
(Charlie Sykes)
And we'll try to continue to play it out.
03:16:
(Charlie Sykes)
But even Rich Lowry from National Review said the longer he holds out, the more disconnected from reality he's going to be.
03:26:
(Charlie Sykes)
So let's go around the horn and talk about where we are at right now, your reaction to the election.
03:34:
(Charlie Sykes)
And so let's start with you, Bill.
03:37:
(Bill Kristol)
I'm cheerful, but I guess I'm a little more alarmed than maybe I should be and a little more annoyed than I should be.
03:43:
(Bill Kristol)
But maybe that's just the way I am now, you know, kind of crotchety and whatever.
03:47:
(Bill Kristol)
I'm alarmed because, you know, the legal challenges aren't going to prevail, but they could cause a fair amount of trouble in the short term and the transition will be delayed, apparently, at Trump's order.
03:58:
(Bill Kristol)
And, you know, again, all that's manageable.
04:00:
(Bill Kristol)
Will they get it all serious about COVID, which is really a terrible situation and getting worse.
04:06:
(Bill Kristol)
So I'm sort of not quite as sort of willing to simply be jubilant.
04:11:
(Bill Kristol)
It's probably just my, as I say, my sort of dour personality or something and worrying a little too much about it.
04:21:
(Bill Kristol)
will do to to to the public sense and and to the republican party in terms of going forward are they supposed to try to make the country work over the next four years be a loyal and responsible opposition or are they just going to go into full uh biden you know biden's sort of semi-legitimate and we just suppose everything and in every republican primary we'll support the trumpiest candidate
04:44:
(Bill Kristol)
So that part alarms me.
04:46:
(Bill Kristol)
And in that respect, that fits into what annoys me, which is the degree of Republican.
04:52:
(Bill Kristol)
They're not really mostly going Trumpy, but they're certainly going sort of, gee, I don't want to criticize the president for being totally irresponsible.
05:01:
(Bill Kristol)
Adam White has an excellent piece of the bulwark this morning.
05:03:
(Bill Kristol)
on this theme the damage that's done by taking a very narrow legalistic view while trump's entitled to pursue his legal remedies it's sort of like it's a bankruptcy you sort of understand the guy who's going under he's going to launch some frivolous lawsuits he's president of the united states the damage that could be done again to our civic structure uh by this kind of indulgence of his irresponsibility
05:26:
(Bill Kristol)
is not trivial.
05:27:
(Bill Kristol)
And the fact that Republicans, with very few exceptions, really, are unwilling to call him out makes me worried about the future, that we've had endless discussion about, you know, is the Republican Party's eligible or not?
05:37:
(Bill Kristol)
How responsible is it going to be?
05:39:
(Bill Kristol)
I don't know.
05:40:
(Bill Kristol)
I wouldn't say this is not a good start.
05:41:
(Bill Kristol)
These first few days, don't reassure me on that front.
05:44:
(Charlie Sykes)
But a lot of that is performative butt kissing, isn't it?
05:46:
(Charlie Sykes)
I mean, we knew that Donald Trump was not going to concede easily.
05:50:
(Charlie Sykes)
We knew that this might be an election month.
05:54:
(Charlie Sykes)
And I don't disagree with anything you just said there, but at least I'm sitting here now going, you know, their fantasy of having this election decided by the Supreme Court is just a fantasy.
06:03:
(Charlie Sykes)
That's not going to be
06:04:
(Charlie Sykes)
Gore versus Bush.
06:05:
(Charlie Sykes)
So yes, they're going to continue doing this.
06:07:
(Charlie Sykes)
Maybe they'll even have rallies and everything, but you know, that's not going to, that at least is not going to happen.
06:15:
(Charlie Sykes)
So Sarah Longwell on Saturday, you admitted, and it was a very powerful part of this.
06:21:
(Charlie Sykes)
I hope people can stick around for the, the, the live stream because you actually gave me goosebumps, but you, you, you reacted very strongly to the,
06:30:
(Charlie Sykes)
the, you know, this, the final, the relief of the final result.
06:34:
(Charlie Sykes)
So where are we at this morning, Monday morning?
06:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, well, I agree with a lot of what Bill said.
06:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, I've been pouring through the data that's available, which still isn't great, unfortunately, because the results are trickling in so slowly.
06:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
But, you know, I had really expected...
06:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
more you know i mean i think it's i am i am i am i am so relieved that uh joe biden you know pulled this out but as i was saying on the live stream on saturday you know he did some incredibly impressive things he flipped georgia he flipped arizona um he built that blue wall back but all of them by you know
07:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
pretty narrow margins.
07:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
Some of them we're talking about 10,000 votes.
07:22:
(Sarah Longwell)
Pennsylvania, which looks to be one of the bigger ones, is by about 45,000 votes, although we're still waiting for some Philadelphia numbers to come in.
07:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
The Michigan win was bigger with about 125,000.
07:35:
(Sarah Longwell)
But those are still not blowout numbers.
07:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
They're kind of the reverse of what Trump got last time, which means that his hold...
07:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
on the Republican Party is pretty deep.
07:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I'm concerned about that.
07:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
I also am just reflecting on, you know, sometimes, you know, I think we all got a little swept up towards the end there, feeling like there was going to be this total collapse of Trump because of coronavirus and because of the racial crisis and how bad things had gone over the summer and
08:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, that the idea that his his supporters might be just a little less enthusiastic going into the election.
08:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
But and I really from doing all the focus groups, I had always sort of focused on these college educated suburban voters, especially women.
08:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
And while they did break pretty decisively.
08:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
Against Trump, you know, the non-college women who I always sort of thought would come along and who the polling was showing was eroding.
08:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
A lot of those stuck it out.
08:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so and ended up, you know, I think I think somebody actually asked this question on the live stream and I I disputed it in real time.
08:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I went back and looked.
08:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
It is it is looking like Donald Trump may have won.
08:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
Again, white women.
08:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so anyway, I just just all of this to say that this is there is a lot more to do here than I think we might have thought.
09:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
But it's still it just it took absolutely every piece of work that every group did, both on turnout and persuasion, because it was it was narrow.
09:15:
(Charlie Sykes)
JVL.
09:17:
(JVL)
Yeah, I'm in a much darker place than I was on Saturday.
09:20:
(JVL)
Ooh, because you were uncharacteristically sunny.
09:25:
(Charlie Sykes)
Yeah, no, it felt very sunny.
09:27:
(Bill Kristol)
I can't believe it.
09:29:
(Charlie Sykes)
We have a picture of you smiling.
09:32:
(JVL)
I know, I know.
09:33:
(JVL)
I'll hear that.
09:34:
(JVL)
So I have spent some time looking around at institutional Republican world and the extent to which even people like Tim Scott
09:43:
(JVL)
Refusing to say anything and dog whistling about legal votes and got to take these allegations very, very seriously.
09:54:
(JVL)
And what is happening right now is that Donald Trump has very cleverly created another loyalty test for the Republican Party.
10:04:
(JVL)
And because the Republican Party is passing this loyalty test, he is binding the Republican voters more tightly to himself.
10:13:
(JVL)
And creating more power for this is in the same way that everybody, the reason people got so passionate about Trump is because they knew they were wrong to do it.
10:21:
(JVL)
And having been in the wrong post election, they're going to keep doubling down on this as well.
10:27:
(JVL)
And I have said this before, but I truly do believe it, that the article of faith is going to be Donald Trump won the election.
10:37:
(JVL)
Donald Trump won all of the legal votes cast, and it was only the handful of illegal votes that pushed Joe Biden over the top, and that this is going to be the price of admission for anybody who wants to play at the highest levels of Republican politics or within the...
10:55:
(JVL)
mainstream parts of conservatism make.
10:58:
(JVL)
You just aren't going to be allowed to say, yeah, Joe Biden got 7 million more votes than Donald Trump and beat him pretty decisively in a handful of swing states.
11:07:
(JVL)
That will be apostasy.
11:09:
(JVL)
I don't even know how you pronounce it.
11:11:
(JVL)
I always pronounce it apostasy.
11:13:
(JVL)
I don't know.
11:14:
(JVL)
I'll let you guys.
11:15:
(JVL)
So that that has me very concerned.
11:17:
(JVL)
And then I'm also concerned just in the logistics of the next 74 days.
11:21:
(JVL)
So The Washington Post today has a story about how the administrator of the GSA has refused to sign on to create the transition.
11:31:
(JVL)
And this is one of those things which has always been done as a matter of course, because as I keep saying, our entire government is run on the honor system.
11:38:
(JVL)
And once somebody realizes, hold on, I don't care about the honor system.
11:45:
(JVL)
Why?
11:46:
(JVL)
Why should anybody in the federal government sign such a document?
11:49:
(JVL)
Right.
11:49:
(JVL)
I mean, and this is going to happen in a cascade across all the levels.
11:54:
(JVL)
And I don't want to sound like a crazy person with his hair on fire, but I feel like we are actually still in the midst of a government crisis and heading towards the possibility, still an outside possibility of an actual constitutional crisis here.
12:07:
(JVL)
And I will not feel better about it until we have an actual handover of the government.
12:14:
(Charlie Sykes)
Wow.
12:15:
(Charlie Sykes)
I find myself being the sunniest person here.
12:18:
(Charlie Sykes)
I don't disagree with the concerns that you're raising here.
12:21:
(Charlie Sykes)
And by the way, this was a question that I had all weekend.
12:24:
(Charlie Sykes)
Who has to sign the document that triggers the actual formal transition?
12:29:
(Charlie Sykes)
I mean, it's one thing to have Donald Trump hiding out in the bunker in the White House.
12:35:
(Charlie Sykes)
But
12:35:
(Charlie Sykes)
It turns out it is the administrator of the GSA who has to sign that paper.
12:40:
(Charlie Sykes)
It's never been controversial before.
12:42:
(Charlie Sykes)
Nobody knew it because it was automatic.
12:46:
(Charlie Sykes)
Somebody was involved in a transition who said that
12:50:
(Charlie Sykes)
They got a call that went to voicemail at 1 a.m. after the election day or whatever, because, of course, this always took place.
12:58:
(Charlie Sykes)
This is also an administrator of the GSA who has looked the other way for a variety of Trumpian things, including the Trump Hotel.
13:04:
(Charlie Sykes)
So that's not a good that's not a good omen.
13:07:
(Charlie Sykes)
Also, there's real damage that can be done by delaying all of this.
13:11:
(Charlie Sykes)
The only time we've had a really substantial delay in the past was the 2000 election, which went right up to the Electoral College.
13:19:
(Charlie Sykes)
So
13:19:
(Charlie Sykes)
These are all concerns, and the damage being done to the legitimacy of our democracy is very real.
13:28:
(Charlie Sykes)
But let me just turn things a little bit, just a little bit.
13:32:
(Charlie Sykes)
Sarah, you're right about how this should not have been this close.
13:35:
(Charlie Sykes)
I was reading one of the articles, one of the TikTok articles, about the last several months of the campaign, and I actually stopped halfway through saying this shouldn't have been this hard.
13:44:
(Charlie Sykes)
It should not have been in doubt.
13:46:
(Charlie Sykes)
in any way whatsoever.
13:47:
(Charlie Sykes)
And so that does raise those questions.
13:50:
(Charlie Sykes)
But in the end, this is going to be a substantial victory.
13:54:
(Charlie Sykes)
Joe Biden is going to get 306 electoral votes.
13:56:
(Charlie Sykes)
He will actually get more electoral votes than Donald Trump actually got because Donald Trump only got 304 because there were two faithless electors.
14:03:
(Charlie Sykes)
So so don't email me about that.
14:05:
(Charlie Sykes)
And he's and he's going to lose the in Joe Biden will win the the popular vote by seven million.
14:10:
(Charlie Sykes)
That's not nothing.
14:12:
(Charlie Sykes)
Also, I do think that the way in which we've kind of moved on from Trump, yes, you're going to continue to have Trumpism, but Trumpism is going to feel very teeny for at least a while.
14:25:
(Charlie Sykes)
Now, I think there's going to be tremendous problems, which I'm willing to talk about later this week.
14:30:
(Charlie Sykes)
I could see the Trump folks starting their version of the Tea Party early next year with the rallies, the Trump Party.
14:37:
(Charlie Sykes)
If, in fact, Biden moves aggressively on the coronavirus or a mask mandate, I mean, I could see these these these mass demonstrations.
14:44:
(Charlie Sykes)
I think it's going to be ugly.
14:46:
(Charlie Sykes)
I expect it's going to be hyper partisan and everything.
14:48:
(Charlie Sykes)
But I have to tell you, I'm still kind of, you know, enjoying the moment of thinking about what it's like to have a president United States who doesn't sound like a complete asshole, you know, who doesn't sound like a lunatic.
14:59:
(Charlie Sykes)
who is going to pay attention to the science, who is going to make rational comments, who is not going to offend our sensibilities on a regular basis.
15:11:
(Charlie Sykes)
I guess I'm at least for the moment, I want to just sit back and go, oh, my God, it's like, you know, maybe Trumpism was a little bit of a parenthesis, this little moment of insanity.
15:21:
(Charlie Sykes)
I mean, I'll get over it.
15:22:
(Charlie Sykes)
I'm prepared to get over it.
15:25:
(Charlie Sykes)
But guys, we've worked very hard to get to this moment.
15:29:
(Charlie Sykes)
I mean, I told you on Saturday night that I calculated that the length of time between Donald Trump coming down the escalator and Saturday was 1,972 days.
15:41:
(Charlie Sykes)
And I'm guessing that every one of us did not have a single day in that nearly 2,000 days.
15:47:
(Charlie Sykes)
We didn't think about Donald Trump, talk about Donald Trump, write about Donald Trump, go on television or radio or podcasts about Donald Trump.
15:54:
(Charlie Sykes)
And, you know, at least let's recognize he hit the trifecta.
15:58:
(Charlie Sykes)
He's a one term president.
16:00:
(Charlie Sykes)
He lost the popular vote twice.
16:02:
(Charlie Sykes)
He was impeached.
16:03:
(Charlie Sykes)
Nobody else hit all of those things.
16:06:
(Charlie Sykes)
And I'm guessing his post presidency is going to be equally shambolic.
16:10:
(Charlie Sykes)
So I was not expecting to be the ray of sunshine on the podcast this morning, but I'm I'm planting my flag there.
16:17:
(Charlie Sykes)
But OK, JBL, you've been arguing about this for some time.
16:20:
(Charlie Sykes)
That Trump is not going anywhere, that he's going to keep his hold over Trump, over the Republican Party.
16:25:
(Charlie Sykes)
And I think you're right about that.
16:27:
(Charlie Sykes)
And I think people do need to understand that, though, that Trumpism was not exorcised last week.
16:34:
(Charlie Sykes)
And so Donald Trump's going to stick around.
16:36:
(Charlie Sykes)
What specific role do you think Donald Trump will play, say, over the next year or so?
16:43:
(JVL)
I think he will essentially have an executive branch in exile and he will be the focal point for the resistance, hashtag resistance against Biden, especially on COVID stuff, because this is a way in which he can force the Biden administration to fail.
17:03:
(JVL)
And here's a real very real question for you, Charlie.
17:06:
(JVL)
I expect that in the next week or two, we're going to get some polling asking Republican voters what percentage of them think that Trump won the election.
17:15:
(JVL)
What what number do you think that's going to be?
17:18:
(JVL)
What what percentage of Republican voters will say Donald Trump won the election?
17:22:
(JVL)
Because if it's if it's above like 20 percent.
17:27:
(JVL)
It's going to mean that it will be virtually impossible for any Republican.
17:30:
(JVL)
No, I agree with Congress people to cooperate with Biden on anything.
17:35:
(JVL)
Oh, I think it's gonna be above 40%.
17:37:
(Charlie Sykes)
What do you think, Sarah, Bill?
17:41:
(Bill Kristol)
Yeah, JBL and I talked about this earlier this morning, and I sort of thought that I picked the same number, 40, 40, 50 maybe.
17:48:
(Bill Kristol)
I'm less confident or less certain, I guess we're less convinced than JBL that this means that, I mean, 40 or 50 is not 80 or 100, and I think there'll be conflicting pressures on Republicans on the Hill, and I think Trump could fade some.
18:03:
(Bill Kristol)
But I can make arguments that there's a sort of semi-happy scenario
18:07:
(Bill Kristol)
And then there's a very worrisome scenario in terms of the future of the Republican Party.
18:12:
(Bill Kristol)
I was thinking of writing something this morning that sort of my head tells me, well, what's the Pascal thing?
18:18:
(Bill Kristol)
You know, the heart has its reasons.
18:20:
(Bill Kristol)
The head doesn't understand it.
18:22:
(Bill Kristol)
reason doesn't understand it.
18:24:
(Bill Kristol)
My head tells me we need to, look, it's better to have, you got to move on.
18:27:
(Bill Kristol)
You got us a little bit of forgive and forget, a little bit of letting people be cowardly these next 70 days, and then he's gone.
18:35:
(Bill Kristol)
And the one thing I would say about JBL's point is it's not, JBL's isn't like, you know, he'll have an executive branch in exile.
18:41:
(Bill Kristol)
It's not that easy to have an executive branch in exile because the executive branch actually is a real thing, you know?
18:46:
(Bill Kristol)
And you can say, I'd like to have a rally with 25,000 people in Macon, Georgia.
18:51:
(Bill Kristol)
But you know what?
18:52:
(Bill Kristol)
If you have the White House and it's a semi-official event and you have White House advance and Air Force One and everything, it's a lot.
19:00:
(Bill Kristol)
And the Republican Party, your call, your beck and call.
19:02:
(Bill Kristol)
If Donald Trump, private citizen in April, this is the Tea Party question, Charlie, in April 2021 says, I want to have a rally in Macon, Georgia.
19:11:
(Bill Kristol)
I don't know.
19:11:
(Bill Kristol)
Does everyone show up?
19:13:
(Bill Kristol)
Does the party help him?
19:14:
(Bill Kristol)
He doesn't have the official ability to kind of, you know, use the police forces.
19:17:
(Bill Kristol)
Don't shut the roads down for him.
19:19:
(Bill Kristol)
I mean, he's no longer president.
19:21:
(Bill Kristol)
That I think is the biggest thing on the other side of the equation.
19:24:
(Bill Kristol)
But getting back to my heart and my head, but in terms of the Republican Party going ahead, going forward,
19:30:
(Bill Kristol)
My head says, you know, probably better to sort of put the cause of reconciliation above the cause of truth, if I can put it that way.
19:38:
(Bill Kristol)
You know, kind of let's just a little forgive and forget.
19:40:
(Bill Kristol)
My heart, I've got to say, though, says to me, they're still behaving so miserably.
19:45:
(Bill Kristol)
And I don't really, other people should go reconcile with them.
19:49:
(Bill Kristol)
Other people should work with them.
19:50:
(Bill Kristol)
It's actually important to do.
19:51:
(Bill Kristol)
But can I personally feel like I want to be sitting down with them and thinking about the conservative future?
19:57:
(Bill Kristol)
I just can't get there.
19:59:
(Charlie Sykes)
So here's the shorter term question is, is how do they get out of the cul-de-sac that they're in?
20:05:
(Charlie Sykes)
Because right now, you know, they're all afraid to acknowledge that the election's over.
20:10:
(Charlie Sykes)
The election is over.
20:11:
(Charlie Sykes)
There's no doubt whatsoever.
20:13:
(Charlie Sykes)
Donald Trump himself will never actually concede that he lost Trump.
20:18:
(Charlie Sykes)
but he might, you know, basically bow to reality.
20:21:
(Charlie Sykes)
I guess he's kind of trapped himself, hasn't he?
20:24:
(Charlie Sykes)
And the rest of the Republicans.
20:25:
(Charlie Sykes)
I mean, if you're Kevin McCarthy, at some point, you have to acknowledge that Joe Biden is the president of the United States, right?
20:31:
(Charlie Sykes)
Why?
20:32:
(Charlie Sykes)
Right?
20:33:
(Charlie Sykes)
Why?
20:34:
(Charlie Sykes)
Why does he have to?
20:35:
(Charlie Sykes)
Well, because January 20th is going to come around.
20:38:
(Charlie Sykes)
So at what point are they going to do it?
20:40:
(JVL)
You're already in the House.
20:41:
(JVL)
I mean, you could just keep saying, like, he stole the election.
20:46:
(JVL)
I mean, we're not going to work with him.
20:47:
(JVL)
I mean, this is a problem.
20:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah.
20:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
Look, it's a problem.
20:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I'm not sure that it's the same.
20:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm not sure I think it's the same problem that the JBL does.
20:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I think the JBL is right.
21:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think that you you could say, like, if you do a poll, you know, a month from now or that people will say, oh, this was stolen, that there'll be some percentage of people that do that.
21:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
But people's memories for better or for worse.
21:14:
(Sarah Longwell)
are pretty short around politics.
21:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
I do think that over time, Donald Trump can't stay in the White House.
21:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
Charlie, you are correct that institutionally people are moving on.
21:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
And you do have to separate the difference between the ardent Trump supporters who are going to go down with the ship and the other people who voted for him for whatever their reasons, but aren't like, they're like, yeah, Joe Biden won.
21:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
Let's move on.
21:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
The other thing is you got a lot of these
21:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
local election officials, the lieutenant governor in Georgia, who's a Republican, coming out saying, look, there's no irregularities here.
21:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I think that the Trump guys are going to try to keep the narrative alive that there were.
21:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
But so far, nobody has produced any real evidence.
21:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
And that is going to matter.
21:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
And over time, Donald Trump is not going to be the president.
22:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
And the country is going to move on to some degree.
22:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
He will keep hold.
22:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it's funny, you know, you look at the people who are like going out of their way to really dive into his narrative.
22:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
Who is it?
22:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's the people who have deeply tied their political futures to Donald Trump, right?
22:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
Ted Cruz, even people like Marco Rubio, people who think, hey, I might want to run for president again, and I'm going to need this guy.
22:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
But over time, they may still do that.
22:27:
(Sarah Longwell)
But the bulk of people whose futures are not tied to Donald Trump will start to move on.
22:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I just don't think that they can sustain as a loser the hold on the party.
22:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think they will maintain one.
22:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm not saying that they won't.
22:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think it will diminish as time goes on.
22:47:
(JVL)
Hard to disagree.
22:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, I know.
22:51:
(Charlie Sykes)
I think part of it, though, is do remember how short attention spans are.
22:56:
(Charlie Sykes)
And I am torn.
22:59:
(Charlie Sykes)
I am torn on this.
22:59:
(Charlie Sykes)
I mean, at some point, they do have to acknowledge it.
23:02:
(Charlie Sykes)
And whether it's the the Electoral College vote or whatnot, you know, once that GSA document is signed.
23:08:
(Charlie Sykes)
But Trump has made it very difficult.
23:10:
(Charlie Sykes)
Trump has made it very difficult to know once he's backed into a corner to to acknowledge all of this.
23:16:
(Charlie Sykes)
And we don't know what the Republican Party will do.
23:18:
(Charlie Sykes)
And so, Bill, you know, part of it is that, you know, I guess I didn't expect the Republican Party to show any moral leadership or courage during this particular period.
23:26:
(Charlie Sykes)
And maybe they were just waiting on Trump to give them the signal that it's OK.
23:31:
(Charlie Sykes)
But it is striking that none of them is coming out.
23:33:
(Charlie Sykes)
And I will say, though, that, you know, it's one thing for people to be cowardly.
23:38:
(Charlie Sykes)
Some of the comments over the weekend by Newt Gingrich and by Lindsey Graham, I mean, were unhinged from guys who and that's why I hold them to a different standard.
23:48:
(Charlie Sykes)
They know better.
23:49:
(Charlie Sykes)
Newt Gingrich knows how elections actually run.
23:53:
(Charlie Sykes)
And he's sitting there talking about, you know, the corruption, the George Soros.
23:57:
(Charlie Sykes)
So the level of his mendacity and his dishonesty is is is is pretty off the charts, even by the standards of this era.
24:08:
(Bill Kristol)
No, I think I had the exact same thought that, I mean, it's one thing for someone who doesn't really understand how it works and is reading some kind of semi-crackpot stuff online and thinks maybe they really did steal the votes.
24:18:
(Bill Kristol)
There weren't observers in Philadelphia.
24:20:
(Bill Kristol)
What is all this late ballot stuff and what's a provisional ballot?
24:23:
(Bill Kristol)
Newt Gingrich knows extremely well how American elections work and he is just lying and he is purposely lying and he is stirring up discontent with our system and with the incoming president.
24:37:
(Bill Kristol)
Again, I think we're having the right discussion here in the sense that we just don't know, of course.
24:40:
(Bill Kristol)
I mean, how much time heals, so to speak, and people get to move along, how much Republican elected officials decide.
24:48:
(Bill Kristol)
I mean, there are a lot of concrete choices.
24:50:
(Bill Kristol)
This won't be resolved in a theoretical debate.
24:52:
(Bill Kristol)
It'll be resolved when, let's take COVID.
24:55:
(Bill Kristol)
Trump can be against Biden, but the truth is if Biden says, I want a lot of money here for PPE and for testing and for economic stimulus,
25:03:
(Bill Kristol)
to tide us over until the vaccine really works.
25:07:
(Bill Kristol)
Are Republicans really going to oppose that?
25:09:
(Bill Kristol)
Or is every Republican going to oppose it?
25:11:
(Bill Kristol)
Is McConnell going to whip Republicans against it?
25:13:
(Bill Kristol)
Or is it going to be a kind of fractured vote where some budget hawks vote against it and others say that's a reasonable proposal?
25:20:
(Bill Kristol)
Biden says, let's legalize the dreamers, which has been a Republican, you know, that issue in immigration, they've sort of been willing to give in on.
25:27:
(Bill Kristol)
but says, okay, I'll put aside the other stuff.
25:30:
(Bill Kristol)
A lot depends on how Biden behaves.
25:32:
(Bill Kristol)
I'll put aside the other stuff that's controversial.
25:33:
(Bill Kristol)
Let's just legalize the dreamers.
25:35:
(Bill Kristol)
Does every Republican oppose that?
25:37:
(Bill Kristol)
I really don't know the answer, but I think those are the kinds of, there'll be a lot of moments from January 20th on, from really from now on though,
25:46:
(Bill Kristol)
where we'll see i think the initial uh uh my one's initial my initial take on sort of their behavior has been mildly negative so far but you know again we're less than a week from the election i think george will be interesting does the left learn for
26:01:
(Bill Kristol)
all-in Trumpy Republicans?
26:03:
(Bill Kristol)
Or do they have a little bit, especially Perdue, of a kind of, look, I voted for Trump.
26:07:
(Bill Kristol)
I think there may have been problems.
26:08:
(Bill Kristol)
But here in Georgia, the Republican governor and lieutenant governor say it's sort of okay.
26:12:
(Bill Kristol)
And so let's talk about the future.
26:14:
(Bill Kristol)
You need to be there to check Joe Biden.
26:15:
(Bill Kristol)
That's really important to me.
26:17:
(Bill Kristol)
I mean, do they run as...
26:18:
(Bill Kristol)
Are they implicitly or explicitly accepting a Biden presidency in the two months now until the Georgia runoff, or are they still litigating Donald Trump's ridiculous claims?
26:29:
(Bill Kristol)
That would be an interesting little tip off, I think.
26:31:
(Charlie Sykes)
Well, also, the whole issue with the vaccine, by the way, this is the big story this morning, that we have perhaps a breakthrough with the vaccine, whether or not that becomes tribalized, probably.
26:42:
(Charlie Sykes)
Interesting, the debate that already broke out was, well, should Donald Trump get credit for this because of Operation Warp Speed, as a lot of people have pointed out?
26:51:
(Charlie Sykes)
They weren't technically part of Operation Warp Speed.
26:54:
(Charlie Sykes)
They didn't actually...
26:55:
(Charlie Sykes)
Which is the company?
26:57:
(Charlie Sykes)
I'm sorry, I don't have it in front of me.
26:58:
(Charlie Sykes)
Pfizer.
26:59:
(Charlie Sykes)
Pfizer.
26:59:
(Charlie Sykes)
Pfizer didn't take any money from the government, which is interesting.
27:03:
(Charlie Sykes)
But one of the tells how this is playing in Trump world is Don Jr. is very, very, very unhappy that this news is breaking after the election.
27:12:
(Charlie Sykes)
He thinks this was part of a conspiracy of some kind.
27:14:
(Charlie Sykes)
And you know that if you're Donald Trump, you're sitting in the White House, you're going, you know, Wall Street is up by 1600 points.
27:22:
(Charlie Sykes)
And now they have a vaccine.
27:25:
(Charlie Sykes)
I'm expecting that he's going to lash out in some way.
27:28:
(Charlie Sykes)
I think we haven't we haven't plumbed the depths of the ugly in terms of what he's going to do.
27:33:
(Charlie Sykes)
Ultimately, I don't think it's going to make a difference.
27:35:
(Charlie Sykes)
But but yeah, in terms of the, you know, forgiving and forgetting, I don't I don't think we've gone through the full cycle because we know some look, Donald Trump.
27:44:
(JVL)
We know who he is.
27:46:
(JVL)
I mean, I'm all forgiving anybody who apologizes for their roles in this stuff, but that's just never going to happen.
27:52:
(Bill Kristol)
Right.
27:52:
(JVL)
You're not going to nobody's going to step up and say, boy, you know what?
27:55:
(JVL)
I stuck by that guy because I was hoping for the best.
27:57:
(JVL)
But it turns out he was a really bad leader.
27:59:
(JVL)
That's not going to happen.
28:00:
(JVL)
There's not anybody in Republican world is going to do that.
28:03:
(JVL)
And, you know, if I push back against Bill and Sarah here a little bit, the idea that you can't
28:08:
(JVL)
that people have short memories.
28:11:
(JVL)
And I just don't buy that because A, he's not going away, right?
28:15:
(JVL)
It's a short memory if somebody disappears and recedes into the rear view mirror, but he's got his 94 million Twitter followers and he has an entire news ecosystem from YouTube to Fox to OAN, which is going to continue to plump him and basically take, you know, Fox daytime has inched away from him, but Fox primetime has not.
28:35:
(JVL)
It'll be very interesting to watch what the Fox primetime lineup does this week.
28:38:
(JVL)
And the ability to of these people to live in a totally alternate reality has been really shown by COVID.
28:49:
(JVL)
You know, you got 40 percent of the Republican Party who has basically acted like COVID doesn't exist.
28:54:
(JVL)
And it's a hoax.
28:55:
(JVL)
If you just look at the polling numbers on mask usage.
28:57:
(JVL)
Right.
28:58:
(JVL)
And like 40% of Republican respondents are like, no, I don't use no mask.
29:02:
(JVL)
Like that's, it's just a different world.
29:05:
(JVL)
And I just don't see any reason to believe that he's not going to be able to take some very large percentage of that party.
29:15:
(JVL)
And which will probably amount to somewhere like 25 or 30 million people, 30, 25 or 35 million voters into an alternate reality with him.
29:24:
(JVL)
And, uh,
29:25:
(JVL)
And that could be really dangerous, especially on the COVID stuff where you have to, I mean, so much of public health is getting the citizenry to buy into behavioral changes because you cannot police mask usage.
29:35:
(JVL)
That's just not practical.
29:37:
(JVL)
You know, 330 million people, you cannot have cops running around saying, you put your mask on, you put your mask on.
29:42:
(JVL)
This has to be a thing that everybody just agrees that, hey, we all have to do this.
29:45:
(JVL)
And, you know, like he's already politicized this.
29:48:
(JVL)
He's going to continue to politicize it.
29:49:
(JVL)
He couldn't he can literally be responsible for the deaths of more Americans, even once he's out of office.
29:55:
(Charlie Sykes)
You know, it's funny you say that because I was listening to a doctor on one of the cable channels last night, and he was talking about what needed to happen to prevent the death of hundreds of thousands of more Americans.
30:06:
(Charlie Sykes)
And he was saying, well, we have to, you know, get together.
30:08:
(Charlie Sykes)
We have to, you know, use masks and a variety of things.
30:11:
(Charlie Sykes)
And as I'm walking along listening to this, I'm going, and that will never happen.
30:14:
(Charlie Sykes)
That is not ever going to happen.
30:15:
(Charlie Sykes)
There is no chance that those things will take place between now and January 20th.
30:21:
(Charlie Sykes)
So that is the danger.
30:23:
(Charlie Sykes)
I'm sorry, Sarah, you wanted to jump in?
30:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
Well, only to say this, that, look, stipulated that Donald Trump can continue to be very dangerous and that he will have every incentive to flex whatever power he can through the media to continue to try to have his hold on the party.
30:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I think my thinking is, and I guess I'm
30:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
perhaps being overly optimistic, but reality is a thing.
30:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
Reality does matter.
30:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
And what Biden does, and I just agree with Bill on this, that if what Biden focuses on in the first six to 12 months of his administration is getting and distributing a vaccine, people's lives appreciably improve, and
31:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
Um, and you know, we go back to work, we all get out of our basements and like, why isn't, why isn't the, why, why isn't there a scenario in which people more and more just as time goes on and people get better and they start to look at the, those who continue to shout, oh, this was a stolen election, start to look more and more like cranks and they're kind of rejected by, uh, just the mainstream of this country.
31:33:
(JVL)
Yeah.
31:34:
(JVL)
That's kind of what I'm thinking.
31:35:
(JVL)
Okay.
31:36:
(JVL)
Sarah, 70 million people just said that they wanted four more years of Trump.
31:39:
(JVL)
See, but that's different.
31:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
And this is, JBL, this goes to a central disagreement that you and I always have, which is the difference between Donald Trump's hardcore MAGA base, people who show up for the rallies, people who are out there right now protesting and saying that they're cheating, and all of the people who basically have a de minimis amount of information and just say –
31:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
you know what, actually, even with this virus, like, I don't trust those Democrats to handle things.
32:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I'm really nervous about, you know, AOC and the socialist wing of the party.
32:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
And actually, I mean, this is one of the things that I think is crazy, but interesting, which is that a lot of people, right, so 60% of the country thinks that things were on the wrong track.
32:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
But if you ask them if their individual lives or economic situation had improved,
32:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, a majority of people did say that it had.
32:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I think that there was a lot to be said for that first stimulus check, which came with his name on it.
32:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, there was there are a lot of reasons why people might have voted for him.
32:32:
(Sarah Longwell)
But that doesn't mean that they are going to stick with him as he begins to look more and more pathetic and off the reservation as the rest of the world moves forward.
32:44:
(JVL)
J.D.O.
32:46:
(JVL)
I to me, what you just said is, look, see, these people were already living in an alternate reality.
32:52:
(JVL)
And so they were literally living in an alternate reality where they well, I got this stimulus check with the guy's name on it.
33:00:
(JVL)
So that means that he was taking care of us.
33:02:
(JVL)
You know, it just seems there's so low information.
33:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
He will not have those levers of government.
33:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
He will not have those.
33:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
He won't have the same bully pulpit.
33:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like you'll have to live in his media ecosystem for him to continue to be, you know.
33:17:
(Charlie Sykes)
Well, they will.
33:19:
(Charlie Sykes)
And that is possible.
33:20:
(Charlie Sykes)
I mean, the media ecosystem that exists now is dramatically bigger and more toxic than it was four years ago.
33:26:
(JVL)
Yeah.
33:26:
(JVL)
Facebook isn't going away.
33:27:
(JVL)
YouTube isn't going away.
33:29:
(Charlie Sykes)
And you ran through some of them, JVL.
33:32:
(Charlie Sykes)
People are still focused on Fox News.
33:34:
(Charlie Sykes)
We're past Fox News.
33:35:
(Charlie Sykes)
This is not Breitbart Fox News world anymore.
33:38:
(Charlie Sykes)
This is OAN.
33:39:
(Charlie Sykes)
This is Newsmax.
33:40:
(Charlie Sykes)
This is YouTube.
33:41:
(Charlie Sykes)
This is Facebook and all those folks.
33:43:
(Charlie Sykes)
Okay.
33:44:
(Charlie Sykes)
I'm going to shift just a little bit because another thing that struck me yesterday was somebody ran a little montage of
33:51:
(Charlie Sykes)
past concession speeches, starting with Jimmy Carter and going through George H.W.
33:58:
(Charlie Sykes)
Bush and John McCain.
34:01:
(Charlie Sykes)
And really, they were remarkably gracious and they were remarkably eloquent and they were important to
34:08:
(Charlie Sykes)
Even even Hillary Clinton's comments.
34:11:
(Charlie Sykes)
It strikes me as looking at right now at conservative media.
34:15:
(Charlie Sykes)
It's it's only been, you know, what, four years or so, but the entire culture has changed so much that it seems like we've redefined gracious concession as some sort of a political sin.
34:28:
(Charlie Sykes)
That you have to fight till the bitter, bitter end.
34:33:
(Charlie Sykes)
And that whole culture seems to have been rejected.
34:37:
(Charlie Sykes)
So that when you see a comment by Mitt Romney or George W. Bush, it feels very anachronistic for the modern Republican Party.
34:45:
(Charlie Sykes)
So if we ever wondered how much would Trumpism change and damage the culture of American politics, this is pretty much an example of it.
34:55:
(Charlie Sykes)
That there's not a huge...
34:56:
(Charlie Sykes)
upwelling of Republicans who are saying, you know what, we lost this election.
35:01:
(Charlie Sykes)
This is what the Constitution is about.
35:04:
(Charlie Sykes)
Democratic transfer of power.
35:06:
(Charlie Sykes)
We need to recognize that value.
35:10:
(Charlie Sykes)
You're not seeing much of that at all.
35:12:
(Charlie Sykes)
And that's really kind of extraordinary.
35:15:
(Charlie Sykes)
And I think it's going to come maybe, but maybe that's naive at this point.
35:19:
(JVL)
it's not coming i you know i i last week i went back and looked at al gore's concession speech the closest analog right to one side feeling like they were really like legitimately robbed right yeah which is how many of the republicans are talking about this and al gore's concession speech was really really good it's shot along all of those vectors and that is not coming back this way you know i i thought actually it would have been a great troll for george w bush not to release his statement as a statement
35:48:
(JVL)
But to, in fact, like come up before the Bush library podium and essentially give the concession speech for the Republican Party, that would have been amazing.
35:57:
(Charlie Sykes)
No, that would have been.
35:58:
(Charlie Sykes)
OK, so I actually heard an interview with Joe Lieberman last night.
36:01:
(Charlie Sykes)
He was talking about that that concession in 2000 and that even after Bush versus Gore came down from the Supreme Court, there were lawyers around Gore saying, you know, you can still litigate this.
36:12:
(Charlie Sykes)
You can go back to the Florida courts, you know, and, you know, keep keep pushing this.
36:16:
(Charlie Sykes)
And apparently he thought about it for a while.
36:19:
(Charlie Sykes)
And so Gore calls Lieberman and he says, what do you think?
36:22:
(Charlie Sykes)
And Lieberman says, well, as the former attorney general of Connecticut, I think anytime you got a shot, you know, at winning in court, you might as well take the shot.
36:29:
(Charlie Sykes)
And he said, so that's what he told Gore.
36:32:
(Charlie Sykes)
Gore calls him back an hour later and says, you know what, I'm not going to do it.
36:35:
(Charlie Sykes)
It's got to come to an end.
36:36:
(Charlie Sykes)
We're up against the deadline of the of the Electoral College, and I'm going to concede.
36:42:
(Charlie Sykes)
It's like, wow.
36:43:
(Charlie Sykes)
OK, an interesting moment of statesmanship from a guy that we were never fans of him, but we're we're kind of a post statesmanship moment.
36:53:
(Charlie Sykes)
But again, this is the contrast.
36:55:
(Charlie Sykes)
I don't disagree with what you're saying here, but.
36:58:
(Charlie Sykes)
I really was struck over the last 48 hours by just the contrast of Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
37:06:
(Charlie Sykes)
And we can't be the only ones to see it.
37:08:
(Charlie Sykes)
I understand that our point of view maybe is a little bit skewed, but how does America not look at Joe Biden calling the country together and the petulant whining and all caps tweets of Donald Trump and not think
37:24:
(Charlie Sykes)
I'd rather go with that.
37:25:
(Charlie Sykes)
I do think that's going to do damage to Trump's standing.
37:28:
(Charlie Sykes)
Obviously, I think there's only a slight difference between JBL and Sarah on this because JBL, you're talking about the hard, hardcore Trumpets who will never let go.
37:39:
(Charlie Sykes)
So the question is, is there some part of that 71 million that has these vestigial memories of what it was like to live in an America where we weren't completely insane?
37:54:
(Bill Kristol)
You know, Charlie, I mean, one way to sort of test this proposition going forward and right now is
38:00:
(Bill Kristol)
There are people in between, so to speak, Trump and the 71 million.
38:03:
(Bill Kristol)
So there are Republican elected officials who've mostly been quiet and sort of timid.
38:08:
(Bill Kristol)
But there are Republican concession speeches.
38:09:
(Bill Kristol)
I haven't looked at them.
38:10:
(Bill Kristol)
So this is a genuine question.
38:11:
(Bill Kristol)
I guess Martha McSally probably hasn't conceded yet because Arizona is in question, I guess, still.
38:18:
(Bill Kristol)
Cory Gardner, maybe he doesn't count because he was never that Trumpy.
38:22:
(Bill Kristol)
But there are plenty of congressional candidates who lost close races here in Virginia 7.
38:26:
(Bill Kristol)
Abigail Spanberger held on.
38:28:
(Bill Kristol)
I'm curious, and this is like a little project to kind of go look, do those people sound more like a normal, so to speak, concession speech, or are they in Trump world?
38:36:
(Bill Kristol)
I do doubt the results.
38:38:
(Bill Kristol)
I'm going to continue, the fight continues, and I don't accept these results, and we'll come back at them as soon as we can.
38:45:
(Bill Kristol)
And meanwhile, we've got to organize a Tea Party to oppose them.
38:48:
(Bill Kristol)
And then what about, you're talking about the COVID thing.
38:50:
(Bill Kristol)
There are, I mean, what does Ron DeSantis, does Ron DeSantis cooperate with the Biden administration?
38:54:
(Bill Kristol)
in public health measures and in the distribution of the vaccine.
38:59:
(Bill Kristol)
It's not like the federal government can personally distribute this vaccine.
39:02:
(Bill Kristol)
And other measures in Florida, does Abbott in Texas, does Kristi Noem in South Dakota.
39:06:
(Bill Kristol)
So there'll be a lot of in-between steps.
39:08:
(Bill Kristol)
And the truth will probably be somewhere in between, you know, in terms of cooperation versus cooperation.
39:12:
(Bill Kristol)
total alternate reality, trying to sort of not let Biden succeed.
39:18:
(Bill Kristol)
I do think COVID though, I slightly disagree with JBL on this, is the strongest issue for Biden.
39:23:
(Bill Kristol)
That is the one that's hardest for Republicans to say, we're fighting some bitter last ditch fight when people are dying.
39:31:
(Bill Kristol)
I mean, I think they can fight on other issues, but that one, if Biden focuses on that, which he seems to be doing, that's what he's doing today,
39:38:
(Bill Kristol)
for the first few months of his administration, if he puts off some things he promised he would do on day one, climate change and maybe some other more liberal things, more divisive things, and says, you know what, this is such an emergency, but such an opportunity with the vaccine.
39:50:
(Bill Kristol)
This is it.
39:51:
(Bill Kristol)
The first 90 days is all public health, public health, public health, plus a little economic stimulus.
39:56:
(Bill Kristol)
He could get off to a start that almost forces or induces Republicans, some Republicans, more Republicans than one might otherwise think to cooperate with him.
40:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah.
40:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
And can I just say one other thing that's going to happen even before Biden takes office?
40:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
Right.
40:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
So Trump is still exploiting this gray area a little bit.
40:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
Right.
40:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
Where results are still trickling in.
40:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's clear it's closed in a bunch of places.
40:22:
(Sarah Longwell)
But here's what's going to happen over the next couple of weeks.
40:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like I'm all for.
40:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah.
40:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
OK. Go to court.
40:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
Fine.
40:27:
(Sarah Longwell)
Count every legal vote.
40:30:
(Sarah Longwell)
Great.
40:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
Trump is saying legal vote.
40:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
His dog whistle is to try to suggest that the mail-in votes are illegal, but they're not.
40:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
And they're being counted.
40:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so here's what's going to happen.
40:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's going to lose in court a bunch of times.
40:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's already lost every single challenge that they've raised.
40:44:
(Sarah Longwell)
They're going to lose the rest of them because none of them are real and good.
40:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's going to lose the recounts.
40:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
The recounts are going to come back.
40:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
We all know that recounts don't change very much
40:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
maybe a couple hundred.
40:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
Well, the margins are far outside of that.
40:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's not as close as Florida.
40:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's not that kind of nail-biter.
40:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's close, but not that close.
41:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I do think that as it becomes clearer and clearer over time that he's tilting at windmills, that that will change something of the...
41:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
you know, his just like screaming fraud.
41:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
He'll continue to scream it, of course, but like reality will intervene to some degree.
41:17:
(Charlie Sykes)
The court process may be annoying, but it may actually end up that way.
41:21:
(Charlie Sykes)
Did you actually create a court record that says, yeah, no, none of this stuff.
41:25:
(JVL)
Nobody believes any of that stuff.
41:26:
(JVL)
Nobody's going to follow any of that.
41:27:
(JVL)
If I had told you on March 12 that on election day, we'd have a quarter million Americans dead from COVID,
41:35:
(JVL)
What do you think the general state of alarm will be in this country about it?
41:40:
(JVL)
We all would have said, well, holy crap, the president will be polling at 25% and we will be talking about this like it is World War III.
41:49:
(JVL)
And instead, he increased his vote share.
41:53:
(JVL)
I mean, you know, you guys are all thinking much too logically and much too as if the old politics still matters where people wanted their elected officials to deliver policies to them.
42:06:
(JVL)
And that is not what this incarnation of the Republican Party wants.
42:09:
(JVL)
This incarnation of the public party is psychotherapy.
42:13:
(JVL)
And it is what they simply want to have their emotions validated.
42:18:
(JVL)
And so for them, the win is resisting the election and claiming that Biden is illegitimate.
42:25:
(JVL)
That is the win.
42:27:
(Charlie Sykes)
So in order to predict, if you just sort of do the the mental process of thinking, what is the worst possible behavior Republicans could engage in over the next several months?
42:37:
(Charlie Sykes)
That's probably going to be predictive.
42:40:
(Charlie Sykes)
What is the worst, least responsible, most reckless behavior that they could adopt?
42:47:
(Charlie Sykes)
And that's probably what they will do.
42:49:
(Charlie Sykes)
I don't know.
42:49:
(Charlie Sykes)
Kate, could we just go back to wallowing in the fact that Donald Trump is going to not be president again?
42:55:
(Charlie Sykes)
Could we just...
42:55:
(Charlie Sykes)
People, could we do this?
42:56:
(Charlie Sykes)
Could we just hold hands and go, guys, look, let's make eye contact here.
43:04:
(Charlie Sykes)
He's not going to be president on noon, January 20th.
43:08:
(Charlie Sykes)
He's going to have to do the walk of defeat someplace.