Don't Call It a Coup!
00:10:
(JVL)
Hello, everyone.
00:11:
(JVL)
Welcome to The Next Level.
00:13:
(JVL)
This is JBL.
00:14:
(JVL)
I am here with Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of The Bulwark.
00:18:
(JVL)
Guys, it is Wednesday, November 18.
00:22:
(JVL)
We have a slow motion, low energy, don't call it a coup.
00:27:
(JVL)
Tim, I'm Ron Burgundy.
00:31:
(JVL)
It's good to be with you, my best friend.
00:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, I was going to say, you kind of skipped the best friend intro.
00:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
I feel like we might have been downgraded there suddenly.
00:38:
(JVL)
I got to settle in on an intro just for us.
00:40:
(JVL)
It's weird to import the best friend thing into a situation where, honestly, it is two best friends and a third wheel.
00:48:
(JVL)
So...
00:49:
(Tim Miller)
Oh, yeah.
00:50:
(Tim Miller)
Well, I understand why you would have to take a little dig like that.
00:53:
(JVL)
By which I mean you and Sarah.
00:56:
(JVL)
My friends have known each other for forever, and I'm the interloper, the third wheel.
01:00:
(Tim Miller)
It's okay.
01:01:
(Tim Miller)
I can take my third wheel status because I'm very tan.
01:05:
(Tim Miller)
Spent the last week in Palm Springs trying not to...
01:09:
(Tim Miller)
focus too closely on the slow motion, low energy.
01:13:
(Tim Miller)
Don't call it a coup.
01:15:
(Tim Miller)
But it's hard.
01:16:
(Tim Miller)
It's hard to not notice, you know, things like the president of the United States trying to steal.
01:21:
(JVL)
Wait, hold on, Tim.
01:22:
(JVL)
I have been assured up and down the street by every Republican and conservative that that is not possible and that people who worry about the president trying to steal are just a crazy nut jobs who just want to keep fixating on Trump and
01:38:
(JVL)
We have the institutions.
01:40:
(JVL)
We have the guardrails.
01:48:
(JVL)
They're terrible.
01:49:
(JVL)
Those liberals are the worst.
01:53:
(JVL)
I found this one guy with 42 followers.
01:56:
(Tim Miller)
in uh from marin county and he said some of the worst things about socialism and he even kind of likes antifa so that's all out there i understand i i hear what you're saying and but being a little distant you know sitting by the pool um you're able to kind of separate the wheat from the chaff on these sorts of things and uh you know boy i gotta say my big takeaway here is that if this was actually a closed election we'd have a lot to be concerned about um that you know i think that um
02:26:
(Tim Miller)
We need to be very grateful for the fact that despite the angst that was caused by the counting process, the fact that, you know, Pennsylvania and Michigan...
02:40:
(Tim Miller)
in particular ended up being not particularly close at all and so that I think can give us this sort of buffer to have a little macabre humor about what is happening but look I mean between we have this racist Wayne County canvassing board fellow Bill Hartman who only wanted to count the votes in the white neighborhoods and
03:03:
(Tim Miller)
trying not to certify the vote there on the first ballot.
03:10:
(Tim Miller)
Why are there canvassing boards voting on whether votes count in the first place?
03:13:
(Tim Miller)
I guess that's a side question that we might have to review.
03:16:
(Tim Miller)
Then we've got the firing of a DHS official for just merely saying the truth about the fact that there was not a secret German company that hacked into the vote counting machines.
03:31:
(Tim Miller)
um and and that the count is is accurate uh you know we've got him being fired by the president of the united states in a banana banana republic style uh thing we've got still the vast majority of the senate not acknowledging that joe biden is one joe biden is not able to work with the uh you know responsible remaining people in the trump administration on on transition items like security briefings
03:57:
(Tim Miller)
You know, all this stuff, to use Bill's word, is alarming, but it would be extremely alarming if this was much closer.
04:05:
(Tim Miller)
And I think that it has left us the one minor silver lining that I have before I turn it over to you is...
04:13:
(Tim Miller)
It has left us with this clarity that there's something I think that all the three of us and those of us in the bulwark world knew, which is that there's a fight to come between the democratic forces, not party, but small d democratic forces within our politics and people who are undemocratic and illiberal.
04:32:
(Tim Miller)
And man, have they shown their colors over the past week.
04:36:
(Tim Miller)
So that's my take.
04:38:
(Tim Miller)
Low DEF CON level.
04:39:
(Tim Miller)
High, high alarm about whether it was a close, if it had been a close election and nice and tan.
04:48:
(JVL)
Sarah, did you see the story today by Bob Costa and The Washington Post where Rudy just out and out says that their strategy is to prevent the certification of.
04:58:
(Tim Miller)
of votes in four states so that they can then have the state legislature i mean this is the president's lawyer this is not just again you can tell it's on vacation thank you jv that was the other item i was supposed to mention in our slow moving it's hard to keep track all the moving parts in this in the non-coup you know you've got county canvassing boards lawyers trying to subvert the electoral process firings
05:21:
(JVL)
You have the governor of the state of Georgia calling for the secretary of state, who's a member of his own party, to resign because they want the Georgia election results thrown out.
05:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
Hey, that's my topic.
05:35:
(JVL)
So this is what I – I don't understand why everybody isn't alarmed.
05:42:
(JVL)
Like these seem like the kinds of things that we should be concerned about.
05:47:
(JVL)
Right.
05:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, we should.
05:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah.
05:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
But here.
05:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
But this is this is where I would just in going back to what you said, you know, this is the president's lawyer.
05:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's not gateway.
05:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
The problem is, is this is the it's like a coup by the apple dumpling gang.
06:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
Right.
06:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like they're so incompetent.
06:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
They're so stupid.
06:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, when you talk, forget the.
06:04:
(Tim Miller)
I'm sorry, I don't get the reference.
06:06:
(Tim Miller)
What's the Apple Dumplet Gang?
06:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's like the gang that can't shoot straight.
06:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, it's a movie from when we were kids, but that's fine.
06:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm not going to run through the whole...
06:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
The point is, their level of competence...
06:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
So it's even like last night, right?
06:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
Where you get this temporary sort of two-hour window of freaking out about the canvassers in Michigan.
06:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
Everybody freaks out and they immediately reverse course.
06:27:
(Sarah Longwell)
Right.
06:27:
(Sarah Longwell)
Because these are just like random people.
06:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
Somebody dredges, you know, pulls up their Facebook account, becomes very clear that person's racist.
06:35:
(Sarah Longwell)
That person's not, you know, has all these like racist pictures of Barack Obama.
06:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
That person's not enjoying this particular spotlight from the country.
06:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
And like things sort themselves out.
06:44:
(Sarah Longwell)
pretty quickly.
06:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
But, you know, if you followed the, there was a bunch of the sort of legal types on Twitter doing the Rudy Giuliani argument thread.
06:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
And like, it's so buffoonish.
06:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
You've got one of the, so you've got Rudy Giuliani, first of all,
06:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
who, by the way, is already having an internal fight with the other people on the campaign, A, because he wants to make $20,000 a day to do the representation, but also because they're still fighting over scraps in Trump world.
07:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
But he makes a totally asinine argument in which he does not allege
07:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
actual fraud.
07:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
He just sort of filibusters his way through the entire thing.
07:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's not a cogent legal argument.
07:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
The judge is essentially, you know, not making fun of them, but just sort of like you can, the questions are sort of eye rolls.
07:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
You've got one of the lawyers who's on Giuliani's side, who's already tried to withdraw from the case, but they haven't let her.
07:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
So she's kind of, you know, making a half-hearted argument.
07:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, the thing is, when you say it's a low energy coup, it's less about the energy.
07:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's about the competence.
07:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
And that's one of the reasons why you don't have to be so afraid because Donald Trump has never been good at being an authoritarian.
07:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's never been capable of doing it correctly.
07:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
But that doesn't mean he's not trying in these moments to destroy our democracy.
08:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
And last night, I deleted about six tweets because I kept wanting to just say, all of these people
08:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
These conservatives who going up to the election wrote these like maybe Trump.
08:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, you know, let me tell you all the ways he's governed as a conservative or your people like Ben Shapiro who go all in on him.
08:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
What did they think on a night like last night after a day like yesterday where the as you pointed out, the lawyer says, oh, yeah, well, we're just we're trying to get I mean, the president's tweeting it that they're just trying to get electors.
08:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
to certify somebody else, to go against the will of the American voter.
08:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's not unclear.
08:43:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's not opaque.
08:44:
(Sarah Longwell)
It is crystal clear what they're trying to do.
08:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
What does the average conservative who's defended Trump called balls and strikes?
08:51:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, I couldn't help it.
08:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
I took a dig at
08:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
Tim Carney, because he loves to talk about how he calls balls and strikes, and that's very important.
08:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
Well, what happens when the game is too dangerous to just sit around and call balls and strikes?
09:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
Because that's where we've thought we've been for a long time, but right now it's so clear.
09:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
What do you think they're thinking?
09:08:
(Tim Miller)
I have three thoughts on this.
09:10:
(Tim Miller)
Number one, we should have a new segment that's just where Sarah reads her deleted tweets or her draft tweet inbox.
09:17:
(Tim Miller)
Secondly, I think that they're thinking that, I don't know, Rashida Tlaib is a boogeyman and very scary and that this is all worth it in a Machiavellian sense.
09:29:
(Tim Miller)
And, you know, I think that trying to
09:37:
(Tim Miller)
trying to just look, they've, they've already, they have this lock box in their brain and they've put Donald Trump in it and he's in this little compartment and they're like, there's a lot of things I don't like about it, but I'm just not going to worry that much about it.
09:51:
(Tim Miller)
And like, that's just it.
09:52:
(Tim Miller)
And, and, and they've, and they're in a little bubble and a little community where that is fostered and encouraged.
09:59:
(Tim Miller)
And so, you know, until that we're on the absolute brink of,
10:05:
(Tim Miller)
have a coup, they're not going to do anything about it.
10:08:
(Tim Miller)
Some of these folks, by the way, I think are basically pro-coup.
10:12:
(Tim Miller)
I don't know.
10:12:
(Tim Miller)
I don't want to say which one could be which.
10:18:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, he's literally broken.
10:19:
(Tim Miller)
But I think some of the softer ones are like, you know, look, if we could get, you know, the Atlanta, the Arizona secretary of state as a Democrat, this isn't going to happen.
10:29:
(Tim Miller)
But to throw out 11,000.
10:31:
(JVL)
So Rod Dreher has this this trope, which has always been very useful.
10:36:
(JVL)
And in talking about the furthest reaches of the progressive left, what he called the law of merited impossibility.
10:43:
(JVL)
which is that conservatives would say, the people on the left are going to try to push X on us.
10:51:
(JVL)
And people in polite society would say, that's ridiculous.
10:54:
(JVL)
They would never try to do that.
10:56:
(JVL)
And then like two years later...
10:58:
(JVL)
X winds up getting pushed at conservatives and the people in the mainstream say, well, of course you have to do X.
11:06:
(JVL)
First they dismiss it as like, no, nobody would ever do that.
11:09:
(JVL)
And then they would say, well, of course everybody has to do that.
11:12:
(JVL)
And that is essentially, we have a law of merit and impossibility with Trump, right?
11:16:
(JVL)
And this has been this way since the moment he took office where people like us would say, hey, he's going to refuse to concede the election.
11:25:
(JVL)
And the people who are the, the anti-antes would say, no, that's ridiculous.
11:31:
(JVL)
He's never going to, of course he'll concede the election.
11:33:
(JVL)
And then he doesn't do it.
11:34:
(JVL)
And they're like, well, of course he's right not to, you know?
11:36:
(JVL)
And then, then you say, well, he's going to try to get, uh, he's going to try to get slates of electors thrown out and separate slates of electors, uh, appointed.
11:44:
(JVL)
And they would say, that's ridiculous.
11:46:
(JVL)
This is just fantasy.
11:48:
(JVL)
And then he goes and does it.
11:49:
(JVL)
And it's just like, well, you know, but that's never going to work.
11:51:
(JVL)
Or, well, maybe they should have them.
11:53:
(JVL)
Right.
11:53:
(JVL)
And this,
11:54:
(JVL)
It's going to keep going like that all the way out to the horizon.
11:59:
(JVL)
And this is so this is what really concerns me.
12:03:
(JVL)
It isn't, as you say, Tim, a tiny bubble.
12:05:
(JVL)
It's it's 70 million Americans.
12:08:
(JVL)
And the problem is that we have a commentator.
12:12:
(JVL)
No, I know what you I know what you mean.
12:13:
(JVL)
But we have one political party which is now essentially pro authoritarian.
12:21:
(JVL)
That's not tenable for the long term.
12:24:
(JVL)
You can't live like that because the Democrats are not going to win every election for the next 20 years.
12:31:
(JVL)
They may not even win the next election.
12:34:
(JVL)
It's entirely possible to Republicans.
12:36:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, they barely won this one.
12:37:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, Joe Biden won clearly.
12:39:
(Tim Miller)
But again, this is the thing.
12:41:
(Tim Miller)
And going back to Sarah's question.
12:43:
(Tim Miller)
Part of what these guys think is that they do justify it by this doomsday mindset of what the left is going to do.
12:51:
(Tim Miller)
And here we have a... Yeah, Ron Klain.
12:55:
(Tim Miller)
I am terrified of Ron Klain.
12:58:
(Tim Miller)
That guy...
12:59:
(Tim Miller)
Right, exactly.
13:01:
(Tim Miller)
Steve Ricchetti and Jim Garrity over at the National Review did this article where he's pivoted.
13:07:
(Tim Miller)
At least he is living in reality.
13:09:
(Tim Miller)
He's pivoted over to the fact that, oh, Biden's senior staff that he announced yesterday was all swampy because they've got all these clients.
13:17:
(Tim Miller)
They've got all these corporate clients.
13:19:
(JVL)
If you're a conservative who was fear-mongering about how AOC was going to be in charge, and it turns out it's just the Democratic...
13:27:
(JVL)
It's just people in corporate consulting class.
13:30:
(Tim Miller)
I'm serious, though.
13:31:
(Tim Miller)
I'm not even kidding.
13:33:
(Tim Miller)
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
13:34:
(Tim Miller)
The Republicans have the Senate.
13:37:
(Tim Miller)
Nancy Pelosi is going to have a 10, 9-seat House majority, not this massive House majority.
13:41:
(Tim Miller)
And then Joe Biden is appointing a bunch of guys who are lobbyists for Clorox into senior administration officials.
13:50:
(Tim Miller)
This is not...
13:52:
(Tim Miller)
a radical far left administration.
13:55:
(Tim Miller)
There is no creeping socialism.
13:56:
(Tim Miller)
There's no chance of the green new deal.
13:58:
(Tim Miller)
Wouldn't this be the moment for all of these guys who said that that was, that Trump was just, you know, the last stand between us and the socialist hordes to say enough.
14:08:
(Tim Miller)
enough you lost time to go let's win these two georgia senate seats uh you know if you're one of these uh folks that that um you know is a republican establishment type and remain so and then fine we will we will move on and you know go beat sleepy joe biden next time like you would think that this would be the moment for that but that's not happening no not only is that not happening nobody's doing that it's all the same you know it's all the same people who have been against trump the whole time that are
14:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
Actually, on this point, let me let me I want to ask you guys a question.
14:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
The genuine question that I don't know the answer to.
14:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
So why does Marco Rubio?
14:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
Why does Ted Cruz?
14:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
Why does Lindsey Graham?
14:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
Why would Nikki Haley?
14:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
Why would Tom Cotton?
14:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
Why would anybody who wants to be the future of the Republican Party engage with this?
14:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
Why aren't they trying to kneecap this guy and get him out of the way?
14:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like he is about to freeze the field for the next three years for twenty twenty four.
15:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
why would they let him do this?
15:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
Why aren't people trying harder in this moment to get rid of him?
15:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
I cannot figure this out.
15:11:
(JVL)
But they are right.
15:13:
(JVL)
I mean, this is the key to understanding is that this calculation by Nikki and little Marco and Lion Ted is simply factually correct.
15:23:
(JVL)
And when you look at the polling that has come out post-election, I am looking at the latest one from Reuters Ipsos, which leads us into number two.
15:31:
(JVL)
So the top line of the poll is that 73% agree that Joe Biden won the election.
15:38:
(JVL)
Well, only 5% think that Trump won.
15:40:
(JVL)
So you think to yourself, oh, that's really good news.
15:43:
(JVL)
Except that when you go down to the cross tabs and look at the details of the opinion, 52% of Republicans say that Trump rightfully won the election.
15:55:
(JVL)
This is when half of the country thinks that Trump was the actual winner of the election.
16:01:
(JVL)
That is you.
16:03:
(JVL)
You can't go or half the country.
16:04:
(JVL)
I'm sorry.
16:05:
(JVL)
Half the Republican Party.
16:06:
(JVL)
You simply cannot go against that.
16:08:
(JVL)
Not if you want.
16:08:
(JVL)
I mean, you know, Republicans having handed their party over to Donald Trump are now his hostages and they can either be Jeff Flake or they can be Lion Ted and they can keep riding it out and hope that.
16:23:
(JVL)
literally hope that Donald Trump has a heart attack and dies and that they then have a chance to battle it out with Tucker and Don Jr.
16:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm not kidding.
16:35:
(Sarah Longwell)
That's a good point about the heart attack.
16:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
You are right.
16:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
They probably do just think he's got to like, that that's what's got to happen.
16:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's not that...
16:43:
(Sarah Longwell)
That they get like they just want to they just want to be able to be there when it all goes down.
16:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
Because otherwise, what do you think they do in 2024?
16:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
Right.
16:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like they don't.
16:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
Do they start to posture against him come 2022?
16:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like or is everybody sidling up to him behind the scenes looking for that top on the head?
17:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like or does everybody just say like, well, yes, 2024 is out of the question because this guy is going to suck up all the oxygen.
17:08:
(JVL)
They'll make visits to Iowa and New Hampshire, and they'll never declare...
17:12:
(JVL)
They can't form exploratory...
17:14:
(JVL)
I mean, just even the fact of forming an exploratory committee, Trump would seize on and rip them to shreds, right?
17:20:
(JVL)
I mean, all they can do is look to...
17:23:
(JVL)
look to basically posture as like, boy, do I love Donald Trump.
17:28:
(JVL)
And I'm just going to go and, you know, meet with some people at the VFW post in Des Moines and, uh, uh, tell them how great Donald Trump is and how close he and I are.
17:37:
(JVL)
Maybe I'll show them a couple of pictures of, you know, look here I have on my iPhone.
17:40:
(JVL)
It's me and me and Mr. Trump.
17:43:
(JVL)
And, uh, that's, that's as far as they can go.
17:46:
(JVL)
I think I honestly don't think that anybody who, and, and I think they're right.
17:51:
(JVL)
that this is the correct calculation that anybody who goes out there and starts really looking like they are running, Trump will cut them down like a fucking clear cutting buzz saw through a forest.
18:04:
(Tim Miller)
I haven't spent enough time thinking about this yet to have a, have a smart opinion for the four plus listeners.
18:10:
(Tim Miller)
So I, my instinct says JBL is right, but I'm not certain.
18:16:
(Tim Miller)
I know what their calculation is right now.
18:18:
(Tim Miller)
And I think that they're making the correct calculation right now.
18:20:
(Tim Miller)
I think that they see themselves as having an option of going to Ben SAS route.
18:24:
(Tim Miller)
Um,
18:24:
(Tim Miller)
which is hopeless on a presidential level or doing the fly under Trump's wing and hope he gets shot down by somebody else strategy.
18:40:
(JVL)
Yeah.
18:41:
(JVL)
And this is, I mean, do you disagree, Sarah?
18:43:
(JVL)
Do you think that there is, if you were, and here's a genuine, so let's just strip her morality out of it.
18:48:
(JVL)
Let's pretend you were the senior advisor to Marco Rubio and you were charged with trying to win him the 2024 nomination.
18:57:
(JVL)
What would you tell him to do?
19:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
I would tell him you are a spineless, obsequious weakling and you should not run because you have no chance of ever winning.
19:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
No, I wouldn't work for any of these people because what I would what I honestly what I would do is I would be looking for the open lane.
19:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
Right.
19:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
So like Donald Trump now.
19:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
See, here's what I don't quite agree with you is that like Nikki Haley could make a move.
19:22:
(Sarah Longwell)
to separate herself from Trump, to distance herself.
19:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, it would take somebody and maybe Nikki Haley is not the right person, but there is a non Trumpy lane that you can start to consolidate.
19:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
Now, look, I think these these polls that ask about the 2024 candidates.
19:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
are very stupid.
19:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
But there is one that came out yesterday that said that sort of ranked who the top Republican candidates would be.
19:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it's a dumb poll because it includes like Democrats and independents.
19:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
But Donald Trump got 25 percent and Mitt Romney got 19 percent.
19:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I don't I'm not taking that.
19:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I just I do think that there is a there is a lane you could build on.
20:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
And if I was going to be a Republican operative, like I would grab
20:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
the most charismatic, least attached to Trump, preferably somebody without a lot of baggage.
20:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I would try to run in the non-Trumpy lane with like a whole new pitch.
20:12:
(Tim Miller)
I already came in last place with the campaign trying this eight years ago.
20:16:
(Tim Miller)
So I'm not really interested in doing it again, but I hope that Sarah does because it's painful, but fun.
20:23:
(JVL)
If it were me, I would go in the exact opposite direction.
20:29:
(JVL)
And I would say that the only possible pathway is to go full QAnon.
20:36:
(JVL)
No, I'm not kidding.
20:38:
(JVL)
I am not kidding.
20:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
It'll be a new campaign from the basement, but it'll be the pizza shop basement.
20:44:
(JVL)
Find a cable TV host of some sort who is glib and a good talker and run on the idea that Trump did a good job seething the ground, but he failed to deliver.
20:58:
(JVL)
He was too weak and too disorganized and failed to deliver what the people really need.
21:07:
(JVL)
Can I tell you that JBL Path actually has a chance to win.
21:15:
(Tim Miller)
JBL Path has a chance to win, whereas the Sarah Huntsman path does not.
21:19:
(Tim Miller)
But Sarah maintains her integrity at the end.
21:22:
(Sarah Longwell)
You are.
21:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
Here's what's wrong.
21:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, I do maintain my integrity.
21:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm just saying it's the reverse Trump.
21:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
Trump got ones that wins a plurality in a crowded field, you know, with his burn it all down lane.
21:32:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I'm saying you run and win a plurality in the normal lane while the rest of these idiots all split the Trumpy vote.
21:39:
(JVL)
The normal lane is really not the problem.
21:42:
(JVL)
Well, no, but here's what happened to the normals.
21:46:
(JVL)
Because the normals all compromised themselves to vote for Trump, and because by definition, they're normals, they understood what they were doing.
21:54:
(JVL)
They can't go back because they've compromised themselves, right?
21:59:
(JVL)
I mean, this is once you've sold out to the mob, right?
22:01:
(JVL)
Like you're in the mob, you can't get out.
22:04:
(JVL)
You don't retire from the mob.
22:06:
(JVL)
The mob doesn't let you retire.
22:08:
(JVL)
So I just don't see it.
22:11:
(JVL)
All right, Sarah, do you want to talk about... Just a quick low energy coup update.
22:17:
(Tim Miller)
The Trump campaign has requested a recount in Wisconsin, but because it was pretty expensive to do it statewide and Donald doesn't want to pony up, it's just going to be a partial county by county.
22:28:
(Tim Miller)
They're just going to pick some red counties and recount there.
22:31:
(Tim Miller)
So I'm sure that's going to...
22:32:
(Tim Miller)
yield some success.
22:34:
(JVL)
Before we move on, I just want to offer one thought, which is that we are focused on the idea that the Trump legal challenges are farcical as points of law, and so they're failures.
22:53:
(JVL)
But I think you should evaluate them along a second vector, which is as a political strategy.
23:00:
(JVL)
And as a political strategy, I think the evidence we have suggests that they've been entirely successful.
23:06:
(JVL)
And in fact, way more successful than anybody could have dared hope going into this, which is that the guy has lost the election by like four and a half points by how many million votes total, Tim?
23:18:
(JVL)
A lot, right?
23:19:
(JVL)
We're coming up on six.
23:20:
(JVL)
It'll probably reach seven.
23:21:
(JVL)
So he's going to lose by 7 million votes.
23:24:
(JVL)
And instead of, as I was assured by people over and over, oh, voters hate a loser.
23:30:
(JVL)
Voters will turn on him.
23:32:
(JVL)
He'll be yesterday's news.
23:33:
(JVL)
He'll be lucky.
23:34:
(JVL)
Five years from now, as Mike Murphy always told me, you won't be able to find three Republicans in America who admit that they voted for him.
23:41:
(JVL)
What this has done is bind the rest of the party and the voters.
23:47:
(JVL)
So, again, both party elites, elected Republicans and the voters to him using this strategy.
23:52:
(JVL)
And so, you know, we can make fun of how incompetent the apple dumpling turnover gang is or whatever.
23:59:
(JVL)
But as a political matter, it turns out to have been very, very canny and very successful.
24:05:
(JVL)
All right, Sarah.
24:07:
(JVL)
Georgia.
24:08:
(JVL)
You know, I demand Tim Carney style to know.
24:10:
(JVL)
I demand.
24:11:
(JVL)
So now will you support the Republican Senate candidates in Georgia, Sarah?
24:14:
(JVL)
Huh?
24:15:
(JVL)
Huh?
24:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
Huh?
24:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
I sure won't.
24:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm not going to actively work in there, but like you couldn't, there's nothing you could give me to support Kelly Loeffler at this point.
24:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
I will tell you though, I don't have, here's the thing.
24:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm not nearly as interested in the Senate candidates in Georgia as I am in Brad Raffensperger.
24:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I want to do a – there's a lot of negative news.
24:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
There's a lot of terrible operators out there.
24:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
But like I always say, these institutions, they don't protect themselves, right?
24:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
There's got to be people who stand in the breach and do the right thing.
24:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
And right now in Georgia, we are watching in real time an excellent Republican public servant named Brad Raffensperger stand up and –
25:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
refuse to let the entire Republican establishment, including the president, which is crashing down on his head.
25:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
The president is tweeting that Brad Raffensperger is a rhino and that this election is fraudulent.
25:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
Lindsey Graham is calling him on the phone to tell him that he should probably throw out the ballots if the signature match isn't perfect and eliminate a bunch of legal ballots, which I don't know, sounds like it would be an illegal thing to do.
25:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
Both of the Senate candidates, Kelly Loeffler,
25:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
And Purdue have called for him to resign.
25:32:
(Sarah Longwell)
Doug Collins, who is the absolute worst, so bad he couldn't beat the other worst person, Kelly Loeffler, in the primary, has also been calling for him to resign.
25:44:
(Sarah Longwell)
And Brad Raffensperger has stood ramrod straight.
25:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
through this election and said, this has been fair.
25:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
This has been done well.
25:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
We will execute a recount.
25:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
He has been calm.
25:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
He goes on, he'll go on social media and he will combat point by point the misinformation.
26:04:
(Sarah Longwell)
He even called Doug Collins a liar directly, which he should because Doug Collins is in fact a liar.
26:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so I would just, I would just like to say three cheers for,
26:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
for Brad Raffensperger, who should not have to share a political party with the rest of these clowns.
26:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
But thank goodness for him, because there because Georgia has been such a narrow margin, you know, less than 13000 votes.
26:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
It has been there's been a and because it's a state that's been flipped.
26:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
That's that's typically a Republican state.
26:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
He basically has the eyes of the entire country on him and he has not blinked.
26:43:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I love him.
26:44:
(Tim Miller)
I want to get into – I've got another separate rant on Georgia about Reverend Warnock.
26:49:
(Tim Miller)
But on this point, A, I agree.
26:51:
(Tim Miller)
Three cheers for Raffensperger.
26:53:
(Tim Miller)
But, Sarah, what is the end game here for Leffler and Purdue?
27:00:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, January 5th is a long time away.
27:04:
(Tim Miller)
You know, is there –
27:06:
(Tim Miller)
a possibility that we get into an even more hot war between the Secretary of State and the Senate candidates in a way that could hurt the Senate race?
27:15:
(Tim Miller)
Or does everybody just realize that they're playing pretend here and it kind of, you know, over the holidays just sort of fizzles away?
27:24:
(Tim Miller)
I'm just wondering from a political standpoint, whether there's a way to create a wedge here.
27:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yes.
27:30:
(Sarah Longwell)
So this is one of the reasons that I it's one of the reasons I like Raffensperger so much.
27:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
So he has gone ahead and just like done interviews and totally spilled the tea on like Graham coming out and trying to force his hand.
27:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
But one of the things that he pointed out that I thought was just a really adept way of making this case was that Donald Trump, by constantly railing against absentee and vote by mail, that he suppressed his own vote.
27:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like Raffensperger went on the record and said Donald Trump would have won by 10,000 votes if he hadn't had an all out war against absentee voting, which is just an amazing way to twist the knife.
28:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I think that there is a similar risk that they are running in Georgia, where if you tell everybody that it is rigged,
28:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
that their votes don't count, that the Dominion voting machines are going to just reverse votes, that you end up suppressing enthusiasm among Republican voters because they say, well, why bother?
28:19:
(Sarah Longwell)
The whole thing's rigged.
28:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's not fair.
28:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I do think, additionally, what do you want if you are Mitch McConnell?
28:27:
(Sarah Longwell)
The environment that you are most likely to perform best in, now that you don't have Donald Trump at the
28:35:
(Sarah Longwell)
The environment you are most likely to perform best in is if you have an election where you are a check on the executive, right?
28:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
They want Joe Biden to be the president in order to run the election.
28:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like the grievance play only gets you so far before it kind of flames out.
28:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like you have to make that transition to we need to run as a check on the Biden administration.
28:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so I do think that there is only limited utility at this point to what they're doing and that they've got to turn the page on.
29:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
in order to be maximally effective for the Senate race.
29:07:
(JVL)
When Raffensperger makes his heel turn, you two are going to go down so hard.
29:13:
(JVL)
It's going to crush you.
29:14:
(JVL)
72 hours when Raffensperger tweets out,
29:18:
(JVL)
I was wrong.
29:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
Throw out the votes fraud.
29:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's not going to know.
29:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
This is why this is, this is, have you been watching him?
29:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like he has been so steadfast.
29:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
You don't get any sense of nervousness from him.
29:32:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, he's pushed back so hard and it's like, like, here's the thing is I shouldn't, there's actually a, there's some truth to the point you're just making, which is that I should never, shouldn't make heroes out of politicians because they will break your heart every single time.
29:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
We're just doing his job.
29:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
But like how starved are we?
29:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like last night watching Krebs even sort of, you know, who just like took his firing like a man and had stood up and was like, I knew it was coming.
30:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know why?
30:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
Because I said that this election was one of the most secure in history and I stand by that comment and he got fired for it.
30:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
People like that.
30:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, we're all going to remember, I think, the people who did who took a flamethrower to our democracy in this moment.
30:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
And there's a lot of them.
30:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
But we shouldn't forget that there were people who did the absolute right thing at a time when, like, to Tim's point in the beginning, you know, the force is pretty overwhelming for things to go the wrong way.
30:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
And there's just like a few people that are standing up saying no.
30:32:
(Sarah Longwell)
And their voices have really, really mattered.
30:35:
(Tim Miller)
I agree with that.
30:36:
(Tim Miller)
And it's sad that this is so praiseworthy, that he's doing something that was just basically standard Secretary of State work circa 2013.
30:46:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, there were a couple of crazy ones.
30:51:
(Tim Miller)
Sure, we saw the embers of this growing, but it would have been pretty standard.
30:55:
(Tim Miller)
Now he sticks out.
30:56:
(Tim Miller)
That's noteworthy.
30:57:
(Tim Miller)
But on the matter of people who aren't doing the right thing while we're in Georgia, before we leave, I do feel compelled to rant about, have you seen this attack on Reverend Warnock's sermon?
31:10:
(Tim Miller)
Oh, yeah.
31:11:
(Tim Miller)
You guys seen this?
31:12:
(Tim Miller)
Oh, yeah.
31:12:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
31:12:
(Tim Miller)
So Reverend Warnock gave a sermon where he says, in America, nobody can serve God and the military.
31:19:
(Tim Miller)
You cannot serve God and money.
31:22:
(Tim Miller)
You cannot serve God and mammon at the same time.
31:25:
(Tim Miller)
America, choose this day whom you will serve.
31:29:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
31:30:
(Tim Miller)
so I don't know what the listener's initial reaction to that is, but that's some pretty standard socialist Christian.
31:36:
(Tim Miller)
That's some pretty standard Christian stuff there.
31:38:
(Tim Miller)
I think there's, you know, it's sermon on the Mount stuff here.
31:41:
(Tim Miller)
You can't have two masters.
31:43:
(Tim Miller)
Um, uh, and, uh,
31:45:
(Tim Miller)
The right has taken this to mean that Raphael Warnock is anti-America and anti-military.
31:54:
(Tim Miller)
Marco tweeted that he's not shocked that he said this because he's a radical who's controlled by the Democratic Party's activist base.
32:06:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
32:07:
(Tim Miller)
I'm pretty fucking grossed out by this from these guys.
32:12:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, it would be a standard issue hit, but we just went through this Amy Coney Barrett thing.
32:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, I thought we weren't allowed to criticize people's religion.
32:22:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, where they all clutched their pearls.
32:24:
(Tim Miller)
Anytime anybody brought up some of the more out there elements of the people of praise,
32:33:
(Tim Miller)
And, you know, this sermon is pretty mainstream.
32:37:
(Tim Miller)
I think that you would hear it at pulpits across the country, not at, you know, the evangelical, you know, Church of America pulpits, but in a lot of certainly...
32:48:
(Tim Miller)
you know, the types of bullets that Reverend Warnock preaches to.
32:53:
(Tim Miller)
Why is this an okay attack now?
32:56:
(Tim Miller)
And why, you know, and shouldn't all of these people who got on their high horse, all of our friends in the conservative media who got on their high horse, anytime Amy Coney Barrett was even slightly
33:09:
(Tim Miller)
dinged over the views of people of praise, shouldn't they be coming to Reverend Warnock's defense right now?
33:16:
(Tim Miller)
Shouldn't they be saying that this is an unfair attack on Christians that's not okay in our politics?
33:23:
(JVL)
I know the answer to this one.
33:25:
(JVL)
Great.
33:25:
(JVL)
I know the answer.
33:27:
(JVL)
It's because he's black.
33:30:
(JVL)
That's the answer.
33:32:
(JVL)
There, see?
33:33:
(JVL)
Look, this is...
33:35:
(Tim Miller)
I have a couple...
33:36:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, John McCain didn't make this attack, to your point, on Reverend White.
33:40:
(Tim Miller)
He refused to make this attack because he felt racist.
33:42:
(JVL)
So I have a couple priest buddies who I'm fairly glossed with, and this is one of the things we talk about a lot, which is the extent to which Christianity in America has become Americanized.
33:59:
(JVL)
And so it's not even really Christianity.
34:01:
(JVL)
It's more...
34:02:
(JVL)
It's more a compliment to Americanism, if that makes sense.
34:07:
(JVL)
Because properly understood, Christianity is a real challenge to the whole idea of the sovereign state, right?
34:14:
(JVL)
I mean, you know, real Christians, honestly, are always a little bit unsettled and uncomfortable by rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
34:22:
(JVL)
You know, they'll do it because that's what they're supposed to do.
34:24:
(JVL)
But they recognize that these things are separate and that one kingdom is higher than the other, et cetera, et cetera.
34:29:
(JVL)
And starting with the evangelical movement in the 1980s, that began changing.
34:37:
(JVL)
And it has bled into the Catholic Church, too.
34:39:
(JVL)
I mean, you see this now in huge swaths of the Catholic Church.
34:43:
(JVL)
And it's a real problem because you wind up in conflict exactly like this, right, where Christianity is just sort of a weaponized version of conservatism and republicanism, you know.
34:58:
(Tim Miller)
Patriotism.
35:00:
(JVL)
Yeah.
35:01:
(JVL)
Yeah.
35:01:
(JVL)
Like that.
35:02:
(JVL)
And it's, it's really, it's not great.
35:05:
(JVL)
It's not great.
35:06:
(JVL)
I gotta be honest.
35:08:
(JVL)
I would give almost anything to see Raphael Warnock beat Kelly Loeffler.
35:16:
(JVL)
I don't know that there is a single other Senate matchup from this cycle that I would find more spiritually, emotionally, psychologically gratifying.
35:29:
(JVL)
them watching him beat her.
35:32:
(Tim Miller)
Well, you just jinx that then for sure.
35:34:
(Tim Miller)
There's no, you're not allowed to get that kind of joy.
35:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
Well, right now, wait, what about, can you, can you do some rank punditry though?
35:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, honestly, um, I haven't followed this as closely.
35:44:
(Sarah Longwell)
Um, what are the chances that, I mean, I guess I just sort of assume the Republican, both candidates are going to win the Republicans.
35:51:
(Sarah Longwell)
Um, do you think that's wrong?
35:52:
(JVL)
I think that's the most likely outcome.
35:55:
(JVL)
Tim, would you agree?
35:56:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, not, not, it's not a cinch, but yeah, I mean, look, George is changing, um, you know, obviously as we saw by the, by the results, but historically speaking, you know, in runoff such as this, I think Chambliss got into one runoff like this a while back and, you know, it was close in the general.
36:14:
(Tim Miller)
And then, you know, he swamped the, he swamped him by 15 in the runoff.
36:18:
(Tim Miller)
Um, um,
36:19:
(Tim Miller)
You would think that with Biden winning, with the fate of the Senate in balance, that the energy, because it's a cliche that it all comes down to turnout, but in a runoff, it really does all come out to turnout, and so that the energy would be in the more MAGA-conservative.
36:38:
(Tim Miller)
communities, the turnout would continue to be high and turnout might dip a little bit in these Atlanta suburbs.
36:44:
(Tim Miller)
Or then maybe that some of these voters in the Atlanta suburbs that voted for Biden want divided government.
36:49:
(Tim Miller)
So I would give the Republican a pretty heavy advantage there.
36:54:
(Tim Miller)
That said, I think it's a wild card, this sort of fight over...
37:00:
(Tim Miller)
like a lot of those types of suburban voters that I was mentioning that, that might want divided government are probably pretty grossed out by Kelly Loeffler and, and David Perdue participating in the not, not a coup coup.
37:13:
(Tim Miller)
Um, so that might motivate them that mega base might be depressed by the fact that the, in the end by January 5th, you know, Loeffler and Perdue aren't fighting hard enough to steal the election.
37:24:
(Tim Miller)
You know, so I think they're wild cards.
37:26:
(Tim Miller)
It's not a hundred zero, but, um,
37:29:
(Tim Miller)
But just the nature of a runoff where the party out of power and still a tilting red state, you know, would make me think that Loeffler and Purdue are in pretty good shape.
37:41:
(JVL)
All right.
37:42:
(JVL)
We've run long here again, guys.
37:44:
(JVL)
Anything else before?
37:45:
(JVL)
We always run long.
37:46:
(JVL)
The people love it.
37:47:
(JVL)
Yeah.
37:47:
(JVL)
You know, I guess.
37:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
JBL, we didn't even do your topic.
37:51:
(JVL)
Yeah, we did.
37:51:
(JVL)
We talked about the success of the political project and how Republicans... We just weaved yours in.
38:00:
(JVL)
That's okay.
38:01:
(JVL)
You don't need to have a hard break between these things.
38:03:
(JVL)
When it's working well, the people don't even notice the transition.
38:09:
(JVL)
All right.
38:10:
(JVL)
Guys, anything else before we get out?
38:12:
(JVL)
No, sir.
38:13:
(JVL)
Peace.
38:14:
(JVL)
All right.
38:14:
(JVL)
Bye.
38:15:
(JVL)
See ya.
38:15:
(JVL)
Go Tigers.