00:07 Charlie Sykes Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. 00:08 I'm Charlie Sykes. 00:10 Just a note here. 00:12 Late Saturday night, we all did a live stream with the Bulwark staff where we talked about our reactions. 00:18 And you'll be able to hear the last 11 minutes of that. 00:21 We're going to tack it on to the end of the podcast. 00:23 And this is the raw history. 00:25 This is what we were thinking when it was very, very fresh, very... 00:29 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 So you get to hear this raw, raw history. 00:41 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 And I reacting sort of summing up our reaction to this election. 00:57 But because, of course, that was for Bulwark Plus, we wanted to sort of get the band back together again this morning. 01:02 And so joining me now on this Monday morning. 01:05 I won't say hangover, but it doesn't feel like a hangover. 01:09 Joining me on this Monday podcast, we have JVL, Bill Crystal and Sarah Longwell. 01:14 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 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 I mean, I just this is the best story ever. 01:31 And every historian of 2020 has to have this detail. 01:35 And can I just read the lead in the Philadelphia Inquirer? 01:39 Please. 01:40 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 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 This is just so perfect that did you did you have all of it comes to to in it. 02:06 OK, so let's talk about where we're at here. 02:09 We have the Dow Jones is up sixteen hundred points. 02:12 which has really got to be making Donald Trump's day. 02:14 Republicans are continuing to not say anything about the election. 02:20 Trump is refusing to concede and planning various legal efforts. 02:25 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 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 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 of India, who was kind of a buddy of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson congratulating him. 03:03 So it's like the world has just moved on in a very decisive way. 03:08 And I'm just guessing that that must be very disconcerting for Donald Trump. 03:12 who probably thought that he could play this string out. 03:14 And we'll try to continue to play it out. 03:16 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 So let's go around the horn and talk about where we are at right now, your reaction to the election. 03:34 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 But maybe that's just the way I am now, you know, kind of crotchety and whatever. 03:47 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 And, you know, again, all that's manageable. 04:00 Will they get it all serious about COVID, which is really a terrible situation and getting worse. 04:06 So I'm sort of not quite as sort of willing to simply be jubilant. 04:11 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 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 So that part alarms me. 04:46 And in that respect, that fits into what annoys me, which is the degree of Republican. 04:52 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 Adam White has an excellent piece of the bulwark this morning. 05:03 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 is not trivial. 05:27 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 How responsible is it going to be? 05:39 I don't know. 05:40 I wouldn't say this is not a good start. 05:41 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 I mean, we knew that Donald Trump was not going to concede easily. 05:50 We knew that this might be an election month. 05:54 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 That's not going to be 06:04 Gore versus Bush. 06:05 So yes, they're going to continue doing this. 06:07 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 So Sarah Longwell on Saturday, you admitted, and it was a very powerful part of this. 06:21 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 the, you know, this, the final, the relief of the final result. 06:34 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 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 But, you know, I had really expected... 06:54 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 pretty narrow margins. 07:20 Some of them we're talking about 10,000 votes. 07:22 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 The Michigan win was bigger with about 125,000. 07:35 But those are still not blowout numbers. 07:41 They're kind of the reverse of what Trump got last time, which means that his hold... 07:48 on the Republican Party is pretty deep. 07:53 And I'm concerned about that. 07:55 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 You know, that the idea that his his supporters might be just a little less enthusiastic going into the election. 08:20 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 And while they did break pretty decisively. 08:33 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 A lot of those stuck it out. 08:42 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 But I went back and looked. 08:50 It is it is looking like Donald Trump may have won. 08:53 Again, white women. 08:56 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 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 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 I'll hear that. 09:34 So I have spent some time looking around at institutional Republican world and the extent to which even people like Tim Scott 09:43 Refusing to say anything and dog whistling about legal votes and got to take these allegations very, very seriously. 09:54 And what is happening right now is that Donald Trump has very cleverly created another loyalty test for the Republican Party. 10:04 And because the Republican Party is passing this loyalty test, he is binding the Republican voters more tightly to himself. 10:13 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 And having been in the wrong post election, they're going to keep doubling down on this as well. 10:27 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 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 mainstream parts of conservatism make. 10:58 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 That will be apostasy. 11:09 I don't even know how you pronounce it. 11:11 I always pronounce it apostasy. 11:13 I don't know. 11:14 I'll let you guys. 11:15 So that that has me very concerned. 11:17 And then I'm also concerned just in the logistics of the next 74 days. 11:21 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 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 And once somebody realizes, hold on, I don't care about the honor system. 11:45 Why? 11:46 Why should anybody in the federal government sign such a document? 11:49 Right. 11:49 I mean, and this is going to happen in a cascade across all the levels. 11:54 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 And I will not feel better about it until we have an actual handover of the government. 12:14 Charlie Sykes Wow. 12:15 I find myself being the sunniest person here. 12:18 I don't disagree with the concerns that you're raising here. 12:21 And by the way, this was a question that I had all weekend. 12:24 Who has to sign the document that triggers the actual formal transition? 12:29 I mean, it's one thing to have Donald Trump hiding out in the bunker in the White House. 12:35 But 12:35 It turns out it is the administrator of the GSA who has to sign that paper. 12:40 It's never been controversial before. 12:42 Nobody knew it because it was automatic. 12:46 Somebody was involved in a transition who said that 12:50 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 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 So that's not a good that's not a good omen. 13:07 Also, there's real damage that can be done by delaying all of this. 13:11 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 So 13:19 These are all concerns, and the damage being done to the legitimacy of our democracy is very real. 13:28 But let me just turn things a little bit, just a little bit. 13:32 Sarah, you're right about how this should not have been this close. 13:35 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 It should not have been in doubt. 13:46 in any way whatsoever. 13:47 And so that does raise those questions. 13:50 But in the end, this is going to be a substantial victory. 13:54 Joe Biden is going to get 306 electoral votes. 13:56 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 So so don't email me about that. 14:05 And he's and he's going to lose the in Joe Biden will win the the popular vote by seven million. 14:10 That's not nothing. 14:12 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 Now, I think there's going to be tremendous problems, which I'm willing to talk about later this week. 14:30 I could see the Trump folks starting their version of the Tea Party early next year with the rallies, the Trump Party. 14:37 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 I think it's going to be ugly. 14:46 I expect it's going to be hyper partisan and everything. 14:48 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 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 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 I mean, I'll get over it. 15:22 I'm prepared to get over it. 15:25 But guys, we've worked very hard to get to this moment. 15:29 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 And I'm guessing that every one of us did not have a single day in that nearly 2,000 days. 15:47 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 And, you know, at least let's recognize he hit the trifecta. 15:58 He's a one term president. 16:00 He lost the popular vote twice. 16:02 He was impeached. 16:03 Nobody else hit all of those things. 16:06 And I'm guessing his post presidency is going to be equally shambolic. 16:10 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 But OK, JBL, you've been arguing about this for some time. 16:20 That Trump is not going anywhere, that he's going to keep his hold over Trump, over the Republican Party. 16:25 And I think you're right about that. 16:27 And I think people do need to understand that, though, that Trumpism was not exorcised last week. 16:34 And so Donald Trump's going to stick around. 16:36 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 And here's a real very real question for you, Charlie. 17:06 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 What what number do you think that's going to be? 17:18 What what percentage of Republican voters will say Donald Trump won the election? 17:22 Because if it's if it's above like 20 percent. 17:27 It's going to mean that it will be virtually impossible for any Republican. 17:30 No, I agree with Congress people to cooperate with Biden on anything. 17:35 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 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 But I can make arguments that there's a sort of semi-happy scenario 18:07 And then there's a very worrisome scenario in terms of the future of the Republican Party. 18:12 I was thinking of writing something this morning that sort of my head tells me, well, what's the Pascal thing? 18:18 You know, the heart has its reasons. 18:20 The head doesn't understand it. 18:22 reason doesn't understand it. 18:24 My head tells me we need to, look, it's better to have, you got to move on. 18:27 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 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 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 And you can say, I'd like to have a rally with 25,000 people in Macon, Georgia. 18:51 But you know what? 18:52 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 And the Republican Party, your call, your beck and call. 19:02 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 I don't know. 19:11 Does everyone show up? 19:13 Does the party help him? 19:14 He doesn't have the official ability to kind of, you know, use the police forces. 19:17 Don't shut the roads down for him. 19:19 I mean, he's no longer president. 19:21 That I think is the biggest thing on the other side of the equation. 19:24 But getting back to my heart and my head, but in terms of the Republican Party going ahead, going forward, 19:30 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 You know, kind of let's just a little forgive and forget. 19:40 My heart, I've got to say, though, says to me, they're still behaving so miserably. 19:45 And I don't really, other people should go reconcile with them. 19:49 Other people should work with them. 19:50 It's actually important to do. 19:51 But can I personally feel like I want to be sitting down with them and thinking about the conservative future? 19:57 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 Because right now, you know, they're all afraid to acknowledge that the election's over. 20:10 The election is over. 20:11 There's no doubt whatsoever. 20:13 Donald Trump himself will never actually concede that he lost Trump. 20:18 but he might, you know, basically bow to reality. 20:21 I guess he's kind of trapped himself, hasn't he? 20:24 And the rest of the Republicans. 20:25 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 Why? 20:32 Right? 20:33 Why? 20:34 Why does he have to? 20:35 Well, because January 20th is going to come around. 20:38 So at what point are they going to do it? 20:40 JVL You're already in the House. 20:41 I mean, you could just keep saying, like, he stole the election. 20:46 I mean, we're not going to work with him. 20:47 I mean, this is a problem. 20:52 Sarah Longwell Yeah. 20:53 Look, it's a problem. 20:54 But I'm not sure that it's the same. 20:56 I'm not sure I think it's the same problem that the JBL does. 20:59 So I think the JBL is right. 21:01 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 But people's memories for better or for worse. 21:14 are pretty short around politics. 21:16 I do think that over time, Donald Trump can't stay in the White House. 21:21 Charlie, you are correct that institutionally people are moving on. 21:26 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 Let's move on. 21:39 The other thing is you got a lot of these 21:41 local election officials, the lieutenant governor in Georgia, who's a Republican, coming out saying, look, there's no irregularities here. 21:49 And I think that the Trump guys are going to try to keep the narrative alive that there were. 21:54 But so far, nobody has produced any real evidence. 21:57 And that is going to matter. 21:58 And over time, Donald Trump is not going to be the president. 22:01 And the country is going to move on to some degree. 22:05 He will keep hold. 22:06 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 Who is it? 22:12 It's the people who have deeply tied their political futures to Donald Trump, right? 22:17 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 But over time, they may still do that. 22:27 But the bulk of people whose futures are not tied to Donald Trump will start to move on. 22:33 And I just don't think that they can sustain as a loser the hold on the party. 22:40 I think they will maintain one. 22:41 I'm not saying that they won't. 22:42 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 And I am torn. 22:59 I am torn on this. 22:59 I mean, at some point, they do have to acknowledge it. 23:02 And whether it's the the Electoral College vote or whatnot, you know, once that GSA document is signed. 23:08 But Trump has made it very difficult. 23:10 Trump has made it very difficult to know once he's backed into a corner to to acknowledge all of this. 23:16 And we don't know what the Republican Party will do. 23:18 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 And maybe they were just waiting on Trump to give them the signal that it's OK. 23:31 But it is striking that none of them is coming out. 23:33 And I will say, though, that, you know, it's one thing for people to be cowardly. 23:38 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 They know better. 23:49 Newt Gingrich knows how elections actually run. 23:53 And he's sitting there talking about, you know, the corruption, the George Soros. 23:57 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 There weren't observers in Philadelphia. 24:20 What is all this late ballot stuff and what's a provisional ballot? 24:23 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 Again, I think we're having the right discussion here in the sense that we just don't know, of course. 24:40 I mean, how much time heals, so to speak, and people get to move along, how much Republican elected officials decide. 24:48 I mean, there are a lot of concrete choices. 24:50 This won't be resolved in a theoretical debate. 24:52 It'll be resolved when, let's take COVID. 24:55 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 to tide us over until the vaccine really works. 25:07 Are Republicans really going to oppose that? 25:09 Or is every Republican going to oppose it? 25:11 Is McConnell going to whip Republicans against it? 25:13 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 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 but says, okay, I'll put aside the other stuff. 25:30 A lot depends on how Biden behaves. 25:32 I'll put aside the other stuff that's controversial. 25:33 Let's just legalize the dreamers. 25:35 Does every Republican oppose that? 25:37 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 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 all-in Trumpy Republicans? 26:03 Or do they have a little bit, especially Perdue, of a kind of, look, I voted for Trump. 26:07 I think there may have been problems. 26:08 But here in Georgia, the Republican governor and lieutenant governor say it's sort of okay. 26:12 And so let's talk about the future. 26:14 You need to be there to check Joe Biden. 26:15 That's really important to me. 26:17 I mean, do they run as... 26:18 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 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 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 They weren't technically part of Operation Warp Speed. 26:54 They didn't actually... 26:55 Which is the company? 26:57 I'm sorry, I don't have it in front of me. 26:58 Pfizer. 26:59 Pfizer. 26:59 Pfizer didn't take any money from the government, which is interesting. 27:03 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 He thinks this was part of a conspiracy of some kind. 27:14 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 And now they have a vaccine. 27:25 I'm expecting that he's going to lash out in some way. 27:28 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 Ultimately, I don't think it's going to make a difference. 27:35 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 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 I stuck by that guy because I was hoping for the best. 27:57 But it turns out he was a really bad leader. 27:59 That's not going to happen. 28:00 There's not anybody in Republican world is going to do that. 28:03 And, you know, if I push back against Bill and Sarah here a little bit, the idea that you can't 28:08 that people have short memories. 28:11 And I just don't buy that because A, he's not going away, right? 28:15 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 It'll be very interesting to watch what the Fox primetime lineup does this week. 28:38 And the ability to of these people to live in a totally alternate reality has been really shown by COVID. 28:49 You know, you got 40 percent of the Republican Party who has basically acted like COVID doesn't exist. 28:54 And it's a hoax. 28:55 If you just look at the polling numbers on mask usage. 28:57 Right. 28:58 And like 40% of Republican respondents are like, no, I don't use no mask. 29:02 Like that's, it's just a different world. 29:05 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 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 And, uh, 29:25 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 That's just not practical. 29:37 You know, 330 million people, you cannot have cops running around saying, you put your mask on, you put your mask on. 29:42 This has to be a thing that everybody just agrees that, hey, we all have to do this. 29:45 And, you know, like he's already politicized this. 29:48 He's going to continue to politicize it. 29:49 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 And he was saying, well, we have to, you know, get together. 30:08 We have to, you know, use masks and a variety of things. 30:11 And as I'm walking along listening to this, I'm going, and that will never happen. 30:14 That is not ever going to happen. 30:15 There is no chance that those things will take place between now and January 20th. 30:21 So that is the danger. 30:23 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 But I think my thinking is, and I guess I'm 30:45 perhaps being overly optimistic, but reality is a thing. 30:49 Reality does matter. 30:50 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 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 That's kind of what I'm thinking. 31:35 Okay. 31:36 Sarah, 70 million people just said that they wanted four more years of Trump. 31:39 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 you know what, actually, even with this virus, like, I don't trust those Democrats to handle things. 32:02 And I'm really nervous about, you know, AOC and the socialist wing of the party. 32:06 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 But if you ask them if their individual lives or economic situation had improved, 32:21 You know, a majority of people did say that it had. 32:24 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 You know, there was there are a lot of reasons why people might have voted for him. 32:32 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 I to me, what you just said is, look, see, these people were already living in an alternate reality. 32:52 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 So that means that he was taking care of us. 33:02 You know, it just seems there's so low information. 33:06 Sarah Longwell He will not have those levers of government. 33:08 He will not have those. 33:09 He won't have the same bully pulpit. 33:11 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 And that is possible. 33:20 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 Facebook isn't going away. 33:27 YouTube isn't going away. 33:29 Charlie Sykes And you ran through some of them, JVL. 33:32 People are still focused on Fox News. 33:34 We're past Fox News. 33:35 This is not Breitbart Fox News world anymore. 33:38 This is OAN. 33:39 This is Newsmax. 33:40 This is YouTube. 33:41 This is Facebook and all those folks. 33:43 Okay. 33:44 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 past concession speeches, starting with Jimmy Carter and going through George H.W. 33:58 Bush and John McCain. 34:01 And really, they were remarkably gracious and they were remarkably eloquent and they were important to 34:08 Even even Hillary Clinton's comments. 34:11 It strikes me as looking at right now at conservative media. 34:15 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 That you have to fight till the bitter, bitter end. 34:33 And that whole culture seems to have been rejected. 34:37 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 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 That there's not a huge... 34:56 upwelling of Republicans who are saying, you know what, we lost this election. 35:01 This is what the Constitution is about. 35:04 Democratic transfer of power. 35:06 We need to recognize that value. 35:10 You're not seeing much of that at all. 35:12 And that's really kind of extraordinary. 35:15 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 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 OK, so I actually heard an interview with Joe Lieberman last night. 36:01 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 You can go back to the Florida courts, you know, and, you know, keep keep pushing this. 36:16 And apparently he thought about it for a while. 36:19 And so Gore calls Lieberman and he says, what do you think? 36:22 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 And he said, so that's what he told Gore. 36:32 Gore calls him back an hour later and says, you know what, I'm not going to do it. 36:35 It's got to come to an end. 36:36 We're up against the deadline of the of the Electoral College, and I'm going to concede. 36:42 It's like, wow. 36:43 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 But again, this is the contrast. 36:55 I don't disagree with what you're saying here, but. 36:58 I really was struck over the last 48 hours by just the contrast of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. 37:06 And we can't be the only ones to see it. 37:08 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 I'd rather go with that. 37:25 I do think that's going to do damage to Trump's standing. 37:28 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 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 There are people in between, so to speak, Trump and the 71 million. 38:03 So there are Republican elected officials who've mostly been quiet and sort of timid. 38:08 But there are Republican concession speeches. 38:09 I haven't looked at them. 38:10 So this is a genuine question. 38:11 I guess Martha McSally probably hasn't conceded yet because Arizona is in question, I guess, still. 38:18 Cory Gardner, maybe he doesn't count because he was never that Trumpy. 38:22 But there are plenty of congressional candidates who lost close races here in Virginia 7. 38:26 Abigail Spanberger held on. 38:28 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 I do doubt the results. 38:38 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 And meanwhile, we've got to organize a Tea Party to oppose them. 38:48 And then what about, you're talking about the COVID thing. 38:50 There are, I mean, what does Ron DeSantis, does Ron DeSantis cooperate with the Biden administration? 38:54 in public health measures and in the distribution of the vaccine. 38:59 It's not like the federal government can personally distribute this vaccine. 39:02 And other measures in Florida, does Abbott in Texas, does Kristi Noem in South Dakota. 39:06 So there'll be a lot of in-between steps. 39:08 And the truth will probably be somewhere in between, you know, in terms of cooperation versus cooperation. 39:12 total alternate reality, trying to sort of not let Biden succeed. 39:18 I do think COVID though, I slightly disagree with JBL on this, is the strongest issue for Biden. 39:23 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 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 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 This is it. 39:51 The first 90 days is all public health, public health, public health, plus a little economic stimulus. 39:56 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 And can I just say one other thing that's going to happen even before Biden takes office? 40:10 Right. 40:11 So Trump is still exploiting this gray area a little bit. 40:17 Right. 40:17 Where results are still trickling in. 40:20 It's clear it's closed in a bunch of places. 40:22 But here's what's going to happen over the next couple of weeks. 40:24 Like I'm all for. 40:25 Yeah. 40:25 OK. Go to court. 40:26 Fine. 40:27 Count every legal vote. 40:30 Great. 40:31 Trump is saying legal vote. 40:33 His dog whistle is to try to suggest that the mail-in votes are illegal, but they're not. 40:37 And they're being counted. 40:38 And so here's what's going to happen. 40:39 He's going to lose in court a bunch of times. 40:41 He's already lost every single challenge that they've raised. 40:44 They're going to lose the rest of them because none of them are real and good. 40:48 He's going to lose the recounts. 40:49 The recounts are going to come back. 40:50 We all know that recounts don't change very much 40:53 maybe a couple hundred. 40:53 Well, the margins are far outside of that. 40:55 It's not as close as Florida. 40:57 It's not that kind of nail-biter. 40:58 It's close, but not that close. 41:00 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 you know, his just like screaming fraud. 41:13 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 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 Nobody's going to follow any of that. 41:27 If I had told you on March 12 that on election day, we'd have a quarter million Americans dead from COVID, 41:35 What do you think the general state of alarm will be in this country about it? 41:40 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 And instead, he increased his vote share. 41:53 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 And that is not what this incarnation of the Republican Party wants. 42:09 This incarnation of the public party is psychotherapy. 42:13 And it is what they simply want to have their emotions validated. 42:18 And so for them, the win is resisting the election and claiming that Biden is illegitimate. 42:25 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 That's probably going to be predictive. 42:40 What is the worst, least responsible, most reckless behavior that they could adopt? 42:47 And that's probably what they will do. 42:49 I don't know. 42:49 Kate, could we just go back to wallowing in the fact that Donald Trump is going to not be president again? 42:55 Could we just... 42:55 People, could we do this? 42:56 Could we just hold hands and go, guys, look, let's make eye contact here. 43:04 He's not going to be president on noon, January 20th. 43:08 He's going to have to do the walk of defeat someplace.