00:10 JVL Hello, everyone. 00:12 Welcome to The Next Level. 00:13 This is JBL. 00:14 I am joined by my best friend, Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, and Tim Miller, writer at large of The Bulwark, who I consider a very close acquaintance. 00:25 Guys, how are you? 00:28 Tim Miller When you were telling me about my codpiece earlier, you didn't say that I was just a very close acquaintance. 00:33 You know, what happens in the green room stays in the green room. 00:36 Sarah Longwell Yeah, boy, you brought that up fast. 00:38 JVL We were having an excellent pre-show discussion about G.I. 00:41 Joe figures. 00:43 It wasn't that excellent. 00:45 It was pretty good. 00:47 We concluded that by year five, the G.I. 00:50 Joe toy line had been taken over by Joel Schumacher and become super duper gay with the introduction of Tomax and Zaymont and Dr. Mindvendor. 01:01 Okay, that's enough of that. 01:02 Tim Miller And that the Cobra commander was overseeing the, quote, gayest terrorist org of all time, according to a friend of the pod. 01:09 JVL So listen, we start out talking about G.I. 01:12 Joe because the thing we're really going to start out by talking about is so damn depressing. 01:19 Right before we sat down to tape, new piece came out in The Atlantic by Barton Gelman. 01:29 Here's the key. 01:30 Here's the big important piece. 01:33 I'm going to just read to you guys from the story. 01:36 The Trump campaign legal advisor I spoke with told me that the push to appoint electors would be framed in terms of protecting the people's will. 01:44 Once committed to the position that the overtime count has been rigged, the advisor said, state lawmakers will want to judge for themselves what the voters intended. 01:55 Quote, end quote, the advisor said. 02:09 Democrats, he added, have exposed themselves to the stratagem by creating the conditions for a lengthy overtime. 02:16 So, yeah, I guess we're headed towards full banana republic. 02:25 Sarah Longwell So can I just tell you, so I participated in a scenario planning exercise in which we gamed a number of these scenarios out. 02:35 In fact, this very scenario. 02:37 And it was conducted by Rosa Brooks and a few others. 02:41 And they released the results. 02:43 And they published that this could be the case. 02:50 Tim Miller What was your role in this scenario? 02:52 Sarah Longwell I was on Team Trump, and I'll get to that. 02:54 I will dig deep on some of the scenario planning with you if you want, but I just want to make this first observation because this is my immediate reaction upon seeing this, that the Trump lawyers are actually going on the record with people saying that they are planning to do this, which is that when the results were published, 03:10 They were met with responses from people like Byron York and others on the right, especially the anti anti Trumpers who said people at National Review. 03:18 JVL Do you remember this? 03:20 Oh, you guys are just assuming that they are going to behave like a bunch of James Bond villains. 03:25 How pathetic. 03:27 How awful of you to begin to question the legitimacy of our great election. 03:32 Do you remember that fucking bullshit, Sarah? 03:34 Sarah Longwell I, in fact, do. 03:35 This is my point is that like they they made it. 03:37 And this is what everybody does. 03:39 Right. 03:39 They gaslight you into this idea. 03:41 And the thing is, is that I used to be there. 03:43 I used to kind of be like, all right, you got this left. 03:46 Stop on the left, calling him an authoritarian. 03:48 You know, you know, you guys are over catastrophizing everything. 03:51 You know, it's too much bedwetting. 03:53 But I'm there like and the reason that I'm there is because I would put nothing past this president. 03:58 And now we find ourselves in a place where they're actually saying that they're going to do the very things that in the scenario we basically said were their best plays. 04:06 And I'll just say just a real quick, our strategy as Team Trump was, hey, so Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, three of the key swing states, all have Democratic governors, but they also have Republican-led legislatures. 04:20 And so what if the Republican-led legislatures, in the instance where 04:24 There's going to be, let's say, because of the craziness of this election, right? 04:27 There's so many mail-in ballots. 04:29 People are trying to process a volume of mail-in ballots they've never processed before. 04:32 Tipping states like Pennsylvania do not count early. 04:36 So they are trying to count, you know, the night of or even in the weeks after. 04:40 So if the election is close, there's this thing, this phenomenon called the blue shift, where all the ballots are going to get counted over time. 04:47 So this happened in Arizona in 2018, where it looked like McSally had won on election night. 04:53 Trump declares victory, but as time goes on, more mail-in ballots get counted, shifts blue, Sinema wins. 04:59 Okay, so that's going to happen, or the anticipation is that that could happen on a national scale, which is why you see Trump coming out and saying we have to know on election night, because he knows that his people are much more likely to vote in person, Biden's people are much more likely to vote by mail. 05:13 And so the election night results may potentially favor him. 05:17 But now what this article is saying is that 05:19 They are actually preparing to have lawyers on the ground in these states and to try to make the Republican legislators say, we're not going to certify these because we saw voter fraud. 05:32 We said we have these three instances across the country that we found a voter fraud because the president kept telling people to vote twice. 05:39 And they're going to blow those up and they're going to say, well, we can't trust these results and we're going to contest them or we're not going to certify them. 05:47 Tim Miller Yeah, I mean... 05:49 Talk us down. 05:50 I think that you and the libs are over catastrophizing still a bit. 05:57 And I get yelled at by Bill Maher this weekend for saying this. 06:02 And, you know, he said that I was a frog boiling in a pot and I just can't see it. 06:07 I think I see Trump pretty clearly. 06:09 I mean, you know, he's been around for a while now. 06:13 I think that there are real... 06:16 I think that this Atlantic article... 06:18 like and and and some of the things you just said sarah bring up real concerns to be worried about the pennsylvania story about are we going to count the ballot that's in one envelope but not two you know i was talking to a lawyer um 06:33 a couple months ago that was on the Ben Wittes live stream with me, who was like, you know, in the recent New York primary, you know, they didn't count 20,000, making that number up, but some significant number of ballots because the signature was, 06:49 was on the wrong line or whatever. 06:50 So I do think that in a close election, obviously the Trump campaign and his legal team will act as unscrupulously as possible. 07:00 Obviously in places like Florida, Ron DeSantis, and places like Georgia where they tried to shut down the Athens voting location. 07:08 I mean, I don't want to be the one that's saying that there's not any chicanery going on. 07:15 The idea that Joe Biden is going to win the election and Trump is going to convince a number of faithless electors to throw out 100,000 to ignore votes because they think it was rigged because of Antifa. 07:31 And then Trump is going to refuse to leave the White House and get, you know, bars to bar the doors. 07:37 And, you know, General Kellogg is going to stand out there with his rifle. 07:42 That just doesn't seem real to me. 07:44 Like, I think that what you are going to get is a lot of Trump whining on Twitter. 07:49 And I think that what you're going to get is a lot of them trying to undermine the faith of the election, which, by the way, is a big deal in itself, just not the same level of big deal as refusing to leave the White House where his base thinks it's rigged. 08:04 And I think that in places like Pennsylvania, if you have a close vote, the stuff that was reported in this Atlantic story does matter and that it's clear that the 08:14 Trump campaign is preparing to, you know, put their thumb on the scale in ways that are, you know, going around the law in order to try to, is rig the right word? 08:30 I don't know if rig is the right word, but, you know, affect the vote count. 08:34 I guess, which is rigging. 08:36 I'm playing semantic games in my head like I'm Rich Lowry right now. 08:40 But anyway, that's where I think it is. 08:43 And that's, by the way, like a five alarm fire, a serious threat. 08:48 It's just, you know, I scroll through this Atlantic article and you have... 08:51 The Democrats aren't taking seriously the fact that Trump will refuse to leave. 08:55 And like that, that stuff, I think, is a little catastrophizing. 08:57 JVL Well, it isn't. 08:58 Yeah. 08:59 But the problem isn't the problem isn't that he will concede that he lost and then refused to leave. 09:05 Right. 09:05 The problem is that he will simply assert that he won. 09:08 Right. 09:10 And then we'll have... 09:12 It's like the Seinfeld episode. 09:14 That will only work, though, if he actually won. 09:16 Well, I don't know that that's true. 09:18 I mean, he will have lost by many millions of votes just the way he did in 2016. 09:24 And there will be... 09:25 All sorts of yes, but actually this was fine over here. 09:30 And actually over there, those ballots have to get tossed out. 09:33 And over here in this other state, we don't think that the early vote should be counted because those were all fraudulent ballots. 09:41 And the state legislature over there has real concerns. 09:43 And so they're setting their own slate of electors. 09:45 And so you could wind up with two slates of electors showing up in Washington. 09:50 And then, like, who decides who to see? 09:53 Crosstalk How does this... 09:54 How is this all supposed to work? 09:56 The new Supreme Court, JVL. 09:57 Yeah, the new Supreme Court, exactly. 09:58 Really? 09:59 I mean, I just, this is a failed state. 10:04 Sarah Longwell It hasn't failed yet. 10:07 It hasn't failed yet. 10:08 And just to be clear, to go back to what Tim was saying, I'm not saying, I actually have never bought the idea that he won't leave if he loses. 10:17 What I think that the article is pointing out, and again, one of the stupid things about the criticism of the scenario planning was the scenario planning was meant to really push the boundaries. 10:27 It was to explore all options of what could be done. 10:29 Tim Miller Did you criticize the scenario planning? 10:30 I missed that. 10:32 Sarah Longwell Byron York and some of the other... 10:33 I mean, it was a story for a minute. 10:37 This was not a prediction. 10:40 This wasn't like, here's definitely what it'll do. 10:41 It's like, what are all the ways we could try to take all the levers of the federal government, which Trump does have at his disposal, all the disinformation opportunities and what could materialize? 10:52 And so we identified things like the fact that even though people think that... 10:59 you know, the governors certify these elections that actually the state legislatures do constitutionally, which there's Democratic scholars that push back and say, absolutely, that's not true. 11:07 You know, the governors do it, but it's in the constitution that the legislature actually has that power. 11:12 So the point is, is like, there's so much gray space. 11:15 And so if it's very close, and Tim, this is to me, the real point about what they're saying in the Atlantic article is if 11:23 Pennsylvania. 11:24 Let's say Pennsylvania is the state that is the Florida of 2000. 11:28 So the 2020 state where everybody's waiting for ballots to come in is Pennsylvania. 11:33 It's governed by a Republican state legislature. 11:36 And there's just this fight going on. 11:37 And so it's not that Trump refuses to leave. 11:39 He's definitely lost. 11:40 And you're dragging him. 11:42 He's leaving claw marks in the resolute desk. 11:44 It's that he's saying, well, you can't trust these ballots. 11:48 And frankly, this is the one thing that I think people sort of fail to 11:53 To understand about the environment, if it is that close, then Joe Biden has wildly underperformed the polls. 12:00 And so there's like deep suspicion. 12:01 Tim Miller I mean, there's a very disturbing Arizona poll this morning. 12:05 Sarah Longwell And Florida. 12:05 Yeah. 12:07 Yes, there was in the Washington Post ABC poll. 12:10 But but I think that if so, people are already they're just like it's one of those things where like this is the moment people are in the streets. 12:17 And what what the article shows is that they are thinking about how they can put their thumbs on the scale in real and meaningful ways. 12:26 Tim Miller Yeah, the Pennsylvania nightmare, and so here's where I'll catastrophize, is like the ballots are coming in and you've got the Trump D-list goon lawyers from The Simpsons sitting there looking at all – and they're ensuring that they're analyzing all these ballots and maybe arguing to throw them out because of the – 12:49 you know, envelope situation. 12:51 And, and, and that's where you get a state legislature that's, you know, saying that we're going to have a separate slate of electors. 12:57 I mean, that is extremely possible and disturbing. 13:02 I'm just, I'm like trying to, trying to like put my fingers in my ears and go la la la and pretend that's not going to happen because Joe Biden's going to win a handle, win handily. 13:11 But, but I mean, that's a very realistic outcome. 13:13 Yeah. 13:13 JVL Here's the thing. 13:14 Even if the best case scenario happens, which is that Joe Biden wins a large victory, maybe his victories of the order of magnitude of 8 million voters, Donald Trump doesn't try to... 13:30 have separate slates of electors or anything like that, he just does tweets. 13:33 And he just does tweets saying that this thing didn't really happen. 13:39 It's all big fraud. 13:41 I actually won, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 13:43 Even if that is all that happens, which I think the three of us would now agree is the best case scenario. 13:49 Yeah. 13:49 That we have the sitting president of the United States claiming that this thing that just happened didn't happen. 13:56 That is... 13:58 So in 1980... 14:00 Ronald Reagan beats Jimmy Carter by eight and a half million votes. 14:03 And there were a lot of people who were upset by that. 14:05 People were really scared about Ronald Reagan. 14:08 So far as I can tell, there were precisely zero people in America who thought that Reagan didn't win by eight and a half million votes. 14:15 As upset as the Democrats were about losing. 14:18 Tim Miller There weren't a couple of radicalized peanut farmers. 14:21 JVL I don't think there were anybody running around saying, actually, the truth is half of those votes from Reagan were bad ballots and Carter... 14:35 The very fact that we're at a place where some percentage of Americans, and maybe that percentage of the total population will be 10%, maybe it'll be 25%, maybe it'll be 30%, but some very significant minority of Americans are going to believe that Trump actually won is, again, it just means that we're a failed state. 14:56 You cannot have a serious country in which... 15:01 A fifth of the people construct a total alternate reality for themselves. 15:06 It doesn't work. 15:09 Tim Miller I was just letting that sink in because I don't have any pushback, contrarian pushback on that. 15:18 Sarah Longwell Yeah. 15:19 I have a question. 15:19 What topic did we dump to talk about this? 15:22 JVL We didn't dump, but we were going to push to... We merged. 15:25 We merged. 15:26 So let's just pass that off, then. 15:27 I'll pass it on. 15:28 Tim Miller Great transition, Sarah. 15:29 JVL Let's talk about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 15:30 Sarah Longwell Was that seamless? 15:32 Did you like how nice that was? 15:33 Tim Miller Yeah, wow. 15:34 You're a pro. 15:36 You should go into the podcasting business. 15:38 So Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the political fallout. 15:44 We had yesterday... 15:45 Mitt Romney come out and say that he was going to advise and consent on the nominee, depending on their qualifications, not based on considerations of fairness, which would give Mitch McConnell 51 votes, essentially. 16:04 And I think that we can all agree, basically a glide path to confirming a nominee barring something crazy happening. 16:12 The political question that I have, since we've discussed that on the Myriad Bulwark podcast last few days, is it's kind of weird that that's the case, right? 16:23 Given that the Republicans have several senators who are in blue and purple states. 16:30 that are basically signing their death warrants with us, particularly two that come to mind who are up this time, Cory Gardner and Martha McSally, who have both agreed to, sight unseen, sign up for any... 16:45 you know, judge that Trump nominates and any of their craziest far right, socially conservative or culturally conservative views in states that are, you know, in Arizona, coin flip purple and Colorado, like trending blue. 17:04 And I think that it's... 17:07 uh an interesting look at like where we stand as the parties a lot of times we think that these that these actors are acting rationally and maybe they are acting rationally but the but the rationalization has nothing to do with their electoral strength so JVO you wrote about this what what's your what's your take 17:23 JVL Yeah, I think it's a it's a sign of weakness. 17:26 And what is happening is that if Gardner and McSally thought that there was a chance of winning, even a very small chance, you know, one in 10 chance of them holding onto their seats, they might not have agreed to do this. 17:41 It's possible that they would have sat and done some back of the envelope math and tried to figure out, OK, do I hurt myself more by going along with it or do I hurt myself more by trying to stop this train from leaving the station? 17:53 But their fates are sealed already. 17:56 I mean, there's just no. 17:59 It is a one in 100 chance that either of them holds on to their seats. 18:03 And so what they're thinking about is their futures. 18:07 And they understand that the future of Republican politics is Trumpism. 18:11 And the only thing that matters in that context is whether or not you were with Trump, whatever the question is. 18:19 Hell, honestly, if I mean, in an alternate universe in which Trump pushed out a totally pro-choice, pro-Roe justice, the caucus would have to vote for it because Trump would say this is like, this is my plan. 18:38 They would just all then rationalize that, right? 18:40 I mean, this is 18:42 There is no principle there. 18:43 Tim Miller Okay, but look at McSally for a second. 18:45 Let's take them one at a time. 18:46 McSally's already lost an election. 18:49 She gets appointed. 18:50 She's appointed to John McCain's seat, whose spouse just endorsed Joe Biden this morning and was obviously attacked by the President of the United States. 19:01 So she's sitting in John McCain's seat in an election that from the fundamentals should be a toss-up, really, against Mark Kelly. 19:09 I mean, Arizona is certainly trending blue, but it's not, you know, like she's running in California or Illinois or something where she has no chance to win. 19:18 Or like, you know, one of those like last Blue Dog senators like Mark Pryor, who's running in Arkansas long after all the Blue Dogs were gone. 19:25 Like, this is Arizona. 19:26 It's a winnable state. 19:28 If she loses twice, her career is over. 19:31 I mean, maybe Gardner can come back. 19:36 JVL Not her career making money from Conservatism, Inc., 19:39 Tim Miller What is she? 19:41 Does anybody like her? 19:43 She's not particularly likable. 19:44 It's not like she's going to be on the Turning Point USA circuit and the children of the corn are going to be like, Martha, Martha. 19:50 I mean, I guess she could be a lobbyist or something. 19:53 She'll consult and lobby. 19:54 But I mean, couldn't she be a lobbyist either way? 19:58 I mean, yeah. 20:00 She could still win this election. 20:02 You cannot be a lobbyist pretending like she might consider this. 20:06 JVL It's just like Danny Pletka. 20:08 Once you understand that you are on your way out and you're heading into the pig trough stage of your career inside conservatism, Inc., then you just got to make sure that everybody on the party knows that you are bought and paid for by the party so that you're never going to embarrass them. 20:22 You're never going to go apostate. 20:24 You're just part of the team. 20:25 And so this is the team player moment for all of these people where they're just going to eat this shit sandwich. 20:32 Tim Miller I just, I find that to be fascinating though. 20:35 Like this is not where, this is not where things, you know, were even relatively recently. 20:40 I mean, you see Collins who is sort of like a, you know, from another era kind of still like there really aren't any other Collins's out there. 20:49 I mean, Murkowski is in a very weird situation since she ended up winning as an independent because of that whole, what was that? 20:55 What was that Joker's name? 20:56 Joe, whatever. 20:58 Beat her in the primary. 20:59 Tea party guy. 21:00 Tea Party guy, I can picture him in my head, but I can't come up with his last name. 21:06 But anyway, Collins is like a senator from another era. 21:09 But what she's doing is actually the rational thing, right? 21:12 She knows that she's in a blue or purple state. 21:14 She thinks she could still win. 21:15 She's at least flirting with the idea that she'll not vote for this candidate based on maybe their position on row, maybe based on their qualifications, maybe based on the sense of fairness. 21:26 She's at least trying to 21:28 to demonstrate an independent spirit that's reflective of her state. 21:33 It is absolutely bizarre that McSally and Gardner aren't even trying to pretend. 21:40 They're not even pretending. 21:41 They could vote yes at the end, but you'd think they'd at least try to send a signal to the suburban voters out there that they're not just a total Trump flunky and they're indistinguishable from having Corey Lewandowski in the seat. 21:56 JVL Yeah, but the difference here is that Collins has probably a 1-3 chance to win, and the other two are at like 1-100. 22:03 Is Miss Alley really at 1-100 in Arizona? 22:06 Sarah Longwell Not if you look at that new ABC Washington Post Bowl that came out this morning. 22:10 That has her neck and neck. 22:12 JVL If McSally is neck and neck, then that poll has to be an outlier. 22:16 Sarah Longwell Yeah, the poll is absolutely an outlier. 22:18 Well, the poll has Donald – it's actually the best poll from an A-plus rated pollster that Trump has gotten the entire – I mean in the last six months because it's got him up by a couple of points in Florida. 22:31 It's got him up by a couple of points in Arizona. 22:35 Tim Miller And it has McSally – Where is the sinking feeling in your stomach right now, Sarah? 22:39 Mine is right above my belly button. 22:41 Sarah Longwell Yeah. 22:41 So when I saw it this morning, I dug into it really fast to be like, what's going on here? 22:47 Why is this different? 22:49 And it's a little oversampled on Republicans, but it's still a good poll. 22:55 And it's got the race super tight between McSally and Kelly, which is crazy compared to everything else we've seen. 23:02 But- 23:03 I mean, I don't know. 23:04 I don't know what to tell you about polls, right? 23:06 Like some of them, sometimes they're outliers and it's better to look at averages. 23:09 All that stuff is probably true. 23:12 But I look and this was also taken, I think, just amid the court thing. 23:17 I don't think that it's the court necessarily changing things. 23:19 I think. 23:20 Look, this was just never going to be as easy as everybody wanted it to be. 23:23 I do think that things, you know, they're tightening up in Pennsylvania for real. 23:28 We do have this issue with the mail-in ballots where, you know, the naked ballot situation where a lot of things could be thrown out. 23:33 And they could be thrown out like the margin, the margin of victory. 23:37 I mean, these are places where Donald Trump surprised everybody. 23:40 I mean, he did win Arizona last time. 23:42 And so, like, it's not crazy that things would be tighter. 23:46 Right. 23:47 I mean, it's crazy in the sense to us because 200,000 Americans are dead. 23:51 The economy is not doing well. 23:53 And Donald Trump is a crazy buffoon who has sown chaos for the last few years. 23:59 And it seems implausible that America would sign up for another four years of that. 24:03 But- 24:04 This is the world we live in. 24:07 I guess I'm not saying that the poll is accurate, but I don't think that you should just throw it out as an outlier because it's not a bad poll. 24:14 Fair enough. 24:14 Tim Miller That takes us back to McSally. 24:17 I think that there are a couple of other theories for what she's doing. 24:20 I think that one theory is that her consultants have convinced her 24:24 that she should be more concerned about losing the Trump base than gaining swing voters. 24:32 And that that's why that she has come out strongly for this nominee. 24:39 Is it not that she's given up like JVL says, but that she thinks that her path back is for Trump to have a comeback in the state and for her to ride the coattails. 24:48 And it's based on a theory of the case that like the McCain... 24:52 voter doesn't matter anymore in Arizona. 24:56 I think that's their rationalization. 24:58 I mean, to me, to those of us, I think that seems insane, but I think that she thinks that she can win. 25:03 I don't know. 25:05 For Cory Gardner, I think it's more along with JBL's lines. 25:07 I think he thinks he can run for governor or Senate again sometime, and he wants to be a team player, but I'm just... 25:13 I think Sally's just making a really dumb decision. 25:16 I actually don't think it's a rational decision. 25:18 I think she's making a dumb strategic decision and she's getting bad advice. 25:22 JVL So speaking of strategic decisions, what would you guys, if you threw on your political consultant hats, what would you advise the Dems to do about the coming nomination? 25:34 I have a very strong view on this. 25:36 Okay. 25:37 Well, then you tell me yours or do you want me to tell you mine and then you can take mine apart and pull it out? 25:41 Yeah, please. 25:42 My view is that the Dems ought to, as a friend of mine put it to me in an email, bend like reads in the wind. 25:51 making a demonstration of protesting entirely around the idea of the process and fairness and never once engaging on the merits of the nominee. 26:03 Talk only about how all precedent suggests that these people over there are lying to you and that this choice should have been made by the next president and then just let it happen. 26:15 and then move right back on to 200,000 dead people. 26:19 Tim Miller I agree with the reads part. 26:21 Like, I don't think that they should go cap in all lengths on this. 26:24 I don't know that that's a winner. 26:26 But here's what I think that they should do is not to fight it on the process. 26:30 I mean, the process should be part of the conversation. 26:32 Obviously, it will be. 26:33 It obviously is. 26:34 But it's defined, you know, basically, in addition to getting rid of the ACA, in addition to putting Roe v. Wade in grave threat, finding one or two other 26:45 absolutely either insane rulings from the judge that gets picked or or things that could be coming down the docket and turning donald trump into ted cruz and this is what i'm writing about this for the bulwark later this week but it's like i donald trump had a big base of people that thought he was a moderate last time like that might seem crazy to listeners of this you know but they agree with him on immigration so they weren't turned off by his radical immigration rhetoric they generally agree with him on trade or don't really have an opinion on that just they just don't like foreigners 27:13 But they thought he was a New York, you know, he probably paid for a few abortions, doesn't really care about this Bible-thumping stuff that a lot of these Republicans like. 27:22 He had a secular base of, you know, either blue-collar former union guys or, you know, kind of moderate Republican types that went with him because they thought he was a business guy. 27:35 And I would hang him with us. 27:38 Like, really? 27:39 Really? 27:39 I thought that I was getting a deal maker and here we are in the middle of this virus, 200,000 people dead. 27:45 They can't pass a COVID relief bill. 27:48 I have financial concerns. 27:51 And meanwhile, he's going to ram through the end of Roe v. Wade and the end of Obamacare. 27:56 Fuck this guy. 27:57 That is not a winner for him in Pennsylvania and Michigan. 28:03 It just is. 28:04 And so I would turn him into Ted Cruz. 28:08 Ted Cruz is much easier to run against than Donald Trump. 28:11 Sarah, what do you think? 28:12 Sarah Longwell Yeah. 28:13 So, I mean, I actually think that part of what Tim's saying there is really right, which is, you know, college-educated female voters in the suburbs, like, they don't like the idea of a repeal of Roe v. Wade. 28:25 They're not excited about that. 28:26 And especially, you know, Obamacare took it a while, but, like, it is now broadly popular. 28:32 The ACA is broadly popular. 28:34 And they're going to hear the ACA case on, like, November 7th or something. 28:38 Like, it is, like... And so I think that running against... 28:41 Not the nominee personally. 28:42 I think these attacks on 28:44 Amy Coney Barrett's religion. 28:45 That is crazy. 28:47 Talking about court packing is crazy. 28:49 Talking about immediately into the filibuster, like that's not good rhetoric because it reminds people like, oh, we don't necessarily want to give these people power. 28:56 What they should focus on are things like they could repeal the ACA in the Supreme Court by having this big lopsided conservative Supreme Court. 29:07 And that gives them the best issue, the absolute best issue for Democrats is health care. 29:13 It just it just is enduringly. 29:15 And I think that they can it gives them an opportunity to run on health care and it gives them an opportunity. 29:19 So one of the big macro political problems, I think, for for for Democrats and why this can potentially help Trump is the biggest thing is that a Supreme Court fight, it knocks covid out of the news. 29:29 And what you want is this to be a referendum on Donald Trump. 29:32 You want it to be about his poor handling of COVID. 29:35 But if you run on health care, you have the opportunity to turn the conversation back to COVID by saying you're going to start stripping people of health care right at the same time that all of these people. 29:44 COVID will now be a preexisting condition. 29:46 You know, so I just think that's a winner for them, that there's a way that they can turn that into a win. 29:50 But in some ways. 29:53 You know, I'm not sure that there's a way around this exactly, that you almost have to choose between the election and the court seat if you're Dems. 30:01 And they should choose the election. 30:05 JVL Yeah, I think that's right. 30:06 All right, Sarah, would you like to talk a little bit about your new second best friend, Olivia? 30:12 Yeah. 30:12 Sarah Longwell So speaking of COVID, you know, one of the things that... Another great transition, by the way. 30:20 Tim Miller I just have to compliment you on that. 30:21 Sarah Longwell Thank you. 30:22 Thank you. 30:23 So my buddy Tim and I here, one of the things we've been doing over at Republican Voters Against Trump is... 30:28 is we have been helping to sort of sherpa out some of these former Trump officials who want to tell everybody what they saw. 30:39 And the most recent person to come out actually has been, has one of the most devastating accounts because she was the lead staffer on the COVID-19 task force for Mike Pence. 30:49 So she was detailed from DHS over to the White House, worked directly with Mike Pence, Fauci, Birx, everybody on the task force. 30:58 And her story, which she released in a testimonial on Thursday was, 31:05 we were doing this incredibly important work. 31:07 We were trying to save lives. 31:09 And at every turn, the president of the United States undermined our efforts and cost people lives. 31:14 It was a devastating account. 31:15 And it's so frightening to the White House that yesterday, after she sat down for a one-on-one with Andrea Mitchell, it was aired on the Today Show, it was aired on the Nightly News last night, it was aired all day yesterday. 31:29 And it spooked the White House so much that they sent General Kellogg out 31:33 who worked with Olivia closely, to say that he had fired her and escorted her from the White House. 31:39 Now, Tim and I know from talking to Olivia that this is just false, that it is just completely false. 31:45 And so, Tim, I want to ask you for your political assessment of why the White House decided to make this a much bigger issue for themselves and elevate this by having... 32:01 Kellogg go to the podium during the press conference and beat her up and throw oxygen on this very bad story for them. 32:08 What's that about? 32:09 Tim Miller I think it's pathological, not strategic. 32:12 I think that Trump just cannot take it when people are saying mean things about him. 32:19 uh and must attack him it's like it's a first principle for him it has nothing to do with trying to shape the news cycle ahead of the election or thinking about the last 42 days plan i think it's the same reason why he's giving a speech last night and he's like randomly doing racist attacks on not randomly but because this is his want but is doing racist attacks on ilan omar he just 32:42 Like he just doesn't like it when people attack him. 32:45 If they're women or women of color, he really doesn't like it. 32:49 And he just can't help himself. 32:52 And so I think my assessment is instructed Kellogg 32:57 is Kellogg and Olivia had a good relationship, according to Olivia. 33:01 And you can see it. 33:02 She sent a tweet out last night of her Instagram post after she left, which was in some ways effusive about Kellogg in a way that I was like, really? 33:14 But, you know, so it's to me clear based on that, that Kellogg felt like he had to do this to please the boss audience of one. 33:23 And these guys just don't give a shit. 33:26 And so they will tell these obviously gross lies and smear her and laugh about it behind the scenes because that's just their MO. 33:35 And I think it has nothing to do with the election at all and everything to do with Donald Trump's sense for how he got where he is. 33:44 And that's that. 33:47 And I think that it's, I mean, it's really... 33:50 I know that it's hard to get outraged about things these days, but it's despicable. 33:56 It's just despicable what they did. 33:58 She was somebody that was in there working her ass off for hours on end to try to help organize a somewhat... 34:07 you know, competent response to this virus. 34:10 And actually, I think has, you know, fond, fonder views than many of us do about Deborah Birx and Mike Pence and like the other people who were involved in this and has said nothing but nice things about them. 34:22 And it's like, look, this, you know, the president, as everybody can see with their own eyes, and this is on the Woodward tapes, it wasn't, 34:28 You know, it's only news because everybody else is gaslighting us. 34:33 That's the only reason that it's news is because she's saying the thing that we can all see with our own eyes. 34:38 And yet, you know, they just they can't tolerate it. 34:43 So they have to smear. 34:45 They have to lie about her. 34:46 And, you know, it's a really it's really maddening. 34:51 Sarah Longwell Can I just can I just offer the one other plausible reason why they're doing this and why they're going so hard at her, despite the fact that it makes the story even bigger than it was? 35:02 I think that, you know, if I had to sort of pinpoint what I think is so unique about this administration and what's going on in the country is how much the sort of aura around Trump is to create fear. 35:15 Now, Olivia is the third and the most high profile of the three, even though, you know, Miles and Elizabeth are a reasonably high profile person who we have- Miles has a CNN contract, so, you know. 35:26 Yeah, right. 35:27 But but so she's the third person that's come out. 35:29 I think that what they're trying to do is they are trying to signal to other staffers who might come out and tell this story now that they see there's actually this this sort of more movement towards defection, that what they want to do is intimidate them, that this is all meant to say we are not going to make this easy for you. 35:45 If you come out, we will lie about you. 35:47 We will fight back. 35:48 We'll fight back from the podium. 35:49 We will do it in the national press and we will say whatever we have to to try to smear you. 35:53 So I think they're trying to keep more people from coming out. 35:55 That's what I think the play is. 35:57 Tim Miller Can I... That's probably right. 36:01 Can I... 36:01 In addition to pathology. 36:03 JVL Sorry, JVL. 36:04 Bring us to a darker place. 36:06 Great. 36:06 Yeah. 36:07 So lying is part of politics and everybody understands that. 36:11 And all politicians and all people caught up in the political process lie. 36:15 Yeah. 36:16 And we're OK with that, sort of. 36:17 I mean, we wish it were like that, but we understand that it's part of it. 36:21 So long as the lies are confined to things which are basically subjective judgments, right? 36:29 My plan for health care reform is better than this other guy's health care reform. 36:35 This score on this bill says that it will generate $72 trillion worth of revenue over the next 20 years, which might be a crazy prediction, but it is just a prediction after all. 36:47 You could say that Senator X is a danger to America because she is secretly in favor of Antifa, right? 36:57 All of these things are generally subjective, right? 37:01 I mean, to one degree or another. 37:05 once you get to a point where people are saying, well, 37:09 lying about factually discreet events, things like I fired her and had her escorted out of the building. 37:19 Now that may be something that happens in very extreme cases within politics, but normally it's done by somebody who is a communications professional or is a behind the scenes leaker. 37:28 And at least they're not attaching their name to it. 37:30 They're doing it as an unnamed source close to somebody so that, you know, there can be a little bit of, uh, 37:38 a little bit of deniability or a little bit of doubt on it. 37:41 Or if, again, it's just a press spokesman, somebody doing it from the podium where we all understand that, well, that is just a spokesman. 37:47 The idea that you can have a uniformed member of the United States military being trotted out 37:53 To violate the military code of justice, right? 37:56 I mean, you cannot, lying is a thing. 37:58 You could get court-martialed for lying in the military. 38:01 You're not allowed to do this. 38:03 To serve el presidente, again, this is just something that happens in a country where things are falling apart. 38:12 Tim Miller And he did, by the way, just JBL, thank you for taking us to a darker place because you're exactly right. 38:17 He didn't just say had her escorted out. 38:19 He said I escorted her out. 38:21 So and this is to your point, like he lied. 38:23 He told this absurd lie easily disproven about an event where he was like this tough guy, strong man general. 38:32 Like, you know, you know, like dragging out this civil servant. 38:38 She's not a political appointee, by the way. 38:40 She's a she's a civil servant. 38:41 So there would have to be myriad and myriad of paperwork and that he drug her out of the building and threw out her ass and was like, you're fired like it's the apprentice. 38:50 I mean, he created a whole fantasy scenario to demonstrate this fake strength. 38:56 JVL And again, this isn't the press spokesman and it isn't somebody close to the situation leaking this version of events on background to The Washington Times or something. 39:06 It is a guy who is bound by an actual legal code. 39:11 To not tell lies. 39:14 And he's doing it at the behest of the president of the fucking United States. 39:19 Like what? 39:19 This is. 39:21 I just don't know how you like denazify this country after this is all done. 39:25 You know, like what is, what does denazification look like with, with these people? 39:29 Because this guy should be stripped of his pension and thrown out of the military for this. 39:33 Sarah Longwell Yeah. 39:33 And I just like to add is like a couple of wrinkle details here that, you know, so she went, she was on a one year detail from DHS, which they extended to two years, which by the way, not something you do for an employee who was not up to the task. 39:46 She was asked to stay. 39:49 And then the other thing you do, if you don't, if you're frog marching somebody out of the White House, you don't give them a token of remembrance in the form of one of these 39:56 you know coins that that the generals give to you know esteemed people uh that's like just not how it works and she's got like photographic evidence of this like that she posted on the day that she like went and got her stuff because she had already you know she'd resigned but then like you know you don't have your badge so you go back and somebody is with you and so she talks to him she like says in the instagram post like had a great heart to heart with with kellogg like so they clearly had this like 40:22 Nice conversation, which she remembers very clearly and well. 40:25 So he is he is the extent to which people will. 40:29 So, A, she's got receipts. 40:31 B, all the evidence is to the contrary in terms of her performance. 40:35 And and C, the extent to which people are willing to trade their own credibility in service to this person is just I've never seen anything like it. 40:47 Tim Miller And D, she's a human. 40:49 You know, I mean, like, this is the other thing. 40:51 Like, this was a really hard thing for her to do. 40:54 I know that we've, like, stripped everybody's humanity from our politics since everybody in this White House is a fucking sociopath. 41:01 But, like, her and General Kellogg know each other, like, decently well. 41:05 I mean, she said that she had a sit down and had a heart to heart with him. 41:08 And, you know, she... 41:11 is a person that if you if you have gotten to know her at all is obviously very considered and emotional and it's like trying to to make the best judgment and she makes a tough judgment that by the way every asshole in the white house knows is true it's not like she was revealing some deep secret of the security state she was revealing the obvious fact that donald trump doesn't give a shit about anybody besides himself something every single person in that white house knows to be true 41:38 And so, you know, to drag her through the mud from behind the White House podium in a in a uniform, it's just it's despicable. 41:47 She's a human like this is not this was not an easy thing for for her to do. 41:52 And, you know, it's not like this is a John Bolton situation where she's out there trying to sell a book or an Anthony Scaramucci situation where she just likes being on TV like they know her. 42:02 She's just she's just a regular person that was trying to do her best. 42:05 Sarah Longwell nothing to gain zero to gain. 42:07 No, no reason to say anything other than the truth. 42:10 Tim Miller And, and so, you know, I mean, I, I just, it's, it's anyway, that's it. 42:16 That's it. 42:17 Well, all right. 42:19 JVL That was a great show. 42:20 I'm really happy we did that. 42:22 Thank you for bringing us down to the darker place. 42:25 We started out with GI Joe. 42:26 I think it's otherwise. 42:27 I don't know. 42:28 All right, guys. 42:29 Good show. 42:30 We'll do this again next week. 42:32 Tim Miller Peace. 42:32 Go Nuggets.