00:11 JVL Hello, everyone. 00:12 Welcome to The Next Level. 00:14 I'm JVL here with my best friend, Sarah Longwell, and fresh off the set from Charlie's Angels, Farrah Fawcett, sitting in for a 10 minutes. 00:22 Amanda Carpenter Thank you all. 00:22 Thank you all. 00:23 I took a shower. 00:23 I'm getting hay. 00:25 I had to blow dry my hair so it's a little bigger than normal. 00:28 My apologies. 00:29 Sarah thinks I'm too dressed up. 00:31 I tried on the Sarah is always white t-shirt and now I'm regretting it. 00:35 Sarah Longwell Not even too dressed up. 00:36 I just like, I'm here in the penitentiary wing of this house with no lighting. 00:42 And I would just like to say that the way Amanda is comporting herself at the moment is a hate crime against me. 00:47 JVL All right. 00:48 I want to start out by sharing a video. 00:50 Amanda Carpenter That's a weird way of giving a compliment. 00:54 Sarah Longwell Backhanding compliments are the only kind I give. 00:57 JVL by sharing a video which just dropped mere, mere moments before we all got together to sit down on this show. 01:06 Here is the video embedded in a tweet from one John Fetterman, senatorial candidate from Pennsylvania. 01:17 Nicole Snooki Hey Maymat, this is Nicole Snooki, and I'm from Jersey Shore. 01:22 I don't know if you've seen of it before, but I'm a hot mess on a reality show basically, and I enjoy life. 01:29 But I heard that you moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to look for a new job. 01:34 And personally, I don't know why anyone would want to leave Jersey, because it's like the best place ever. 01:40 And we're all hot messes. 01:42 But I want to say best of luck to you. 01:44 I know you're away from home and you're in a new place. 01:47 But Jersey will not forget you. 01:49 I just want to let you know I will not forget you. 01:51 And don't worry because you'll be back home in Jersey soon. 01:55 This is only temporary. 01:56 So good luck. 01:58 You got this. 01:59 And Jersey loves you. 02:03 Sarah Longwell A plus trolling. 02:06 JVL About a week ago, somebody wrote a piece, the headline of which was, could John Fetterman shitpost his way into the United States Senate? 02:15 And the Fetterman campaign retweeted this piece with the quote tweet of, we certainly hope so. 02:22 I don't know. 02:25 You're the new guy from New Jersey. 02:27 Amanda Carpenter What do you think of Snooki as a potential surrogate for Senator, soon to be president, John Fetterman? 02:33 Do you approve? 02:34 JVL 100%. 02:35 100%. 02:35 I hope this is the first of a series and we get the situation next week and then JWoww the week after that. 02:43 Amanda Carpenter Is the sit still in jail? 02:46 JVL Hmm? 02:47 Well, you know, I'm sure one of his uncles could take care of that. 02:52 Amanda Carpenter And he hung out with Michael Cohen and they talked. 02:54 And I think they probably did a podcast together later or something. 02:57 I'm not making this up. 03:00 JVL Anyway, it's great. 03:01 All right. 03:01 So we had some actual real big news drop today. 03:04 Olivia Nuzzi? 03:06 Nuzzi? 03:06 Nuzzi? 03:07 I've never said her name out loud before. 03:10 Anyway, the very talented Olivia, whose last name begins with N, who writes for New York Magazine, dropped a piece today in which she interviewed up in Bedminster, also in Jersey, former president of these United States, Donald J. Trump. 03:24 And he started out by saying, you know, I'm going to make a decision. 03:28 And she said, you 03:29 you're going to make a decision?" 03:31 He says, well, I've already made a decision. 03:33 He says, really, you've made a decision? 03:36 Yeah, I've made a decision. 03:39 The only question is whether I go before or after. 03:41 She says, before or after? 03:43 The midterms? 03:44 He goes, the midterms. 03:46 The former president has basically now pre-announced his announcement that he's going to, at some point soon, announce either within the next 12 weeks or shortly after the next 12 weeks. 03:58 Third campaign through the presidency. 04:03 Thoughts, Amanda Carpenter? 04:05 Amanda Carpenter Yeah, well, I think it's progress that he's admitting he actually isn't president right now, so that's a good thing. 04:11 But of course, the whole idea, I don't know why people think that he is not going to run for president. 04:17 How could he not? 04:18 He already has most of the Republican leadership saying, yeah, they would be completely fine if he was a Republican nominee in 2024. 04:25 You have Lindsey Graham, 04:27 I'm going on Fox News every night just waiting for the next iteration of the Trump presidency. 04:31 You have people all over America with Trump is still our president, Trump 2024 flags. 04:38 So with an asset already in place like that, how do you not run? 04:44 JVL Sarah? 04:45 I don't know about you. 04:47 My own view is that the January 6th committee hearings so far have been much more powerful than I expected and have painted an even more serious picture of Trump's legal, not just moral, but potential legal culpability for what happened at the insurrection. 05:07 In a weird way, does that make him more likely to run? 05:10 Because his ultimate get out of jail free card is that he's a declared major party candidate for president, which makes it almost impossible for DOJ to try to indict him. 05:22 No? 05:23 Sarah Longwell Yeah. 05:23 And you've made this case persuasively in your news newsletters. 05:26 You write those. 05:27 I read them sometimes. 05:28 Can I just I want to say a different thing just real quick. 05:31 And it is it is it is drawing a distinction between the shit posting like Trump is the ultimate shit posting president. 05:39 And Fetterman, it's like Fetterman is doing this thing and it's all negative polarization, right? 05:45 It is not. 05:46 Fetterman's like, his whole case is just, I'm one of you. 05:49 Look at me. 05:50 I am man of Pennsylvania. 05:52 This is dope of New Jersey. 05:55 And the shitposting, he's leaning into it, right? 05:58 And people sort of delight in it. 06:00 Democrats are delighting in it because they're like... 06:02 Yeah. 06:03 Like I want somebody who's just enormous and fun and just going to make fun of these guys and like own them all day long on their on their BS. 06:13 And I'm not actually that wild. 06:14 I'm like, it works actually in part because it's Dr. Oz, I think. 06:18 And like the whole thing is so stupid and so preposterous that you're like, why treat this? 06:25 What are they going to do? 06:26 Debate major policy issues? 06:28 Like, I don't, you know, but there, I am just, the January 6th committee, 06:34 And the attenuating legal ramifications like lives in a different universe where like stuff matters. 06:42 And like these guys and it's like Trump making an announcement about running for president again, kind of to a reporter, like not even, you know, with a like, it's just all so preposterous. 06:54 And it just exists in this universe where like, 06:58 One of Trump's superpowers is the ability to be incredibly evil and threatening while at the same time seeming like a clown that you don't take that seriously. 07:10 And it is just on display here again where we're all gonna roll our eyes at this like, 07:15 Will he won't he he's going to enthrall all of us, including the media with his will he won't he will he before the midterms? 07:22 I announced a major initiative this week and there's a great piece in The New York Times. 07:26 I'm happy about it, whatever. 07:27 But like the reporter really wanted to be like to write a section about like, but what if Trump gets in? 07:33 Because that's where everybody's going to be now for months. 07:36 And I think one pushback, I think you're right. 07:39 I think you made a persuasive case about why he would get in early. 07:42 In your newsletter, top of the list is that he's got legal peril he's facing. 07:48 But like he could also hold off just because it's fun to keep everyone guessing and talking about him and everyone will, including us. 07:58 JVL Fair enough. 07:58 All right. 07:59 So we're going to go to the main part of the real show. 08:02 So this is Thursday night, but it's also the next level. 08:05 Sort of. 08:06 Tim is probably three hurricanes deep pre-gaming his book event down in New Orleans right now. 08:16 But we're live. 08:17 We have the chat, which is great to see. 08:19 We have Q&A stuff. 08:21 Please be nice to each other in the chat, as always, or I will pull the show over and put some questions into the Q&A for us if you haven't. 08:28 And we'll get to them towards the end. 08:30 We'll try to do the last 10 or 15 minutes just 08:32 Hidden fun goes for you guys. 08:35 All right. 08:36 So let's start with the committee hearing from this week. 08:39 It was really a two part hearing. 08:40 The first part was the Trump directed at all. 08:43 The second part was the look at the Oath Keepers, which was its own brand of weird. 08:50 The most important thing I thought from part the first was what you wrote for us, Amanda, which is that Trump planned it. 08:59 and that we now have a bunch of evidence, the speech draft, the two conversations with Bannon, Ali Alexander saying that they're not supposed to say that they're gonna go to the Capitol. 09:10 So Amanda, what does this change in how we understand what happened? 09:20 Amanda Carpenter The most serious thing that the committee has talked about is not the pressure on DOJ and the false elections. 09:27 All that is very important. 09:28 But it was building up to this moment to show that Trump was really in charge of it all. 09:34 When Liz Cheney talks about the seven 09:38 part effort that he launched. 09:40 These were things that built on top of each other that escalated in the attack on the Capitol. 09:46 And there was always this talking point from the right that this was just a protest that spun out of control. 09:52 And that hearing proved absolutely, without a doubt, that wasn't a spontaneous event. 09:59 From the rally that was organized, to his speech, to his words, 10:03 that day was all deliberately planned. 10:07 And so that's why I really wanted to draw attention to those text messages and emails from the rally organizers where they knew they were in on this plan. 10:15 They called it. 10:16 They said Trump is going to unexpectedly call on us to march to the Capitol. 10:22 But we got to keep it a secret because we'll get in trouble with park police and everyone else. 10:26 So everyone was in on the game. 10:28 But, you know, it's really... 10:31 You that is important, but you really have to look at what the committee, the body of evidence that is building, because I don't think people can keep track of like the seven part conspiracy. 10:42 But the idea is he wasn't poorly advised. 10:45 He was always looking for people who would do his bidding. 10:48 Right. 10:48 It started with the lies that he told when he claimed victory on election night. 10:53 You know, that didn't work. 10:54 So they went to the courts. 10:56 That didn't work. 10:56 And then so he leaned on the Department of Justice. 10:59 That didn't work. 11:00 And so they came up with this fraudulent elector scheme. 11:03 Oh, and then they had to get members of Congress to get in on it. 11:06 Oh, you know, we didn't really know if that was going to work to pressure Pence. 11:09 And so we called the mob. 11:10 Like none of this happens without Trump, because at every step along the way, he and only he is the one calling the shots. 11:20 JVL Sarah, what were some of your big takeaways from the first part of the hearing? 11:25 Sarah Longwell I mean, the biggest one is what Amanda said. 11:26 They were planning it. 11:27 Actually, I want to ask Amanda this, but then I want to say another thing. 11:30 One of the things I'm interested in is they were able to show us 11:35 that at some point they had all been put on standby, right? 11:38 They had been told, but like we don't have the communication yet where obviously there was like, they all got this information from somewhere. 11:47 And so like the big outstanding question to me is like, is that Meadows? 11:50 Is that Trump himself? 11:52 Is Trump talking to Roger Stone? 11:53 Like who is the person 11:55 who's telling Ali Alexander, here's what Trump's gonna do. 11:58 Who's the person who reads the text that Trump was gonna send and says, don't do that. 12:03 That puts you in legal peril. 12:05 Just say it on the down low and call for it spontaneously. 12:08 Like what the January six hearings are doing is they are giving us real information, but they're also opening up to me a series of questions about 12:17 Clearly it was at Trump's behest, like who was organizing all this? 12:20 Where were the back channels coming from? 12:22 And so it just reminds you actually of how much there is left to know. 12:26 But I will say the thing that caught me the most from the hearings was actually the text messages between Brad Parscale and Katrina Pearson. 12:36 And the reason that they're so amazing, right? 12:39 The reason they're so amazing is here's Brad Parscale going, 12:44 he's starting a civil war. 12:46 Like his advisors are watching this going, holy shit. 12:49 Like, cause they think, they think in that moment, this is it for all of us. 12:53 We're all going down for this. 12:55 And he, Brad Parscale, that's why he's saying about Trump, Trump's causing this civil war on purpose. 13:00 What's he doing? 13:01 He just got somebody killed with his rhetoric, with his rhetoric. 13:05 They specifically do the incitement. 13:07 He's inciting this. 13:08 And Katrina Pearson in a, like, just what a funny response to be like, 13:13 You thought it was the right thing to do at the time, which is by the way, like not how morality works. 13:18 Like you are not off the wall. 13:19 Because like at the time you were like, I think this is okay at the time. 13:23 And so therefore like you're not culpable. 13:26 And Brad Porskill is like saying he regrets helping him. 13:29 What is amazing about this is that Brett Parscale, to this day, working for Trump, working for Trump. 13:37 If somebody said to me, like, if I was like, you know what? 13:40 I think the person I'm working for has murdered people. 13:43 I think his irresponsible rhetoric is starting a civil war and people are dead because of it. 13:48 I would then not be like, I should probably keep working for him. 13:53 Like, it is just... 13:56 Amanda Carpenter That was an amazing part to me. 13:58 I think Brad Pascal is what you would call a Fifth Avenue Republican. 14:02 But just to piggyback on top of this, yes, it's amazing, but it's also amazing because Brad Pascal is an expert in how the Trump base works, right? 14:11 He was the digital guy. 14:12 He knows exactly exactly 14:14 the effect that Trump's words have on his followers. 14:17 He wasn't just like a bystander in a Trump loyalist who said, oh my God, I think he did it. 14:22 He knows the effect like in terms of engagement and metrics and payable scalable numbers that Trump's words have on that very audience. 14:33 And so I think that's just another element to consider. 14:36 JVL Yeah, one of the things that struck me was in the second part of the hearing when they brought in Jason Van Tottenhoove, the former Oath Keeper guy, is when he talked about when he quit the group and it was, you know, he said, I just looked up and realized that these are a bunch of evil people doing evil things that we're going to get people killed. 14:55 And so he quit, right? 14:57 Which is the next natural step. 14:59 When you realize, oh, I'm in league with evil people who are doing evil things, the next step is, and so I will walk out the door. 15:06 And this happens in very, very few people in Trump world. 15:10 I mean, it's one thing to never actually get to the, oh, these people must be evil, to create your rationalizations or... 15:21 But Brad got there. 15:23 And by the way, he's not the first guy I would have picked if we had a bingo card for, you know, winding up with a pretty decent sense of morality on this stuff. 15:32 It was really something. 15:34 Sarah Longwell He does it. 15:34 He's got the worst kind. 15:36 The worst kind of morality is the kind where you know it's wrong and then are happy to do it anyway. 15:41 Like the dummy, like Katrina Pearson, who's like, morality is just this thing that happens sometimes. 15:46 You remember? 15:47 Like she is less culpable because she has no idea what's happening on the planet Earth. 15:52 Like she has no... 15:53 Amanda Carpenter Although she was the one to call out the crazies that were coming to the rally. 15:56 Like she was like, I'm worried this is getting out of hand. 15:58 There's crazies here. 16:00 Sarah Longwell Imagine Katrina Pearson identifying you as crazy. 16:03 What must that be like? 16:06 JVL All right. 16:07 So listen, the truth is I could do a full hour on the December 18 meeting. 16:14 Do I have that date right? 16:17 Where Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn and Rudy Giuliani have gotten into the Oval Office and Cipollone, who I think should be called Cipollone because, you know, he's an I-type. 16:30 Nicole Snooki Cipollone. 16:32 JVL Gabigool, Gabigool, the White House counsel. 16:36 Hey, he he gets wind that this is going down and he and Hirschman, you know, make a beeline to to get into the Oval Office. 16:46 Now, the first part of this is imagining that the president of the United States is so irresponsible. 16:57 that it could be dangerous to have him in a room with people who he has chosen to be in a room with. 17:04 This must be the first time in the history of the Republic that's ever happened. 17:07 No? 17:09 Right. 17:10 Oh, and the Overstock CEO guy. 17:11 Yes, thank you. 17:13 And then the account of this meeting, which sounds like a combination of the death of Stalin mixed with the office and the fact that it is all told to us in the confessional style. 17:26 And I don't know what your favorite parts were. 17:29 Maybe it was the part where Hirschman challenges Rudy Giuliani to a fight. 17:35 Sarah Longwell No, my favorite part was when Sidney Powell was chugging a diet Dr. Pepper talking about how Cipollone set a land speed record to get to the office because she knows that they didn't want Trump alone with her. 17:47 And is anybody more psychotic than her? 17:50 I mean, what a lunatic. 17:54 Amanda Carpenter I'm just going to say the constant animal print that she wears was always a tell. 17:59 It's a tell. 18:01 JVL I don't know if you guys remember, but in the early days of this, the serious people of Conservatism Bank, who just wanted to see the president exhaust all his legal challenges, said that Sidney Powell was a very serious person and a very accomplished lawyer. 18:14 And, you know, I just assumed that she will... 18:19 present some evidence to support her claims. 18:21 They didn't want to say what everybody could have said, which is this is a conservative bank ambulance chaser who defended a bunch of Enron executives and then lost the Ted Stevenson thing when she defended him and he went to jail. 18:36 She's just always chasing some sort of CPAC-like. 18:39 Anyway, that's the side of the point. 18:42 Amanda Carpenter But like about this meeting, it was unhinged. 18:45 But I'm also, you know, always thinking about like how all these events fall on the timeline because we didn't really know how crazy that one was. 18:52 The White House was such a chaotic mess from December till January 3rd. 18:58 Because remember, Bill Barr talked about his meeting there with Trump was banging the table. 19:02 He had the crazy Kraken meeting on the 18th. 19:04 You had, what was it, all the members of Congress marching in there, Marjorie Taylor Greene with the false electors, I think, on the 23rd. 19:11 And then there was that other crazy meeting with all the Department of Justice guys on January 2nd or 3rd, where they were just had this hours long screaming standoff threatening to resign if Trump made Jeffrey Clark attorney general. 19:26 So this wasn't the first crazy thing. 19:29 And then, you know, the next day he's throwing ketchup plates on the wall. 19:32 I mean, what 19:33 What an unhinged madhouse this was. 19:36 And none of them talked. 19:37 None of them wanted to talk about it through impeachment. 19:40 Pat Cipollone was defending Trump at the last impeachment. 19:43 Go back and look at those tapes where he's talking about how it's so bad to impeach a former president. 19:50 And now he's turning around talking about a check for JVL, giving Mike Pence the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 19:58 What? 19:59 Who is this guy? 20:01 JVL So, Sarah, 20:04 How, if you are Cipollone or Hirschman who present as like reasonably normal people, right? 20:14 They kind of seem like adults in the room, sort of, by the standards of Conservatism Inc. How do you take meetings like that? 20:26 and think that everything is okay. 20:28 Like, I don't understand that because my own personal instinct would be to wanna throw myself into the arms of Cthulhu. 20:38 Sarah Longwell I don't get that reference, but I want to just there's a point in they show a clip of Cipollone when he's talking like the film and they ask him something like, Amanda, you might have this glocked better than I do, but like they ask him something like, what did you think when the president said he was going to send alternate electors? 21:00 And Cipollone is like almost derisive in the way he responds where he's like, what do you mean? 21:06 What did I think? 21:07 Like, I thought it was horrible for democracy and a totally unethical front. 21:13 And he like attacks them as like, how dare they ask him? 21:17 Why? 21:18 And everyone's like, I'm sorry, but aren't you the guy who refused to talk to us until we subpoenaed you, who has defended Donald Trump this whole time? 21:28 And like, clearly the story that they're telling themselves, because like the reason these things are bananas is because you do have people like Cipollone who are just standing there to Rudy Giuliani and 21:37 Like, I mean, like, you know, like Hirschman who, by the way, like Hirschman sort of fun in these because he's so outspoken, but he's clearly obviously the kind of person like that's the best you can do for adults in the room. 21:52 Like someone who's going to get in a shoving match over it. 21:54 Like, 21:55 They are, so like, but it's Cipollone that I find the most contemptible in this. 22:02 And you know what? 22:02 I'll give Mike Pence a Medal of Freedom. 22:04 Mike Pence can have a Medal of Freedom the second he goes and sits in front of this committee and testifies, because you are not defending democracy if you won't tell the story of what happened. 22:13 A lot of the, well, some of the big looming questions, again, going back to a piece of information we have that simply opens doors to more questions. 22:20 One is why wouldn't Pence get in the car with the Secret Service? 22:24 So there's a story out today that suggested that the Secret Service has been deleting their text messages and their communications at the time because the implication was that they were going to take Mike Pence somewhere for his safety to keep him from certifying the election. 22:39 And that that's why Mike Pence didn't want to get in the car. 22:42 Well, I know somebody who knows what Mike Pence's state of mind was and why he wouldn't get in the car. 22:47 And that guy's name is Mike Pence. 22:48 And if he was a patriot who deserved the presidential medal of freedom, he would testify and tell us whether or not that's what was on his mind. 22:54 Mike Pence and Patrick Baloney. 22:57 I'm actually too mad. 22:58 I'm like too mad to be on this live stream. 23:00 Amanda Carpenter But they're the same kind of person. 23:02 They both think that they are the responsible institutionalist. 23:06 Sarah Longwell It's in the book. 23:06 Amanda Carpenter Who held the line. 23:07 It's in Tim's book. 23:08 Respected and applauded. 23:10 And honestly, how dare you even question my integrity? 23:13 Because darn it, I was the responsible person in the room. 23:16 Like, no, no, no. 23:17 There was almost a... 23:18 Flipping of the election, a coup, people were hurt, police officers were assaulted. 23:22 You owe us a little more than that. 23:24 So yes, Pat Cipollone, you are going to come testify to the committee. 23:28 And thank God, Liz Cheney was the one who made his name public. 23:32 I had forgotten about him from the last impeachment until she started really bringing up and saying he was the White House lawyer. 23:40 We really... 23:40 We really need to hear from him. 23:42 We think that he did good things and we expect him to come. 23:45 I mean, she leveraged that public pressure to say, you need to come do this. 23:49 And he did. 23:49 He did. 23:50 This is why you have to make these people famous. 23:54 JVL And yet Donald Trump currently leads Joe Biden in perspective, head to head, you know, head to head matchups like. 24:00 Joe Biden's winning. 24:01 Sarah Longwell Joe Biden's beating Trump. 24:02 JVL Joe Biden's beating Trump. 24:03 I understand. 24:03 But but how is it possible that 42 percent of America can look at all of this and just say, yeah, 24:10 Let's run it back. 24:13 You know, I'd try another, boom, because gas is $4.50 account. 24:17 Yeah. 24:17 Amanda Carpenter Polls are meant to be changed. 24:20 JVL I will say my favorite part of the entire meeting is when Sidney Powell finds that she has been appointed special counsel and she has been given security clearances. 24:32 So she has been, because evidently the law emanates from the mouth of the president of the United States. 24:38 That's how it all works. 24:39 Amanda Carpenter Well, she's the only one that would follow the leads from Mark Meadows about the Italian satellites. 24:44 No one else would do it at Justice. 24:46 So Sidney Powell said, you know what? 24:48 I will follow up on the Italian satellite YouTube links that Mark Meadows had dutifully sent to all these other people in the Justice Department. 24:55 She alone will do it. 24:56 And she will tee that up to the next Attorney General, Jeffrey Clark. 25:00 I mean, imagine what kind of duo that would have been. 25:02 JVL So Cipollone is then asked, when she keeps calling into the White House, I think it was Cheney who asked him, she said, was your sense that Ms. Powell thought that she was a special counsel or was seeking to have the special counsel paperwork finalized and formalized? 25:23 Cipollone goes, both. 25:28 This is amazing. 25:29 Okay. 25:29 We really could do the entire thing on this, but we probably won't. 25:32 Sarah Longwell Wait, can I say, I'm sorry. 25:33 I have like one other like smidge thing that I want to say. 25:35 One of the other things that was interesting to me now that we know Cassidy Hutchinson and we've seen Cassidy Hutchinson in her new role as truth teller is her texts from that time in which she thinks this is both off the rails bananas, but also like kind of funny. 25:49 And it goes back to my other point because I just think the psychology of this is so important. 25:56 And like, 25:56 And this is where the Jan 6th committee is like in a different universe. 26:00 Like in her universe, in that White House, where like clearly insane things happened all the time. 26:04 Plates are thrown. 26:05 People are yelled at. 26:06 Coups are plotted. 26:07 You know, whatever. 26:08 She's like, like, look at all these crazy people that are running around. 26:12 Like they're yelling in there. 26:14 Amanda Carpenter She said the alcohol is flowing. 26:16 That's her response. 26:17 To start popping bottles and start texting secret service guy to laugh about it. 26:21 Sarah Longwell That's right. 26:21 Like they're joking about it. 26:23 JVL She thinks she's in an episode of Veep. 26:25 Sarah Longwell Yeah, right? 26:27 Because she's 25 years old and like, I guess doesn't quite realize this is how you're supposed to behave. 26:32 So then what happens? 26:34 Then the January 6th committee brings her in. 26:36 Like you're a kid in sixth grade who didn't realize that like taping somebody's butt together, like I'm just thinking, you do this like terrible thing, right? 26:45 You do this terrible thing that you think is funny. 26:47 And then like some adult is like, let me tell you what you did to that kid. 26:51 Like, let me tell you how horrible it is. 26:53 Let me tell you what he had to do. 26:55 And like what and like you are then filled with shame and regret. 26:58 And like suddenly it dawns on you how serious the thing is that you've done. 27:02 And that's the Cassidy Hutchinson we're seeing now. 27:05 Right. 27:05 But because she was in that other environment where like that stuff was OK, that's how she was behaving. 27:10 And it's just just to me is so striking. 27:12 Amanda Carpenter But this has always been the phenomenon with the Trump campaign. 27:16 era is that people think it's funny and they can go along with it out of tribal loyalty, partisan, blah, blah, blah. 27:23 It's fun until the responsibility lands squarely on them. 27:28 Right. 27:29 Cassidy was going to go along with all this until the lawyer started knocking on her door and she got hauled into the committees and she was being asked tough questions. 27:37 Had that not happened, she would probably be working for the Save America PAC, whatever iteration 2.0 of Trumpism that's coming our way. 27:47 Same thing with Rusty Bowers, who testified to the committee. 27:51 It wasn't until all this landed on him in Arizona and the people were protesting at his house 27:57 that he really wanted to speak out. 27:59 And even now, when he was questioned by a reporter, I saw Sam Benson with the Desiree News followed up with him and said, well, what do you mean, Rusty Bowers, when you said that you would probably still support Trump if he was the 2024 nominee? 28:10 And he kind of said that I was being sadly evasive. 28:15 He didn't even after all this, he didn't want to say I'll oppose Donald Trump. 28:20 But then he kind of backtracked and said, you know, kind of, of course, I wouldn't. 28:23 But I really don't want to go against the party on this. 28:27 But somehow he still thinks, even in his mind, I did the right thing when this was on my plate. 28:32 So it's OK if I go along with the party. 28:34 Same thing with Mike Pence. 28:35 Same thing with Pat Cipollone. 28:37 Same thing with Bill Barr. 28:38 You know, I will maybe do the right thing when it's on me, when I am forced to confront this question. 28:44 But if it's not on my plate, it's not my problem. 28:47 Sarah Longwell But this is where this is where the Jan 6th committee is so important. 28:50 And this is why I brought up to Cassidy Hutchinson thing. 28:52 And it's this idea of like, what does it mean to be adult in the room? 28:55 Because some people in the chat are pointing out like she's 24, 25. 28:57 And that is my point also, that when you are that age, you don't always know how things go. 29:02 Like she hasn't worked in a White House before. 29:04 And I assume she thinks it's bananas. 29:06 But like, 29:07 how corrupt and awful it is. 29:10 She doesn't quite have the barometer for that, which is why you have adults in the room, is why you have people, and that's why, is Cipollone or in Hirschman, are they the adults in the room? 29:19 Quasi, like quasi. 29:21 The January 6th committee are the adults in the room, where they're like, this is what's right and this is what's wrong. 29:26 And that is the thing that is happening right now is we are watching adults in the room methodically work through people to help them understand how serious this all was when they were all still kind of taking it like a joke. 29:36 Amanda Carpenter And you can see Cassidy respond to someone like Liz Cheney after the hearing, you know, when they're hugging each other. 29:41 Like you can see how people who need to have that kind of moral guidance will accept it if the right people are in charge. 29:50 But you have bad actors in charge and they'll just follow that lead. 29:54 JVL So this actually segues nicely into the second part of the committee hearing, where we had Jason Van Tottenhove, who, to my knowledge, may be the first person with a face tattoo to ever testify before Congress, and Stephen Ayers. 30:09 And Ayers? 30:11 I think strikes me as being exactly like what you're saying. 30:15 Just one of these people who just followed along with it. 30:18 And it wasn't until he gets arrested and loses his house and loses his job and has the full weight of Trump's lies come down on him that he's like, hold on, wait a minute. 30:28 This isn't fun anymore. 30:30 Right? 30:30 And I... 30:33 Jesus, I really struggled with that stuff. 30:37 I was I was reasonably impressed by by Van Tottenhoof or however you say Jason's name, because he he looked around, saw things and realized of his own like, wait a minute, this is wrong. 30:51 Like, I got to get out of this. 30:53 That's not the experience that Ayers had. 30:56 And Ayers was just sort of there. 30:58 And yet Ayers did give us, I think, one very critically important piece of testimony, which I think in all the analysis I've seen seems to have been overlooked, which was when he asked why he left, he said it was because we saw Trump's tweet telling us to go home. 31:14 And that he and all the people he was with, the minute that tweet came across their phones, they're like, oh, OK. 31:20 and that establishes, again, what Trump could have done earlier. 31:25 That's another part of this, I don't know if it will be part six or seven of the conspiracy, but is that he had a duty to call off this thing that he knew was going to turn into this thing, and he knew that calling it off would stop it, and he refused to do it. 31:44 That was pretty important. 31:45 What did you guys make of those two dudes? 31:50 Sarah Longwell I will just say this. 31:51 I have some regret that I will voice on this locked live stream, which is that I tweeted prior to the testimony. 31:57 I saw them sitting there and I said the first part had been so bananas that I was like, all this hearing is missing is somebody with a face tattoo. 32:06 And I regret that tweet. 32:10 And I regret it because then I listened to this guy talk and I was like, 32:14 shouldn't judge a person by their face tattoo because he was, somebody as JBL just pointed out, he arrived, he was articulate, he was thoughtful and seemed to understand that he had done the wrong thing and like got out of it in the moment. 32:30 And so I'm just gonna express that regret. 32:32 On the other side though, this has always been JBL, one of our central tensions, you and me, where I blame the people who tell these people the lies. 32:42 I have sat through focus group after focus group with people whose heads are being pumped with poison. 32:47 And it is not that I don't believe that they are responsible for their own actions. 32:50 I do. 32:51 I'm the people who went in the Capitol that day. 32:53 They should be held accountable. 32:54 And if they go to jail, they go to jail. 32:56 But the people who sent them there like a loaded weapon, who told them lies, who are credible people that they would look to and say, well, if they say it, it must be true. 33:06 None of them have been held accountable. 33:07 That is the challenge for society right now is like those people have agency. 33:11 And so you do not let them off the hook. 33:14 But that is not the same. 33:15 Like it is not fair for them to be the only ones held accountable. 33:19 JVL Yeah, look, I mean, I agree with this 100%. 33:22 And this is the problem with the foot soldiers always get thrown in jail for the war crimes, not the generals, right? 33:29 And the answer is I would like to be tougher on all of them, not 33:35 You know, not just the one, but it's really it was pretty striking, I thought. 33:40 And again, its own weird way. 33:42 It was it was a shift of gears. 33:44 I don't know. 33:44 Amanda, were you sympathetic to them? 33:46 Were you? 33:48 Amanda Carpenter No, no. 33:48 I mean, it was fine. 33:50 to be honest with you guys, I didn't find it super compelling. 33:54 It was important because, you know, the committee probably is not going to establish, you know, a very direct, bright connection from Trump commanding them to go and going. 34:04 But that is pretty close to cause and effect, as you can get. 34:08 And, you know, I always look at what happened in the committee, but also look at the pattern of Trump's behavior, which, you know, if this goes to a Justice Department sort of investigation, they are going to have to look at broader things than that. 34:19 And that, you know, Trump has been told that his rhetoric had violent effect many times before. 34:24 I mean, we've seen this in Charlottesville. 34:26 It wasn't the first time. 34:27 And so I'm glad the committee got these people to speak because there are oath keepers being charged with things like seditious conspiracy. 34:36 That part is a criminal investigation is not going away. 34:40 But obviously, the first half of the hearing was was much more compelling in terms of establishing 34:45 how deliberate Trump acted in sending the mob to the Capitol. 34:51 JVL Before we get off of this and then start taking questions, I gotta say, I even weirdly impressed with all of the committee members, but Raskin, I thought was just great on Tuesday. 35:05 Am I crazy? 35:07 Am I a sucker for just thinking that Raskin was fantastic? 35:12 Amanda Carpenter He's gotten better. 35:13 He's toned it back a little bit. 35:15 I feel like, cause I think in other ones, he laid it on a little bit too thick, but I liked him. 35:19 But the woman I really enjoyed learning more about was, um, gosh, I'm blinking the name. 35:24 Yeah. 35:25 Oh, yes. 35:25 Yeah. 35:26 Yeah. 35:27 The immigrant who's leading this hearing last hearing is going to lead the next one. 35:30 I had no idea about her backstory. 35:33 And so I am I am glad that the committee sort of pushed some more of her biography out in front of this because there's Democratic members we should be learning more about. 35:41 It is sort of the Liz Cheney show. 35:44 But gosh, what a compelling story and what a good job she did. 35:48 JVL Well, we are going to need one of them to run for president in 2024, according to Bill Kristol. 35:52 So it would be good to get them some exposure. 35:55 All right. 35:56 I think we've got a bunch of pretty good questions. 36:00 Kavanaugh, what exit? 36:01 12. 36:01 I'm on exit 12. 36:03 You like that? 36:04 Yeah. 36:05 Kit Kat Kitty says it was a coup wrapped up in an insurrection, hiding behind a riot, masquerading as a political rally, which is amazing. 36:15 Somebody asked, what do we make of the Secret Service deleting text messages from Jan 5 and Jan 6? 36:21 Amanda Carpenter Yeah, I mean, it seems pretty bad, especially considering that they were texting the message after the investigation was announced. 36:28 I think there's a lot of, you know, we didn't really, I'd heard of Tony Ornato's name before this as kind of, you know, super Trumpy guy. 36:35 How weird was it that he was at the Secret Service and then working as a presidential appointee for the Trump staff? 36:42 But his name seems to keep coming up. 36:44 And as we've learned from previous hearings, if somebody's name comes up, it comes up again. 36:50 And so I don't think that's the last we've heard about Tony Arnotto. 36:54 JVL So Mary Ellen asks, why would Trump announcing his his running make inditing him impossible? 37:01 And maybe I'm wrong about this. 37:02 Maybe this is a JVL believes that this is a country of men, not of laws. 37:11 And but the truth is that the laws are more important than the men and people. 37:15 Am I wrong? 37:16 Maybe I'm wrong. 37:17 Maybe Merrick Garland is made of such certain stuff that he would be totally willing to launch an indictment of a former president who is now declared candidate, and in fact, the front runner to become president next. 37:32 And doesn't that just seem like it opens up a world of trouble? 37:35 Sarah Longwell Yeah, like I don't think that there's a legal doctrine that says you can't indict somebody who's running. 37:41 It is that to the extent that the conundrum before Garland is that 37:50 we don't do this in America. 37:51 Like we don't prosecute previous presidents. 37:54 Everybody got mad at me actually on like the next level where we debated this. 37:57 And I, what I said was I can argue either side. 38:00 Okay. 38:01 Because it is actually, it is actually difficult personally for me. 38:05 I don't know if I would have said this before the committee hearings, but now that we've seen everything, like I think they, I think they have to, I think it's getting harder and harder for Garland not to do something about it. 38:15 The weight of that ledger though, the weight of that gets balanced. 38:18 Then if Trump runs again, 38:20 Now it's not that you're prosecuting a former president. 38:23 Now you are prosecuting somebody who would be the front runner for the party, for like the opposing party in power. 38:30 And that is just like totally different terrain for a department of justice in the United States. 38:34 It would have never happened before. 38:36 Already it wouldn't have happened before the prosecuting president, but prosecuting somebody actively running, it would just, it would look political and they would struggle with it. 38:42 Although, I mean, I don't know, you could say like, well, what about the FBI investigating Hillary Clinton publicly? 38:47 Why isn't that seen as political? 38:49 JVL You know, there are, you know, John, John Robert throws another question in the pile here about exactly this. 38:54 And what he argues, and this is as good an answer as I could have come up with myself, is that even if the attorney general and his advisors concluded that the case was lead pipe cinch, they're like really 39:07 just prudential concerns. 39:08 For instance, how would you do security for that trial? 39:12 We've seen what Trump and his supporters are willing to do. 39:14 How in the world could you do it? 39:16 And so what John suggests is maybe there is a way to bar him from running for office without a trial, like a deferred prosecution agreement. 39:24 Anyway, it just seems interesting to me. 39:28 Suzanne has a question that is really an Amanda special. 39:31 It's a two-part question. 39:33 And she asked, what exactly was going on with the delayed National Guard deployment? 39:38 And was it related to the late-breaking staff changes at DOD? 39:42 And that's very, very important. 39:46 That's an interesting question. 39:47 You've been all over the National Guard stuff. 39:50 Do you think this is something the committee is going to get us get to at some point? 39:54 Amanda Carpenter Yeah, I mean, absolutely. 39:56 They're going to have to address that because the next committee hearing is going to talk about what Trump was doing for those one hundred and eighty seven minutes in which the Capitol was attacked and it was not secured. 40:06 I mean, that's really the central question. 40:08 Why? 40:08 You know, why wasn't the guard sent in? 40:11 I mean, you'll start with the fact about like, you know, 40:12 winding up supporters and sending them there. 40:15 But once they breached it, what was Trump doing? 40:18 And I've written about this and trying to refresh my memory and all the details. 40:22 But basically what it boiled down to was that the guys in charge of the National Guard were scurrying all over town, trying to respond to press conferences and sort of busying themselves about who had the authority by deliberately not talking to Trump. 40:38 The acting secretary of defense, Chris Miller, did not speak to Trump that day. 40:45 Or so he says, that's weird. 40:48 Why would he not speak to Trump that day? 40:49 The Capitol was under attack. 40:52 Why would you not speak to him? 40:54 And so there's been previous hearings and material and testimony on that. 40:59 But it all deals with what was going on from Christopher Miller on down. 41:04 It doesn't get up to the Trump level, which I think was extremely deliberate. 41:08 in that investigation because they didn't want to touch that. 41:11 And just another side note on this about like these other investigations that have happened. 41:15 I was going back weirdly last night and looking at the Senate majority report about the pressure that Trump put on Department of Justice. 41:24 You know, when we first started learning about, you know, these guys threatening to resign and maybe Jeffrey Clark coming in, they had like great timelines of what happened, but there were such... 41:34 Huge things missing in it, like the December 18th meeting that we're talking about earlier. 41:40 No mention of that. 41:42 No mention of that because they were just like had their little microscope and they were just looking at the Department of Justice. 41:48 Meanwhile, not asking any about anybody about these crazy meetings. 41:52 about the outside people Trump was trying to bring in to totally warp the Department of Justice. 41:58 And all those guys knew about it. 41:59 We have the emails now when they're talking about how this was insane, but somehow that was left out of that report. 42:05 And so that all goes to say, we have details about how bureaucratically there was no decision made to send the guard in time, but it leaves a lot out about what was happening in the executive branch. 42:19 JVL And Amanda, Suzanne's second question is about just the intel failure. 42:25 Do you have any sense as to whether or not the committee plans to delve into that? 42:30 How is it the comms broke down between the FBI and the Capitol and DC police? 42:35 How is it that they seem to have not understood what was going to happen? 42:40 Do you get the sense that the committee is going to touch that at all or no? 42:44 Amanda Carpenter I don't think so, because that stuff has been investigated. 42:48 And the thing that's been left out from all of it, just to go back to this point again, is what Trump was doing. 42:54 There's all kinds of memos about who would have the authority for something to happen and why riot gear wasn't this or that. 43:01 I mean, that's kind of just bureaucratic talk. 43:03 And the Republicans say that they are going to come out with this report about the security failures, where they're going to shove this all somehow on Nancy Pelosi and Capitol Police. 43:14 But again, it gets down to who is commander in chief. 43:18 There was one person that could make that call to make movements happen, and he didn't. 43:24 And that's because he sent the mob there to do that. 43:27 I mean, I don't know if you can establish that direct line, but we have never known what Trump was doing during those 187 minutes. 43:35 And now, you know, Cassidy Hutchinson's talking. 43:38 We have Sarah Matthews, who they previewed, who's talking. 43:41 You know, Cassidy knew a lot. 43:43 She's talked about all she knew about what was going on the days in the run up to that. 43:47 You don't think she knows what Trump was doing during that time when people were begging him when Kevin. 43:53 And this is the other thing, too. 43:54 You know, Kevin McCarthy is happy to talk about how he you know, he he's told people what he said to Trump. 44:01 We've never heard what Trump said back to him. 44:04 We need the other side of those conversations. 44:07 JVL So I had a question here from Daria that I honestly, I wish Tim were here for, but I'll give it to you anyway, Sarah. 44:15 And Daria says, don't you think paradoxically it would have been better if all of the normies had left? 44:24 Because then it would have been the Four Seasons total landscaping crew all the time with the leaking hair, the diet pepper. 44:32 And wouldn't that have... 44:34 I think what Dari is trying to suggest here is wouldn't that have turned the rest of America against Trump even harder and even faster? 44:41 Whereas the normies, when they say like, oh, we're protecting us from really bad shit. 44:46 Sure, I guess. 44:48 But at the opportunity cost of trying to preserve Trump's essentially his political viability. 44:55 Interesting? 44:56 Sarah Longwell No, it is interesting. 44:57 And it's something I think about a lot, which is like, what if everybody had resigned like they did in England and they resigned and they said what was going on instead of waiting to leak it anonymously or write it in a book? 45:12 And how would that potentially have changed the course of history? 45:15 What would have happened then if Trump was relegated to the D-team that he was trying to do? 45:20 And here's the thing. 45:22 It's a tough counterfactual to game out because you're like, I don't know, then maybe the coup happens and like is successful because there's nobody there to threaten. 45:32 You know, like you listen to Cipollone and there's part of you that's like, thank God this guy was there. 45:36 And then there's this other part of you that's like, 45:39 But would it have ever gotten that far as Cipollone had said a year earlier or two years earlier? 45:44 I mean, there's like a million other inflection points that you could look to to say this was enough. 45:49 This was enough to walk away. 45:51 Gun to my head, I would say I think they all should have resigned at some point, that I think it would have been worth it for people to come out and tell us what was going on much earlier, as opposed to them being there when the coup happened, because maybe we would have never gotten to that point. 46:04 JVL So Rick Hackett has a good question on this. 46:07 He says, if you're the White House counsel and you work for not the president, but for the American people, how do you justify placing a corrupt president before the citizens that you're supposed to be there representing? 46:20 That's a really good question. 46:24 This isn't like criminal defense where even the most guilty guy is entitled to an aggressive defense, right? 46:31 Sarah Longwell Right. 46:31 And this is, this is what I was trying to get at earlier when I was saying his, his consternation with the committee asking him like, and him being like, well, obviously this is terrible as though the question shouldn't even, he should, why should he even dignify that with an answer? 46:45 This is so obvious. 46:46 And it's like, yeah, bro, but what have you been doing this whole time? 46:49 Like you've been defending this guy, Don McGann, you know, I saw Don McGann at a Nats game. 46:55 He was just hanging out, having his hot dog. 46:57 And it's like, 46:58 I'm sure that Don McGahn thinks he's a real responsible guy for how he handled that. 47:02 I disagree. 47:05 JVL Mike Flynn. 47:06 This is interesting. 47:07 Bianca asked if we had seen that Atlantic piece by Bart Gelman on Mike Flynn. 47:13 This is an interesting philosophical question. 47:15 Mike Flynn is this incredibly well-respected, decorated military guy who gets pretty high up in the world and then turns out to be absolutely insane. 47:27 Like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and all these other people, was he always insane and he was just passing and nobody realized it? 47:37 Or did something happen to him and did he change? 47:39 Thoughts? 47:41 Amanda Carpenter I mean, it's impossible to know. 47:43 I mean, maybe some of the things that... 47:47 JVL Well, let's let's let's fuzz it up. 47:48 Amanda, you don't have to pronounce on the state of Michael Flynn's soul and his psychology. 47:53 But in general, do people go crazy, go that crazy or were they always crazy and they just hit it? 48:02 Amanda Carpenter I think he responded to incentives. 48:04 I think he legitimately got burned by the firing. 48:07 Right. 48:07 He was fired by Barack Obama and then was rewarded for being an intel guy who publicly spoke out against Barack Obama and just plowed down that rabbit hole. 48:18 I mean, he got celebrated as like, you know, you know how it is in conservative media when one of these military guys comes out and speaks and tells you how bad that Democratic president really was. 48:28 I mean, it is instant fame, credibility. 48:31 And he just wrote it and wrote it and wrote it. 48:34 That's that's kind of my top line. 48:36 Look at him. 48:36 But, you know, now he's doing a great job. 48:39 He was at the launch of Doug Mastriano's gubernatorial campaign. 48:45 He has been a Doug Mastriano advisor from the start. 48:49 So he is finding more like minded military guys to align with, which is concerning. 48:55 Can I just take a quick shot at this? 48:57 Sarah Longwell You know, I think there's something about like a guy like Flynn clearly had a set of skills that were valued within a lane of a set of skills, right? 49:06 And that is, so like how Mike Flynn felt about 49:11 flat earth society or whatever, like isn't part of what you ask Mike Flynn, just like it's not what you ask Ronnie Jackson. 49:17 Ronnie Jackson, doctor, treats President Obama, friends with President Obama. 49:23 Like, and I think that there's a question here of like, 49:27 In general, I would say there is a cycle, A, of radicalization that happens when you're attacked, right, and you find a community, right, that welcomes you into the bunker and then celebrates you. 49:40 But it's also just the story of radicalization. 49:43 And the story of radicalization is about going down a path. 49:46 Something happens and, like, there's a break. 49:48 There's a breaking point. 49:49 You're radicalized by it. 49:51 And, like, 49:52 then a bunch of other incentives kick in and it like sends you down a path. 49:56 Like, cause he was probably really, really good at some stuff. 49:58 Amanda Carpenter Like he probably has an element of genius in him, right? 50:01 Well, he was intelligence gathering and picking apart crazy bits of information and putting them together, which makes you a really good conspiracy theorist. 50:09 That's right. 50:13 JVL Barb has a really good question. 50:15 So Barb asks, why didn't Pence and the cabinet 50:20 use the 25th Amendment. 50:23 And I got to say, so now that we're getting all the interior stuff and the stuff that clearly, you know, look, the West Wing is a building. 50:30 It's an office. 50:31 Every office has public secrets, right, that everybody knows, even though you're not supposed to talk about them. 50:37 You know, Jan and Ben are having an affair, but we all know it, but we don't say it. 50:43 And so we got the president who goes in these spittle-flecked rages of the Secret Service people. 50:49 He is bringing in people like Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn and MyPillowMan, an overstocked dude for secret meetings. 50:59 And everybody, including guys like Hirschman and Cipollone, believe that the president is essentially a madman who is a child 51:12 I mean, am I being too, again, I'm trying not to be pejorative, but just descriptive. 51:17 They do not seem to believe that the president is all there mentally. 51:22 Surely the cabinet all knew this. 51:27 What is the 25th Amendment for, if not for exactly such a moment? 51:32 Amanda Carpenter You know who I wanted to answer that question the most? 51:35 JVL Mike Pence. 51:36 Amanda Carpenter Mitch McConnell's wife. 51:38 who resigned, who resigned in protest of what was going on. 51:44 She was in on those conversations about the 25th Amendment. 51:48 Mitch McConnell's wife. 51:49 I mean, I'm just going to keep saying this because it's so weird, number one, that she was a cabinet secretary, but like whatever. 51:55 Mitch McConnell, who says that he still supports Trump as a nominee, his wife quit her cabinet position in protest, and nobody talks about that. 52:08 Nobody acts like that didn't happen. 52:10 You know who else was in on those conversations? 52:13 Was good old Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 52:16 What did he say? 52:18 Was he on those emails? 52:19 He almost certainly was. 52:21 So yeah, I think that is a, it's amazing. 52:25 There's so many questions to ask, but the fact that there were meetings about it, someone thought it was a good idea. 52:31 Who thought it was a good idea? 52:32 Sarah Longwell It wasn't the first time. 52:34 I mean, that was the whole thing before anybody knew Miles Taylor was anonymous and he was writing us up in the New York Times. 52:40 The whole point of that was like, we're discussing the 25th Amendment. 52:43 And so like people had clearly been discussing it the whole way through from early on. 52:47 And like the answer to why it never happened 52:50 is that the thing that we all got wrong all the time is that everybody kept waiting for sort of normal political forces to exert themselves. 52:59 And so Mitch McConnell doesn't vote for impeachment despite the fact that his wife resigns because he thinks the voters are gonna do it for him, right? 53:05 He thinks this guy's done. 53:06 And so nobody could do it by their hand. 53:09 Nobody wanted to be the person that actually took the steps to do it. 53:13 They wanted to sit in the meetings to see if they could get like a collective will to form. 53:17 But I don't know what those meetings were like, but clearly nobody is willing to be the person to stand up and say we have to do this. 53:25 And that's not that means Mike Pence wouldn't do it. 53:27 None of them would do it. 53:27 They wouldn't take that step. 53:30 JVL All right, we're coming up on the end of this. 53:32 I would like to give people a little bit of candy because this has been all very serious and high-toned, except for the Snooki stuff. 53:41 Have either of you gentle ladies watched Bill Kristol's outstanding interview with Joe Trippi? 53:47 Amanda Carpenter I listened to three quarters of it this afternoon. 53:52 JVL So Joe Trippi, who Sarah, I take it you did not listen to it because you've been traveling and working like a crazy person. 54:01 Joe Truby is, to my mind, the single smartest guy of his generation in politics. 54:07 I always listen to him. 54:09 He sees around corners. 54:11 He has a very upbeat take on the midterms. 54:15 What he says is this midterm looks like it is moving away from being a referendum on Biden and is instead shaping up to be a little bit more of a referendum about crazy Republicans because 54:30 Republicans have nominated a whole lot of high profile candidates who are all crazy in the exact same way. 54:35 So they're not like crazy different where you can money the waters, but there's like a coherent narrative to tell that in the seven important Senate seats, Republicans are actually leading in four of them. 54:45 And the other three are sort of a dead heat. 54:49 And that between those things happening where the Senate races top the ticket are looking OK for Democrats, along with all of the crazy gerrymanders, which basically gave Democrats already in 2020 a bunch of the losses in marginal seats that they otherwise would have suffered this time around. 55:10 He thinks Democratic losses are likely to be between 10 and 25 seats. 55:16 And he would be surprised if it's more. 55:19 Are either of you buying this? 55:22 Sarah Longwell Do you listen to me when I talk? 55:25 This is literally my whole thing about what's happening right now. 55:29 I wrote a New York Times piece about this. 55:32 JVL Oh, I'm sorry. 55:33 I would have read that piece if it had been in the bulwark. 55:36 Sarah Longwell Okay, I'm glad, okay, whatever. 55:38 We've had this conversation about the threshold on the seats and how many that the Democrats already lost in 2020 and why there's a ceiling on how many Republicans can win and why the Senate, not just the Senate, but the governor's races, 55:51 are being populated by people who are broadly unacceptable and that state level candidates matter, candidates in general matter. 55:57 And one of the things that you're seeing, so like this Georgia poll just came out and like polls are polls, but it has Kemp up by, I think like seven. 56:05 And it has Walker down by three, which means that something is like, there's, they are just decoupling. 56:11 They're decoupling Biden from the individual candidates at the state level. 56:15 And like, 56:15 we don't see as much split tickets. 56:17 And honestly, when we're thinking about strategy, we've been thinking a lot more about just encouraging split ticket voting. 56:23 Like the idea that there would be DeWine Ryan voters in Ohio, not crazy, right? 56:29 They're not crazy at all. 56:31 Like Pennsylvania is the funnest one for me because 56:34 The idea that there would actually be like Mastriano-Fetterman voters is like a pretty wild idea. 56:39 And like Shapiro-Oz voter, like what does that ballot look like to a human? 56:45 How does that work? 56:47 But the individual candidates that Trump has helped propel forward are broadly out of step. 56:52 And so there's just the fundamental question of this election is gonna be, 56:56 Do those foundational things like the economy not doing well and the party in power being underwater and unpopular, do those exert themselves 57:07 over the ability to prosecute a case. 57:10 And by the way, this doesn't just happen. 57:12 Democrats have to prosecute this case. 57:14 They have to take abortion. 57:15 Everybody's like, will abortion change all the fundamentals? 57:19 Will guns change the fundamentals? 57:21 Stop it. 57:21 No, you gotta take abortion and guns and the individual candidates and you gotta wrap them into a narrative about Republican extremism and you gotta do it really well in order to overwhelm what are very tough fundamentals, but it can be done. 57:35 JVL Sarah, I wish I could print out the comments for you right now, because the amount of love flowing your way, you have clearly won the night. 57:43 I will have to do better tomorrow morning when we sit down to take the secret. 57:47 Sarah Longwell You know, it's because they listen to me on the show. 57:50 They listen to me on the show. 57:51 They've heard me. 57:51 They know I've been saying this for months. 57:53 And for you to walk in here and be like, Joe Trippi just said something that blew my mind. 57:58 JVL Maybe it's because Joe Trippi is a man. 57:59 I don't know. 58:01 Sarah Longwell Maybe. 58:02 Maybe. 58:02 Of his generation. 58:05 JVL Oh, that's a war crime. 58:08 All right, Amanda, thank you for sitting in for Tim. 58:11 Sarah, well, not thank you. 58:14 This is your job. 58:14 You had to be here today anyway. 58:16 Everybody who's with us, thanks for coming in. 58:18 Thanks for supporting Bulwark Plus. 58:19 Thanks for being with us for the next level slash Thursday Night Bulwark. 58:25 Sarah and I will see you tomorrow on The Secret Show. 58:30 Amanda Carpenter Bye.