Chapter 1: What significant events shifted the political landscape in 2023?
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We make sleep easy. Restrictions apply. See store or website for details. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. This is the last one of the year. And so we brought in an old friend who's going to like make me not have to work that hard because he's just going to talk and give you a lot of thoughts.
Chapter 2: How has the Epstein case impacted Trump's political standing?
He's got a lot of thoughts and a lot of takes. He is doing a lot of stuff. You got the Impolitic podcast. Is that what it's called now? Yeah, baby. You're co-host of Hacks on Tap. Oh, yeah, baby. You're writing for Puck. You're an analyst at MS Now. You used to be on Showtime's The Circus. MS Now. MS Now. MS Now. Are you still saying it that way? MS Now. Yeah, it's the only way I can say it.
Right. When we talked about this when you were on my pod, it's just impossible for me to resist the MS Now. MS Now. MS Now.
Chapter 3: What are the prospects for a reform candidate in the Democratic Party?
It's not MS Now. It's MS Now. Now. Now.
Okay.
I'm off this podcast for the rest of the week. I am going to sneak by MS now on Friday because I'm taking my child to New York for her eighth birthday. We're going to see a show. Oh, that's great. We're going to take a swinger by, see the crew. What are you going to see? I think The Lion King. We're kind of on the fence. We're rolling through a couple different things.
So I think The Lion King, but I don't know. I haven't decided yet. If you're in the mood. Okay. I haven't seen it, but my friend Danny Strong, who wrote the Game Change movie and people know from a lot of other things. Slumdog Millionaire?
Chapter 4: How does the cultural climate affect political candidates?
Yeah.
No, not Danny Boyle. Not Danny Boyle. Danny Strong. How many Dannys could there really be? Who was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oh, right. Dope sick. He was dope sick. Yes, he did. He wrote and produced. He was on the Gilmore Girls. Danny's been on a lot of things. He was in Justified for one season where he played a baddie on Justified. Have you ever seen Justified? I love Justified.
Oh, Justified is great. Danny plays a rapist. Prison warden who does all kinds of bad things to Walt Goggins' girlfriend. Love of his life on that show, which is really not a character for Danny.
Chapter 5: What role does music play in shaping public sentiment?
Anyway, Danny is producing, directing a revival of Chess, the Tim Rice musical that has like with music from ABBA in it that has like One Night in Bangkok and all those songs on it. And the guy, my friend Ian Weinberger, who used to be the musical director at Hamilton, is the musical director on that show. And it's supposed to be really good.
And it's a musical, which is kind of what you're looking for. Now, I don't know if your daughter would appreciate a Cold War. Yes, eight-year-old, I don't know, like him, it would be more fun. My godson's a big chess savant, so maybe I should take him to New York and do that with him. Seems like a good idea to me. Hey, how was your birthday, by the way? We'll talk about politics in a second.
Or why, who cares? Do we have to? It's my podcast. Well, I heard these people like parasocial, like your viewers all love the parasocial thing. Is that what you're hearing? The parasocial? That's what it says. Parasocial is supposed to be big in our world now. I'm just parasocial. I'm as parasocial as I get down here in New Orleans.
Chapter 6: How are generational shifts influencing political views?
My birthday was great. It's Christmas Day. Eight-year-olds old is perfect Christmas Day for a child because she's just still so happy about everything and enchanted by the whole deal. It was a beautiful, warm day. We had to top off the Jeep. Christmas in the South I love. I don't need a white Christmas like some others. That's not necessarily my cup of tea. That's not your jam.
And then at the end of the day, like when everybody's kind of winding down, I left her with my in-laws and we're like, now it's my birthday. We went down to Lafitte's blacksmith shop, had a purple drink, uh, ended up at the casino where I was rolling. I heard you shot some craps. There's word out in the craps with the nuggets game on the nuggets game was on the big screen. They won an overtime.
I was hot on the craps table next to, uh, lady like a creole lady whose her birthday was saint patrick's day mine was christmas we felt like we were a lucky duo and we were we were crushing we crushed how much you make You know, enough that I'll spend it all in New York this weekend. But it was good. It was up. Up's better than down.
Chapter 7: What challenges does the Democratic Party face moving forward?
Up's better than down. Up's better than down. Well, congratulations. I always think of you as kind of my kind of alt babe in a manger kind of thing because of the Christmas birthday. Thank you. Yeah, me, Jesus, and Karl Rove for the Christmas birthdays. Karl Rove's birthday is on Christmas Day? Yeah, turd blossom. We're texting. Carl Christian Rove. Maybe that helps explain the middle name.
I want to get on the pod and argue. Two Christmas babies. Every time I think he's about to do it, I didn't do it. The fact that we can have this first five minutes and just laugh like this is kind of related to my first topic, which I had noted for you, which is just the vibe shift from now to last year. Things are bad, obviously.
But this time, if we had gotten together to set, well, we were together on election night last year. And I got to tell you, the vibes in your house were not hot. I'll just say, I would say, I would say like you were in full rain cloud. I mean, you were, it was like a torrential downpour.
Chapter 8: How do personal experiences shape political perspectives?
There was tension in the house, I would say. And not, not a lot of laughs. And then even by December 30th, 30th of last year, there was a lot of foreboding. I'd say sense of foreboding would probably be the word that would come to mind for me. And then through the first half of the year, there was kind of like, this could be over. This whole little experiment we're doing could be over.
Like the wheels are coming off the country.
Um,
And the vibes feel like they've shifted kind of like maybe the wheels are just coming off of Trump and that the people who are kind of the late comers to Trump are like, yeah, this was fun for a minute.
And they might be looking around and the business guys who are really excited to suck up to him are now kind of like, well, maybe I'll just do this and do this for a couple more years as long as I have to. Right. Like that's not all good. None of those are like that's not courage or anything, but it's a notable vibe shift in my perspective. Are you sensing that? A hundred percent.
You know, the Epstein story was the first break. Right. I mean, up till then, from January 20th until the Epstein story, you know, Trump is on offense. He's doing all this tariffs. Maybe there was a brief hit with the tariffs got bad for a second. Yeah, but it was only for like 48 hours when the markets looked like that. And then he backed off enough to get the markets back on track.
That didn't shift my vibes at all. I think, you know, the first moment when people were like, oh, huh, this is doing something to him that's different than anything else that we've seen so far. And I just remember the day I was in New York City in July to see Wu-Tang on the last tour. Trump had attacked Republicans immediately. who were on the side of Epstein filed disclosure.
And he was like, you're idiots. Yeah. Anybody who's, who's on this side is a moron. I mean, Trump has attacked Republicans before, but the whole thing was so events to kind of panic about how he was losing the thread and didn't understand what was happening to him. That made me think that that was the first moment where I was like, Oh, okay. Yeah. there's a chink in this armor, right?
And obviously the fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mason, all these people were involved in the resistance to him on that was part of it. But then, you know, you get into the fall and I think, you know, I mean, the election's the huge thing, Tim, right? I mean, in the end, the reason there's a vibe shift in January is
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