S2 Ep1012: Sam Stein: Elon Is Toxic
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Why is the Wisconsin Supreme Court race significant?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Bulwark After Dark tonight. I am here with the Bulwark's Managing Editor, Sam Stein. We are taping right after the very professional call of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race made by the Decision Desk HQ, Dave Wasserman and others. And I got an early flight tomorrow and Sam's kid has a tick in his or her head. His. Yeah.
Thank you for the revelation. It was not enjoyable pulling that thing out. Hope I got it all.
So we're doing a late night taping tonight. So buckle up, everybody. We're punchy. All right, listener. You might think that, you know, the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, is that really worth it? Is that really a late night taping thing? Is that something I should care about? Let me tell you, if you have any doubts, I want to play for you. One of the world's richest men discussing the Supreme Court race just the other day.
They think it's well, it's just, you know, some kind of judicial thing that's not that important. But actually what they're doing, what's happening on Tuesday is a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives. That is why it is so significant. And whichever party controls the house, to a significant degree, controls the country, which then steers the course of Western civilization. So it's like, I feel like this is one of those things that may not seem that it's gonna affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will. Yeah.
Susan Crawford, the Democrat-aligned judge. You are affecting all of humanity, the destiny of humanity. Sam, what do you make of it? Good. Good.
Did you hear the guy scream at him?
No pressure. No pressure.
Do you feel like Western civilization was on the line in Waukesha County tonight?
I mean, I personally did not, but maybe I'm happy it is, right? As Elon says, we get a little bit of a turn here. I'm happy with that we're turning civilization in a new direction.
Are you not? I'm happy. I'm happy that Elon's sad. And it felt a little overwrought to me. Just a little.
Just a touch.
Destiny. Are all of our destiny settles on this Wisconsin Supreme Court race?
This race that Elon heard about Maybe, you know, four weeks ago and decided, you know what, I'm going to put $20 million in there.
I think that there are a couple things that are really important about the race that may be a little short of, you know, the fate of Western civilization. But I think they're pretty important. Number one is Elon Musk... could not just go buy races. And I think that there are people, particularly on the left, particularly progressives, I had some folks who have come up to me that are very worried about just elections going forward, Elon monkeying with it, the Twitter, the bots, the amount of money that he has. If you can't buy a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, then it's going to be very much more challenging to buy a bigger race. It's not like you can't buy any race, but I think that it is... Let me stop you there because...
I hear you, but what happens in a race where there isn't such donor enthusiasm on the Democratic side, right? The actual total amount of money was relatively matched in this race, but there's... Hundreds of races. Hundreds in the cycle. Sure.
Could he steal a random marriage race somewhere? Sure. To me, I think that Elon is not magic. He does not have scary magical powers. He is not able to manipulate the machines. Here's what he is. He's just a man.
If anything, he's toxic.
That's what I was going to say. He backfired. I think Elon's money, I think probably, which we'll get to next, because the nature of the backlash against Trump and the nature of how these special elections work and the nature of the coalitions, Susan Crawford was probably going to be the favorite no matter what. But I think Elon was a net negative on this, even including the $20 million that he put in and the $2 million bribes that he gave to random twinks, college Republican twinks yesterday. I think even in spite of that, I think he was a net negative.
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