Speaker 1: It's going to be a very long road between the
Speaker 1: end of Trump himself and the end of trump Ism.
Speaker 1: The base of the party is very different from the
Speaker 1: leadership of the party, which McConnell doesn't believe in any
Speaker 1: of that garbage, but he does believe in power and
Speaker 1: he wants to keep it.
Speaker 2: One thing I learned very.
Speaker 1: Quickly in politics was that Rogerstone is ninety five percent
Speaker 1: bullshit about Roger Stone.
Speaker 2: He's an evil piece of shit.
Speaker 3: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she.
Speaker 4: I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years,
Speaker 4: living undercover all around the world.
Speaker 3: And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I
Speaker 3: served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 4: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 4: created conspiracies in our operations.
Speaker 3: We got people to believe things that weren't true.
Speaker 4: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 4: news almost every day.
Speaker 3: Will break them down for you to determine whether they
Speaker 3: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Mission Implausible.
Speaker 5: All right, guys, Next week a big week. This is
Speaker 5: our last episode before the election, and we all know
Speaker 5: what we're doing right.
Speaker 4: Well, I think we're kind of screwed anyway, because I mean,
Speaker 4: obviously Jerry and I are on the lists. You know
Speaker 4: they're gonna be coming at us. We could try to turn.
Speaker 4: I think Trump actually really likes it when people say
Speaker 4: bad things about him then come out and go the
Speaker 4: opposite way.
Speaker 5: I think the golden rule of Trump is it's better
Speaker 5: to have said horrible things and then.
Speaker 2: You sold your souls. What you're doing, you sold your.
Speaker 5: Soul like those great Assyrian or other ancient Mesopotamian freezes,
Speaker 5: of like the leader sitting on top of all the
Speaker 5: slaughtered soldiers, like if you liked.
Speaker 6: Him all along.
Speaker 5: I think he thinks you're kind of a schmuck and
Speaker 5: a sucker. But if, like he doesn't respect Giuliani, he
Speaker 5: lets Juliani talk. But if everyone knows that you don't
Speaker 5: like him, but you're saying you like him, that is
Speaker 5: power in his mind.
Speaker 4: Trump's fatal flaw here is that Jerry and I can't
Speaker 4: be humiliated, like we've humiliated ourselves so much over so
Speaker 4: long a period that there's nothing three daughters.
Speaker 2: I've been through hemial like it right through.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and as Deep State guys, John and I we
Speaker 3: have kissed a lot of asses in our time, right,
Speaker 3: so it's war criminals.
Speaker 5: But Rick Wilson is he saw things early. He's been
Speaker 5: an outspoken and I think this is going to be
Speaker 5: a question for the rest of our lives. You know,
Speaker 5: what did you do daddy? What did you do mommy?
Speaker 5: During the And it is it's interesting how few have said, like,
Speaker 5: we're not doing this conspiracy theory thing. We're not doing
Speaker 5: this like truth doesn't matter approach to politics, even career Republicans, loyal,
Speaker 5: long term party people.
Speaker 4: I think Rick is like some others. There was an
Speaker 4: up end Today's New York Times. I'm David French, who
Speaker 4: is their conservative columnist, and he, like Rick, said, they
Speaker 4: thought the Republican Party was a party of ideology, and
Speaker 4: they had certain beliefs. And what they've now learned is
Speaker 4: how long they were. And it's about violence as fault
Speaker 4: for one person, that's about all these other things. And
Speaker 4: they saw early on that he was going to destroy
Speaker 4: the Republican Party. And in fact, we probably shouldn't even
Speaker 4: call it the Republican Party. If Trump does win, they
Speaker 4: should probably rebrand this thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the Trump Party.
Speaker 3: It takes one to no one for the Republican Party.
Speaker 3: He understands how it operates. I think it takes a
Speaker 3: lot of courage to like sort of turn on them
Speaker 3: and use the same taxics that the old Republican Party
Speaker 3: used against Democrats for the old Republican Party to use
Speaker 3: against the new trumpy whatever it is, the Trump sort
Speaker 3: of cult to personnel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's courageous.
Speaker 3: I have a question for both of you, or at
Speaker 3: least it's to come in so oftentimes fit very often,
Speaker 3: when an ideology gets going, it will be hijacked by
Speaker 3: a strong man. And I'm thinking, like sort of the
Speaker 3: Nazi Party started out, there was a guy, greg Or Strasser, right,
Speaker 3: who wanted to give it be the nice Nazi Party.
Speaker 3: We're going to focus on the socialist part. And of
Speaker 3: course all those guys were shot in the Night of
Speaker 3: the Long Lives. And the same with Lenin to a
Speaker 3: certain degree. You know, he his party and he was
Speaker 3: pretty bad. But then Stalin came along. Cult to personality
Speaker 3: hit what cult a personality?
Speaker 2: The Bath Party?
Speaker 3: They had an ideology and then pretty soon Saddam hijacks
Speaker 3: and sod it and see it. So thoughts on like
Speaker 3: ideologies being taken over.
Speaker 5: By Yeah, I mean the Bath Party processes. It stood
Speaker 5: for something like this kind of post Nasser in Egypt,
Speaker 5: pan Arabic socialists. I found it fascinating how Asad and
Speaker 5: Syria and Saddam in Iraq hated each other. You know,
Speaker 5: that's kind of emblematic of the transition from hey, we're
Speaker 5: all into in this international ideological approach to this is
Speaker 5: my stuff and I get to keep all the stuff. No,
Speaker 5: it's my stuff and I get to keep all the stuff.
Speaker 5: We used to have a saying in Iraq all the time.
Speaker 5: It's like when you would meet people who hated Saddam, Iraqis,
Speaker 5: like new parties were forming, and the Iraqis would talk
Speaker 5: say they don't want to eliminate Saddam, they just want
Speaker 5: to replace Saddam themselves. And there were some people who
Speaker 5: wanted to eliminate the whole Sadamist approach and create a
Speaker 5: real democracy. But what's developed is pretty much just we
Speaker 5: just have different Saddams.
Speaker 3: Well Victor Rick Wilson, so you know, all these guys.
Speaker 3: As soon as these strong men took power from an ideology,
Speaker 3: from a movement, one of the first things they did
Speaker 3: is they turned on their own supporters, right, you know,
Speaker 3: they turned on people who had supported them, but they
Speaker 3: worried about them, people who wouldn't bend a knee. So
Speaker 3: people like Rick Wilson is like, they're going to turn
Speaker 3: into the enemies, probably before we are right, because they're
Speaker 3: former insiders.
Speaker 5: All right, Well, I can't wait to hear what he says.
Speaker 4: For our listeners who follow election coverage closely, you certainly
Speaker 4: know our next guest, Rick Wilson. Rick is a political
Speaker 4: strategist and ad maker, writer, speaker, and commentator. He's the
Speaker 4: co founder of the Lincoln Project that has authored two
Speaker 4: New York Times bestsellers, and has his own podcast with
Speaker 4: Molly John Fast. For our purposes, we're especially interested in
Speaker 4: his experience as a former Republican political strategist. So for me,
Speaker 4: I'm an arduent follower of excellent put down vocabulary. I
Speaker 4: learned the word chowed from him and WALLEYE chucklefuck, and
Speaker 4: today on Twitter, Trump a quivering mass of evil. Sue it.
Speaker 3: What have you got against sue it?
Speaker 2: Rick?
Speaker 1: Listen, I pro sue it and I vote.
Speaker 4: So Rick, can you talk about how political parties might
Speaker 4: use conspiracy theories? To help their candidates and did sure.
Speaker 1: So when you were it wasn't really my flavor particularly,
Speaker 1: But there's been this evolution. I'm not going to say
Speaker 1: it's only in the Republican Party, because there are plenty
Speaker 1: of Democratic Party conspiracy theories over the years as well,
Speaker 1: but there has been this evolution as social media has
Speaker 1: convinced people that what they see online must be true,
Speaker 1: that became it became easier and easier to convince people
Speaker 1: that ludicrous things were actually happening behind the scenes, that
Speaker 1: they were causing them. And as we've moved away from
Speaker 1: the traditional media structure of the country had for a
Speaker 1: long time, you know, three television networks and then for
Speaker 1: a while it was seeing in an MSNBC, in Fox.
Speaker 1: But now it's a billion Facebook pages of the Patriotic
Speaker 1: Patriots egle Forum dot ru and these things that appear
Speaker 1: convincing and you can sell people on truly dumb and
Speaker 1: dangerous and pernicious ideas, and so it's really become a
Speaker 1: centerpiece of the way that particularly the Republican Party right
Speaker 1: now prosecutes its cases. You know, it's not enough that
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris is a liberal. She's got to be a
Speaker 1: global plant by a Marxist super state hidden away somewhere
Speaker 1: in the world, secretly run by George Soros, out of
Speaker 1: the basement of a pizza restaurant, or whatever flavor of
Speaker 1: crazy you want to hit that day. They will always
Speaker 1: find a way to include it. Now inside the dialogue
Speaker 1: in the Republican Party, be a little bipartisan.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: Democrats have occasionally gotten a little what we call blue Anon,
Speaker 1: where they believe some things that are not true to
Speaker 1: be true. And it is a sign not of any
Speaker 1: failing of any one party. It's just the capacity of
Speaker 1: these methods is so beyond what we've ever experienced before.
Speaker 3: Why do people like tolerate and buy into this when
Speaker 3: I used to love the Republican Party parts of it
Speaker 3: in any case, And I don't get what happened to
Speaker 3: the party. Where are the rational people?
Speaker 1: They mostly got pushed out guys like me. I'll give
Speaker 1: you a good example. The first sign of a crack
Speaker 1: between me and the Republican base was back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and some reporters said to me, what
Speaker 1: about this story, isn't it true? He was born in Kenya?
Speaker 1: And I said to political, I'm like, it's the dumbest
Speaker 1: fucking thing I've ever heard. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: That's insanity? And they're like, no, no researchers. And so
Speaker 1: I literally called my opposition research guy. I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: do me a favorite check the hospital. There's a birth
Speaker 1: record in Hawaii. Of course there was, but all of
Speaker 1: them decided that this was true, and not the senior
Speaker 1: campaign people for McCaine. But I was hanging out there
Speaker 1: because people were really angry that I was trying to
Speaker 1: blow up this great narrative they thought was going to
Speaker 1: defeat Barack Obama, and I was working hard to defeat
Speaker 1: Barack Obama at the time. You guys know, from the
Speaker 1: intelligence world, you're trying to sell someone a vision of
Speaker 1: something that they can or should be, and you frame
Speaker 1: up the world in a way that makes it compelling
Speaker 1: for them to do that. And these conspiracy theories take
Speaker 1: people who are lower information voters, who are lower sometimes
Speaker 1: not always, but generally speaking of lower education levels, and
Speaker 1: gives them this cohesive vision of the world that makes sense,
Speaker 1: and it gives them a way to say, oh, that's
Speaker 1: why my life sucks, that's why these people don't treat
Speaker 1: me the way I want to be treated.
Speaker 2: That's why I lost my job.
Speaker 1: And it's convenient and it's comfortable, and man, it's just
Speaker 1: it's really unfortunately leads to some very dark outcomes.
Speaker 4: Like you said, I think people it's about feelings. I
Speaker 4: feel like that's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, vibes based, all vibes based.
Speaker 4: Exactly, and I can imagine why campaigns would want to
Speaker 4: weaponize that if they could. Do you think there are
Speaker 4: strategists around Trump who see these or try to to
Speaker 4: even create these things for their own purpose or are
Speaker 4: they just out there and they let them go.
Speaker 1: I think for the most part inside the campaign, they
Speaker 1: depend on the existence of those things outside of the campaign,
Speaker 1: and they can nudge them, leverage them not and wink
Speaker 1: at them. I know, inside the right wing media infrastructure
Speaker 1: and the right wing political infrastructure, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys. The Jack Posobiacs, the Steve Bannons, the
Speaker 1: Dan Bongino's, the Roger Stones. They're personally too smart to
Speaker 1: believe this garbage, but they do recognize how much it
Speaker 1: motivates a lot of people inside the Republican base, and
Speaker 1: they really like that.
Speaker 3: So your political strategy is not a neuroscientist, but people
Speaker 3: in their general lives. Even paultists, they know that if
Speaker 3: I don't put gas in my car, it's not going
Speaker 3: to run forever. Right, But when it comes to their
Speaker 3: political philosophy, they throw basic rationality out, so, at least
Speaker 3: in my mind, in their minds, there's this dissonance that
Speaker 3: goes on where they accept fantasy in their political world
Speaker 3: and for their political leaders and people who you know,
Speaker 3: they want to represent them, but COVID vaccines, vaccines in general,
Speaker 3: but they don't accept it in their personals.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, the delta between what they like as a
Speaker 1: political technique or a political angle. But most people who say, oh,
Speaker 1: they control the weather, they also if a hurricanes steaming
Speaker 1: right towards them, they're going to probably evacuate. They're not
Speaker 1: so irrational. But politics has made Americans less rational about
Speaker 1: their lives in ways that we haven't really fully reckoned
Speaker 1: with yet. I think it's been difficult for Americans, more
Speaker 1: centrist Americans, more or less politically engaged Americans, to say, wow,
Speaker 1: they really do believe in like Hillary Clinton, a global
Speaker 1: pedophile conspiracy or whatever, all these crazy things that we
Speaker 1: all go, God, come on. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are shocked how what their neighbors believe. They
Speaker 1: act normal during the day, and then it'll come up
Speaker 1: at barbecue. Somebody in a barbecue will suddenly said, what
Speaker 1: about the Illuminati and the lizard people. It shocks people,
Speaker 1: it bothers them because it really has. It really does
Speaker 1: show how our culture has been rebuilt around the things
Speaker 1: that make us politically and socially comfortable.
Speaker 4: I want to talk a little bit about Lincoln Projects.
Speaker 4: So in some ways it seems like we're in this
Speaker 4: secret Republican Civil War, right, so some people, but it's
Speaker 4: not so yeah, not so secret that some people want
Speaker 4: the Republicans to be maga and others want to be
Speaker 4: more kin to the traditional Republican party. I do personally
Speaker 4: think that there are generally two types of people in
Speaker 4: the world, right, some value strength and security and other
Speaker 4: value fairness and inclusion. That's why sort of two parties
Speaker 4: in all sorts of countries.
Speaker 2: Do you think we need.
Speaker 4: A generally leftist party and a generally rightist party? And
Speaker 4: so what do you think is happening and what is
Speaker 4: your role in that? What are you guys trying to do? Well?
Speaker 1: Look, I believe that one party states are always doomed
Speaker 1: I think they descend into authoritarianism and domestically one party
Speaker 1: states to send into corruption. And you look at Florida,
Speaker 1: my home state. It is one of the most lavishly
Speaker 1: corrupt places you can imagine. It's all pay to play.
Speaker 1: It is beyond what people even believe. And on the
Speaker 1: flip side, New Jersey is basically a state run by
Speaker 1: a political mob. And so you don't see I don't
Speaker 1: see one party systems really benefiting the population. And so
Speaker 1: I think we need a center left and a center
Speaker 1: right party in this country. I mean, right now, I'm
Speaker 1: part of a weird coalition. It runs from Bernie Sanders
Speaker 1: and AOC to guys like me and Adam Kinsinger and
Speaker 1: Liz and Dick Cheney. If you can't find a place
Speaker 1: to live in that coalition, I don't know where you're at.
Speaker 2: I don't know how I can help you.
Speaker 1: The Republican Party of today is a different creature than
Speaker 1: the traditional Republican Party, which, at least aspirationally, at least
Speaker 1: on paper, believed in limited government and the rule of
Speaker 1: law and keeping the role of the state in check
Speaker 1: and the things that would be recognizable as traditional GOP.
Speaker 1: Those things are no longer a part of the Republican
Speaker 1: Party because now it's about occult. Now it's about Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and his whims and his psychological quirks, and all
Speaker 1: the things that he represents are very distant from the
Speaker 1: old Reagan, Busch, Eisenhower, GOP. And look, a lot of
Speaker 1: people very much regret that, and they've been trapped in
Speaker 1: this idea, this very false dichotomy of well, oh, it's
Speaker 1: either Trump or communism. It's either Trump or George Soros
Speaker 1: takes over the world. And those things depend on fantasies
Speaker 1: and conspiracies and imaginary demons that are out there in
Speaker 1: a way that it's been a long time in our politics,
Speaker 1: or actually never in our politics where we've seen that
Speaker 1: kind of nerve racking, constant revision of history about what
Speaker 1: the party is and means. Because look, when the Republican
Speaker 1: Party was formed in eighteen fifty four, it came out
Speaker 1: of the Whig Parties collapse, and it had some the
Speaker 1: Whig Parties DNA in it, but it remained largely unaltered
Speaker 1: until nineteen sixty four, so almost one hundred year run,
Speaker 1: and then it transformed itself from nineteen sixty four through
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen into the sort of pro security, pro limited government,
Speaker 1: constitutional rule of law party, and now it's something very different.
Speaker 1: So it's only had three iterations. Democratic parties had a
Speaker 1: few more iterations over the generations, but GEOP has really
Speaker 1: been only about three things. And now it feels much
Speaker 1: different than it did when it started.
Speaker 3: It's dabbling with strongmanism, authoritarianism now called leaders.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent.
Speaker 4: Let's take a break, we'll be right back. All right,
Speaker 4: let's get back into it.
Speaker 3: So I wonder if you'd run with me on a
Speaker 3: thought experiment that's just for the sake of argument. Trump
Speaker 3: loses or he has his last big man, what happens
Speaker 3: to the base and what it hapends to trump Ism
Speaker 3: once Trump is no longer like a viable lead.
Speaker 1: Jerry, that's a That's an absolutely fantastic question. It is
Speaker 1: a question I think about every single day. I don't
Speaker 1: think trump Ism immediately disappears. I think it has some
Speaker 1: shelf life left to run because in part it's the
Speaker 1: product of this it's a product of this very effective
Speaker 1: media ecosystem. And it's not just Fox, it's Facebook, and
Speaker 1: it's Discord and Telegram and all these other channels that
Speaker 1: have become definitional to how the party indoctrinates its members
Speaker 1: and communicates with its members. Those things are still going
Speaker 1: to exist. Rupert Murdoch is going to live at least
Speaker 1: four hundred years old, and he's going to run Fox
Speaker 1: as he runs Fox right now. He has no incentive
Speaker 1: or desire to change that. And I do think it's
Speaker 1: going to be a very long road between the end
Speaker 1: of Trump himself and the end of Trump. And again,
Speaker 1: the base of the party is very different from the
Speaker 1: leadership of the party. Mitch McConnell doesn't believe in any
Speaker 1: of that garbage, but he does believe in power and
Speaker 1: he wants to keep it.
Speaker 3: Did they need a pail it in? Do they need
Speaker 3: a leader? Can trump Ism survive as an ism without
Speaker 3: a leader?
Speaker 2: Was different?
Speaker 3: People vibe for it to take control of whatever it is,
Speaker 3: Like parna, isn't it?
Speaker 1: You know? The terrific question? And well, pronism is actually
Speaker 1: a really good analogy to it too. I think there's
Speaker 1: a real problem inherent in this whole thing, and that
Speaker 1: Trump got away with things as a celebrity that an
Speaker 1: ordinary political leader could never get away with.
Speaker 2: He got away with things as a.
Speaker 1: TV personality, And I saw this in focus groups in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen. We were trying to beat
Speaker 1: the guy, and people were just Their image of Trump
Speaker 1: was locked in by fourteen years of The Apprentice on TV.
Speaker 1: He's the richest man in the world. He owns all
Speaker 1: of Manhattan, he builds everything, everything he touches turns to gold.
Speaker 1: And the entire appeal of Trump in that space came
Speaker 1: from lower middle class voters who are legitimately pissed off
Speaker 1: about a lot of things in our culture, our society,
Speaker 1: and our economy. The economic anxiety thing was real in
Speaker 1: the beginning. We had gone through the two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight crisis, we had gone through a lot of other
Speaker 1: restructurings of our economy, and a lot of those working
Speaker 1: class folks saw him as like, he'll be the avatar
Speaker 1: of me, sticking it to the man. I'm going to
Speaker 1: use Trump as my weapons system to go after these
Speaker 1: people that treat me like crap. And for Trump, that
Speaker 1: was a great image to build. It worked like magic
Speaker 1: to persuade a lot of the people in the Republican
Speaker 1: base that he needed. Those people are dying off. The
Speaker 1: demographics of that group are quite elderly, because a lot
Speaker 1: of them are earlier boomers, and for us late boomers,
Speaker 1: the most intense feelings about Trump are with people seventy
Speaker 1: and older. They really are pissed off about a lot
Speaker 1: of things, and he really channels that for them. That
Speaker 1: will be going away, that will be changing, but that's
Speaker 1: going to take a while. That's a process, not a solution.
Speaker 1: And the other part of it is that there's only
Speaker 1: one thing in politics that teaches you anything, and it's pain.
Speaker 1: Pain is the only teacher in political life. If Republicans
Speaker 1: start losing races consistently because trump Ism doesn't sell and
Speaker 1: it doesn't scale, they will change.
Speaker 2: They will not stick with a.
Speaker 1: Poisoned chalice for very long. But the old Party's never
Speaker 1: coming back, Let's put it that way. That's a forlorn
Speaker 1: hope by a lot of my friends believe it. And I, however,
Speaker 1: have been around this block now with trump Ism for
Speaker 1: a little longer than I care to recount.
Speaker 2: Nine years.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, I don't have that same that sunny optimism
Speaker 1: I once had as a younger man.
Speaker 4: Is there anything you can do? I mean, obviously, in
Speaker 4: twenty twelve, the thought was, Okay, we've been losing races.
Speaker 4: We need to expand the party, we need to bring
Speaker 4: new people. Turned out, that wasn't what happened, right Trump
Speaker 4: came along the opposite way. Is there anything that people
Speaker 4: like you or like whether that can do to Yeah,
Speaker 4: you can't recreate it, But do you have to destroy
Speaker 4: it the village in order to save it?
Speaker 2: What are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: I think the village is doing a pretty good job
Speaker 1: destroying itself right now. It feels like a suicide pack
Speaker 1: sometimes in the GOP that you look at these people
Speaker 1: who do things they know are politically destructive. Mitch McConnell
Speaker 1: right now could have come out of the Senate race
Speaker 1: this year with a five or six seat majority. But
Speaker 1: Donald Trump got to pick all of the nominees except
Speaker 1: one guy, Dave McCormick, who just had so much money
Speaker 1: he could do what he wanted. He is unlikely to
Speaker 1: do that. He may get the majority, barely get the majority.
Speaker 1: But this is not an easy, an easy skate for McConnell.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be an easy win. And the
Speaker 1: reason it's not going to be easy is because in
Speaker 1: these swing states in particular, trump Ism does not sell
Speaker 1: and it does not scale.
Speaker 3: So Trump ism is built on a lot of things.
Speaker 3: Essentral to it, I think are a set of conspiracy theories,
Speaker 3: or at least misconceptions.
Speaker 2: About how the world works and government works.
Speaker 3: And that to a certain extent, Okay, you know you're
Speaker 3: selling a product. I get that. But when you look
Speaker 3: at some of where these conspiracy theories go and when
Speaker 3: you take it to ultimate fool, it leads to violence
Speaker 3: or can lead to violence. We saw that on this.
Speaker 2: Yes January sixth, a perfect example exactly.
Speaker 3: If you claim elections are not the way to settle
Speaker 3: our political differences, there's really nothing left but violence as
Speaker 3: an obvious answer. And it's not of both siders. Only
Speaker 3: one side is doing this right.
Speaker 1: There is only one side that believes that. And look,
Speaker 1: we saw this at a rally this weekend, the Rod
Speaker 1: of Iron rally, which combines Christian nationalism and gun fetishism
Speaker 1: and fund at parties. And they were talking this weekend
Speaker 1: a guy named Ivan Rylkin, who calls himself Trump's Secretary
Speaker 1: of Retribution. They're talking about when does the reign of
Speaker 1: fire begin? When do we get to start killing the
Speaker 1: liberal shills, When do we get to make our vengeance
Speaker 1: on the people that have tried to hurt Trump. And
Speaker 1: the problem with rhetoric like that, and the problem with
Speaker 1: folks like that is if they're denied the ability to
Speaker 1: do that, if they're told no, this is up out
Speaker 1: of bounds, and they still feel frustrated, and their leaders
Speaker 1: still tell them, Oh, the other reason you can't do
Speaker 1: this is because those liberal elites don't want you to
Speaker 1: have power. They will start seeking that out. And we
Speaker 1: saw it on January sixth. We've seen the outliers of
Speaker 1: it with the Omar Sayak. We saw it with the
Speaker 1: Tree of Life synagogue attack. We saw it with the
Speaker 1: Walmart attack, where you've got these young kids who become
Speaker 1: politically involved in the alt right and they go out
Speaker 1: and they shoot people up because they believe that white
Speaker 1: people are being replaced or globalism is causing the America
Speaker 1: to fall apart, all of it based on lies and conspiracies,
Speaker 1: but for people who are not paying attention, cults have
Speaker 1: always been able to capture young men, particularly and activate
Speaker 1: them for violence, and this behaves like a cult in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: In the nineteen sixties, of course, it was the left
Speaker 3: that was doing this, the weather men and bombings and
Speaker 3: so forth.
Speaker 1: Look, we've seen the parties go through various phases like that.
Speaker 1: But all of this is juiced by the existence now
Speaker 1: of social media, of these online platforms, and that those
Speaker 1: things reduce the friction of the activation of extremists, and
Speaker 1: they feed them a curated version of the world that
Speaker 1: lets those extremists feel like they're on a mission, that
Speaker 1: they're doing the right thing, that without them playing the
Speaker 1: role that they're the people handling them want them to play,
Speaker 1: that the world will end. It's a very dangerous and
Speaker 1: pernicious space. I worry a lot about our ability as
Speaker 1: a society and a country to manage that risk.
Speaker 4: Jerry and I are both on Ivan Ranklin's list. I'm
Speaker 4: sure you are as well, and so it's really troubling.
Speaker 4: And Jerry and I lived around the world. We live
Speaker 4: for thirty some years overseas doing kind of things. And
Speaker 4: there are country where there's incredible poverty, incredible civil war,
Speaker 4: incredible oppression. But here we are the richest, most powerful
Speaker 4: country in the history of the world. Our economy is
Speaker 4: the best going on in the world right now, better
Speaker 4: than China, better and everybody else. People aren't starving, but
Speaker 4: people are so angry they're willing to burn it down,
Speaker 4: like I don't get that piece of it again.
Speaker 1: That is where I think the social media matrix grabs
Speaker 1: these people and will not let them go, and it
Speaker 1: tells them that we've reached the final extremity. Everything is
Speaker 1: falling apart. The elites are so powerful, except you, soldier
Speaker 1: of God, can go activate yourself and strike a blow
Speaker 1: against the people that are trying to poison our blood
Speaker 1: and soil, which I know, of course, sounds better in
Speaker 1: the original German. But these techniques aren't new. The irony
Speaker 1: is that, as you point out, they're happening in a
Speaker 1: country that is profoundly wealthy, where we have the highest
Speaker 1: standard of living in the history of mankind, and yet
Speaker 1: people are told that their lives are a paragon of misery.
Speaker 2: Is a really tough problem.
Speaker 3: It's not just that we are coming up with these
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories ourselves. I think we are coming up mostly
Speaker 3: with them, but they're being amplified by our adversaries as
Speaker 3: a societal weakness, and mostly Russia, but around China and
Speaker 3: so forth. You are a message guy, right. Your whole
Speaker 3: thing is how to get to people and then get
Speaker 3: through to them and I'm wondering, you're also seeing what
Speaker 3: the Russians are doing. What grade would you give them?
Speaker 1: I would say they are actually quite improved from twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: A lot of the stuff in twenty sixteen was a
Speaker 1: little too lurid, a little too over the top, a
Speaker 1: little too provably fucked up. And now it feels like
Speaker 1: they're finding social divisions that they can exploit much more effectively,
Speaker 1: because a lot of us, if they're exploiting, is real.
Speaker 1: They're not just trying to tell Republicans, hey, you're being
Speaker 1: taken advantage of my liberals or whatever. They're also targeting
Speaker 1: black communities. Who are They're saying, the Americans hate you,
Speaker 1: the police want.
Speaker 2: To kill you. Why do you put up with this?
Speaker 1: They're also targeting Hispanics now, saying that America wants to
Speaker 1: deport you, they hate you, Why do they disrespect you?
Speaker 1: They talk to them in the languages of their cultures.
Speaker 1: I think they've gotten better at it. Some of it's
Speaker 1: still pretty, you know, crude, but it's still it's just
Speaker 1: because it's crude doesn't mean it doesn't work. There are
Speaker 1: things about their communications apparatus that we don't understand the
Speaker 1: scale of or how they're targeting. And we've got some
Speaker 1: evidence of how they did it post Hawk from twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen and twenty twenty, but not a ton and not
Speaker 1: as much as I'd like to know to be able
Speaker 1: to build a sort of profile of how to punch
Speaker 1: back on it and how to push back on it,
Speaker 1: because again, as a communicator, as a message guy, I
Speaker 1: can write a lot of smart, beautiful messaging, but I
Speaker 1: don't know that I'm hitting the targets with the ability
Speaker 1: to have a counter veiling impact for what the bad
Speaker 1: guys from overseas are doing.
Speaker 4: Speaking of punch back from your past world working as
Speaker 4: a strategist, why did Democrats seem so poor at developing
Speaker 4: their own effective avenues of attack? And the follow up
Speaker 4: is that do you think the Harris campaign is showing discipline?
Speaker 4: Are they doing what you'd want them?
Speaker 1: They are doing what I thought would be the correct
Speaker 1: approach in this. They're quite assertively not taking Trump's bait.
Speaker 1: They are in fact laying down bait of their own,
Speaker 1: and He's taking it over and over again, which I
Speaker 1: think is unique for my lifetime. We have not seen
Speaker 1: that level of commitment by the Democrats to fighting the
Speaker 1: real fight the number one thing a Democratic campaign would
Speaker 1: have done prior to Biden. I think prior to Trump,
Speaker 1: their first thing is we're going to set up a
Speaker 1: big policy team. We're going to write this policy. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about all these things that are gonna
Speaker 1: help us sell to America. And they didn't understand that
Speaker 1: the elections in this country aren't about policy. They're about
Speaker 1: personality and culture and connection. And I think she's doing
Speaker 1: a much better job of being of being someone Americans
Speaker 1: relate to and understand, of being someone Americans like. Those
Speaker 1: things are not trivial in a national campaign, and I
Speaker 1: have to salute her for very smartly handling a lot
Speaker 1: of the aspects that could have been a negative for
Speaker 1: her campaign if they'd follow the old rule book.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back in a moment.
Speaker 4: Now back to the conversation.
Speaker 3: I have to say, some of the most effective messaging
Speaker 3: out there that I've seen is the stuff from the
Speaker 3: Lincoln Project. It's punchy when I watch these things. It's
Speaker 3: the old Batman comic books. It's like wow zowie, like
Speaker 3: the air bubble that comes in the speech bubble that
Speaker 3: comes around it. Sure, so it's wondering what's your what's
Speaker 3: the mission of the Lincoln Project? And where does it
Speaker 3: go once the election ends? It's great, I love it.
Speaker 1: Sadly, I think we're going to end up with seventy
Speaker 1: six days between the election and certification that are as
Speaker 1: risky as anything we've ever faced in this country. And
Speaker 1: I wish I could tell everybody it's all going to
Speaker 1: be fine. But we watched January sixth happen, and I
Speaker 1: watched what they did last time, and this time they
Speaker 1: have actual lawyers, not the four seasons total landscaping jokers.
Speaker 1: They have real attorneys now, and that that should scare
Speaker 1: the shit out of people. That is not a great
Speaker 1: place to be right now. One of the things we're
Speaker 1: useful as is one of somebody analogizes this once, so
Speaker 1: they're like, you guys are like a seal team. You're assholes,
Speaker 1: but sometimes we need the specific kind of asshole to
Speaker 1: glow blow something up behind the enemy lines or do
Speaker 1: something horrible. And I was like, yeah, I'll take it.
Speaker 1: We're not the big army. We're not there to rebuild
Speaker 1: the cities, we're not there to do all the traditional stuff,
Speaker 1: but we are you know, we have a set of
Speaker 1: skills to pull over some of these Republican voters and
Speaker 1: convince them and some of these independent leaning conservatives and
Speaker 1: convince them that the system that they've been playing in
Speaker 1: is not a healthy one. Look, our goal is to
Speaker 1: defeat Trump and trump Ism and preserve the republic. I
Speaker 1: know that sounds high, Fallutin, but it has the advantage
Speaker 1: or disadvantage of being true. We really believe the country's
Speaker 1: in quite grave peril, and so what happens after he's defeated,
Speaker 1: We'll see where it goes. But I think the preservation
Speaker 1: of democracy and a constitutional republic it's a big deal,
Speaker 1: because everything falls apart without that. Nothing works without having
Speaker 1: the institutional and political infrastructure of an actual republic. You
Speaker 1: can't pretend that in Russia people are billionaires because they
Speaker 1: worked hard. They're billionaires because they played the ballgame and
Speaker 1: Putin gave them the money or made them part of
Speaker 1: his crime family. There are no situations and circumstances where
Speaker 1: authoritarian regimes allow free markets or free individual expression, or
Speaker 1: individual liberty or free expression. We see this risk is
Speaker 1: going to last for some period of time. I don't
Speaker 1: know how long. I would prefer it not be the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. I'd like to be done with
Speaker 1: this mission at some point. I've been on it for
Speaker 1: nine years and I don't know how long you guys
Speaker 1: would spend under cover, but you reach a point where
Speaker 1: you're just like, my god, I'm exhausted.
Speaker 4: I think you're trying to get people at the margins.
Speaker 4: That's what politics is about. But the future is about
Speaker 4: actually changing the minds of those people who are caught
Speaker 4: deep in this thing. And it is not a thing
Speaker 4: that's really important. Is Jerry and I grew up to institutions.
Speaker 4: We were professional public servants, and Americans have forgotten from
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty years ago what the US government
Speaker 4: was like. It was like these foreign governments was paid
Speaker 4: to play and had to just pay for things, and
Speaker 4: corruption and series of reforms over the years has created
Speaker 4: a system where they call it the deep state. Is
Speaker 4: a negative thing. But for most of this stuff, these
Speaker 4: institutions are professional. People take it seriously, are working on
Speaker 4: behalf of the state. They're trying to follow the rule
Speaker 4: of law. And you know, the notion that you should
Speaker 4: just throw these things away and life is going to
Speaker 4: be good. I think a lot of people, if they
Speaker 4: get their way are going to be really sad.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think they would be shocked and
Speaker 1: appalled and horrified at what the world looks like if
Speaker 1: the Republican Party becomes the Bath Party. And think about it.
Speaker 1: You had Saddam he ran for election every couple of
Speaker 1: years and got one hundred and seventeen percent of the
Speaker 1: voter or whatever it was, and people say, well, they
Speaker 1: do have elections there. It may not be free, but
Speaker 1: that's not the world people in America I think, could
Speaker 1: ever truly adjust to. I think it would be much
Speaker 1: more difficult than they believe to live in a world
Speaker 1: like that. And God knows, I don't want to live
Speaker 1: in a world like that. That's the last thing I
Speaker 1: want to see for this country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Rick, I want to run with a really bad
Speaker 3: Star Wars analogy. So I picture you as like Luke Skywalker, right,
Speaker 3: Darth Vader would be Roger Stone. And I was wondering,
Speaker 3: if you're standing across from Roger with a lightsaber, but
Speaker 3: what would.
Speaker 2: You talk to Roger Stone about.
Speaker 1: Roger's from a generation actually almost two generations prior to
Speaker 1: me in politics. But one thing I learned very quickly
Speaker 1: in politics was that Roger Stone is ninety five percent
Speaker 1: bush about Roger Stone. He's rarely actually involved in big
Speaker 1: races or big consequential issues. He's an evil piece of shit.
Speaker 1: He's a degenerate fop. He's a weirdo, bad actor, bad tattoo,
Speaker 1: bad guy. But he has lived off of one small
Speaker 1: boar scam after another his entire career, and he never
Speaker 1: got big races and consequential assignments because he's just full
Speaker 1: of shit. And look, everybody in politics has a bullshitting
Speaker 1: gene in their body, but Roger is just bullshit. And
Speaker 1: people always ask me, like, he says these things about you,
Speaker 1: why don't you fight with him. I'm like, cause I
Speaker 1: don't give a fuck, because Roger is inconsequential to me.
Speaker 1: And in politics a lot of times, the people who
Speaker 1: build up a legend, who build up their cover story
Speaker 1: about who they are, and Roger Stone tells people, oh,
Speaker 1: I aw, what dude, Nixon. Roger Stone was a fucking
Speaker 1: intern for Nixon in seventy two. He was a sign
Speaker 1: boy in Connecticut. He wasn't like a key player. He
Speaker 1: like glombed on the Nixon much later in Nixon's life,
Speaker 1: and it's just like, I don't take people like that
Speaker 1: seriously because I come from a group and a world
Speaker 1: and a cohort of like people who are serious fucking guys.
Speaker 1: I don't look at people like Roger as somebody that
Speaker 1: I'm scared of, or I don't even think of him
Speaker 1: as like a serious person. He look, he's good at
Speaker 1: threatening people. He plays his little like fuck around games
Speaker 1: from time to time with people. And is that a superpower?
Speaker 2: Eh? Maybe, but it's not one I particularly respect. No.
Speaker 4: But that's the danger is magaism has has empowered these
Speaker 4: kind of people. So this view that your enemy, your
Speaker 4: real enemy, not just your political and other is the
Speaker 4: other party, other American parties. Therefore, Russians are your friends
Speaker 4: because they're helping you against your real enemy. You have
Speaker 4: no soul and no values. Someone like Roger can be
Speaker 4: the go between Russians, go between the proud boys, go
Speaker 4: between these very dangerous people. And then when President of
Speaker 4: the United States pardons him and has community now from
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court. As stupid and awful as he is,
Speaker 4: he could be a.
Speaker 2: Real nasty one.
Speaker 1: Look, I think as Steve Bannon as more of a
Speaker 1: threat because he's an organized He's an organized psychopath and
Speaker 1: Rogers a disorganized psychopath.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the idea that.
Speaker 1: These guys have in their heads is that the things
Speaker 1: they couldn't earn in this world they're going to take
Speaker 1: because they're going to be part of it. It's like
Speaker 1: a Middle Eastern strip in the seventeen hundreds. They're going
Speaker 1: to be with the guy, and they're going to be
Speaker 1: his viziers and his advisors, and they'll make a world
Speaker 1: on the back of having the ear of the king.
Speaker 1: That still happens in this world. But there's also the
Speaker 1: good guys have another benefit of this fight. These guys
Speaker 1: are the most corrupt and backstabbing munch of people you'll
Speaker 1: ever meet. Sure they may hate all of us who
Speaker 1: believe in democracy and freedom, but they hate each other more.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic.
Speaker 4: That's what the Russians are trying to do is get
Speaker 4: us to fight each other. Sure, we can then use
Speaker 4: those skills to get them to fight each other inside
Speaker 4: mega world to maybe that maybe that's.
Speaker 1: I for the just for the Ukraine war really got hot,
Speaker 1: or actually the day after they invaded, we ran an
Speaker 1: ad on Spotnik and we put it up in Rush
Speaker 1: in Moscow on a couple of digital platforms. It got
Speaker 1: taken down almost immediately, but it was in Russian and
Speaker 1: it was asking women in Russia are you going to
Speaker 1: send your young man to die for this old man?
Speaker 7: Puci Muljils And we got a friend of ours from that,
Speaker 7: from y'all's former world who was like, please be fucking careful.
Speaker 2: They'll kill you.
Speaker 4: Luckily they have a lot of enemies before they get
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, that's that's the upside.
Speaker 3: You've gotten a lot of headlines just off of what
Speaker 3: you're saying and how you say it, and some of
Speaker 3: the messages in there. I was wondering, do you have
Speaker 3: like a greatest hits, like the top one or two
Speaker 3: that the audience could go look.
Speaker 2: At, here's the problem with this.
Speaker 1: I've made something seven hundred ads in the last five years,
Speaker 1: and there are some absolute home runs that I think
Speaker 1: are super effective and that also have an emotional place
Speaker 1: for me personally that.
Speaker 2: Spoke to me.
Speaker 1: There's an ad at the very end of the campaign
Speaker 1: in twenty called One Day. Martin Sheen narrates it's about
Speaker 1: it's a final motivation at don't get you got to
Speaker 1: get out and vote.
Speaker 8: Good morning today is the first day of the rest
Speaker 8: of America's life. One day, one day that will, one
Speaker 8: way or another, change how this country feels about itself.
Speaker 8: One last push to get the train back on its tracks.
Speaker 8: One day that cannot wipe out the last nine months
Speaker 8: or the last four years, but can clear a path
Speaker 8: for a thousand better days ahead. One day America on
Speaker 8: a tightrope.
Speaker 2: Is that called girl in the mirror.
Speaker 9: Imagine a young girl looking in the mirror, searching for
Speaker 9: role models in the world to give her hope that
Speaker 9: one day she too can make a difference. Now, imagine
Speaker 9: how she feels when she watches women being verbally attacked.
Speaker 2: What a stupid question in it?
Speaker 5: But I watch you a lot, You ask a lot.
Speaker 8: Of stupid questions, and I've got that loser who doesn't
Speaker 8: have the energy.
Speaker 2: Of a rabbit.
Speaker 9: Blind.
Speaker 8: There's something wrong with Kamala, and I just don't know
Speaker 8: what it.
Speaker 2: Is, but there is definitely something.
Speaker 3: Missing, belittled. I'm not thinking of it.
Speaker 4: That's okay, I know you're not thinking.
Speaker 2: You never do.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry.
Speaker 9: Now, imagine a different future for her, A future with
Speaker 9: a president who looks like her, who sounds like her,
Speaker 9: who shows her who she can grow up to be
Speaker 9: if only she believes in herself a strong woman.
Speaker 1: There there is an ad called Fellow Traveler that talked
Speaker 1: about Trump and Russia.
Speaker 6: Some of God Trump to these issues, not something God.
Speaker 1: We had a series of ads about COVID that are heartbreakers.
Speaker 4: Because of all we've done, the risk to the American
Speaker 4: people remains very low.
Speaker 10: Fifteen within a couple of days is going to be
Speaker 10: down too close to zero.
Speaker 2: One day it's like a miracle.
Speaker 4: It will disappear.
Speaker 2: And this is their new hopes this year.
Speaker 1: We've had some stuff that I think we ran and
Speaker 1: now we just released the other day called Daisy, named
Speaker 1: after the famous ad. But it's a story about a
Speaker 1: girl who can't get care when she's pregnant, and it
Speaker 1: runs backward from her death to her birth and talks
Speaker 1: about why her father did this, chose Trump over her.
Speaker 4: Just using your political sense of having been in this
Speaker 4: field for a long time, what do you think about November.
Speaker 2: I think she's going to win.
Speaker 1: There are three scenarios for November. She's going to win
Speaker 1: by a little She's going to win by an absolute
Speaker 1: landslide wipeout, which tells me that the polling is as
Speaker 1: wrong as we think it is, or he's going to
Speaker 1: he's going to surprise us in three or four states
Speaker 1: that we don't see coming. I think that's the lowest probability.
Speaker 1: I think a win is the highest. I think a
Speaker 1: big win is a higher probability than Trump winning. But again,
Speaker 1: as I said, my concern is not November fifth, it's
Speaker 1: the seventy six days between November fifth and certification. That's
Speaker 1: where the world. I think it's scary and weird and dangerous.
Speaker 1: You must be right, because I agree with you. They're
Speaker 1: gonna have to carry me out feet first on this one.
Speaker 1: Apparently you know we hear these shows.
Speaker 3: I say it's a privilege and a pleasure, but with you,
Speaker 3: it really is a privilege. I watched your stuff, and
Speaker 3: you're an impressive guy to an impressive one.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I do appreciate that, I really do.
Speaker 10: We'll see you next time on Mission implausible and who
Speaker 10: knows what the world will be like in a week.
Speaker 10: We'll leave you now with the full add called Daisy
Speaker 10: created by the Lincoln Project.
Speaker 11: It didn't need to end this way, Dad, You were
Speaker 11: so excited to be a grandfather when you walked me
Speaker 11: down the aisle. Those were happy, tears, college, high school sports.
Speaker 11: I could always count on you.
Speaker 3: You are my.
Speaker 11: Protector, my hero. You always made me feel safe, loved,
Speaker 11: like I was the most important person in the world.
Speaker 11: But it turned out he was more important.
Speaker 3: The fact that I was able to terminate Roe v.
Speaker 4: Wade after fifty years of trying.
Speaker 6: Each one of those abortion bands includes strict legal rules,
Speaker 6: rules that are designed to be impossible to comply with.
Speaker 6: How does a mother who is dying in a hospital
Speaker 6: bed get to a courthouse to prove to a judge
Speaker 6: that she's dying.
Speaker 5: You will no longer be thinking about abortion.
Speaker 11: You knew what he did. You knew his politics would
Speaker 11: end my freedom, my rights, my wife. You chose hate
Speaker 11: over me.
Speaker 12: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha, John Cipher,
Speaker 12: and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 2: The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 12: Mission Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable
Speaker 12: Pictures for iHeart Podcasts.