Adam Jentleson and Pablo Torre: This Country Is Being Scammed

Tim Miller (0:13)

Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. In segment two, we got my guy, Pablo Torre. The man of the moment. Looking forward to that. Make sure to stick around. We also have coming up to live shows. If you haven't got your tickets yet, go get them now. We are in Columbia. We are in Charlotte. We are in Atlanta. Go to the bulwark.com/events in October.

We might be adding a super special secret live show coming up in two weeks in the Midwest.

Hold tight for that. I'm going to have more news for you tomorrow. Our first guest today is amazing, and he's wrote a great book that I want you to read. I just want you to know that you can buy his book in good conscience because his book isn't out until next week. He's not competing with the more important book of the week, Sarah Longwell's How to Eat an Elephant. Right now, the number one New York Times bestseller is Ted Cruz's biography of Clarence Thomas. He and Sarah are in an internet fight.

It is important for God and country and democracy for you to buy Sarah's book today so that she can beat Ted Cruz. But here we go. Up first, he was Deputy Chief of Staff to Senator Harry Reid. More recently, he was Chief of Staff to John Fetterman. He's the founder of the Searchlight Institute, and his new book is Supermajority, How Democrats Can Build Lasting Power. It's Adam Jentleson. What's up, bro?

Adam Jentleson (1:24)

What's up, man? It's good to be here.

Tim Miller (1:26)

Welcome to the show. First time.

Adam Jentleson (1:28)

Love it.

Tim Miller (1:28)

We'll see how you're doing. We'll have the commenters rate and review you.

Adam Jentleson (1:31)

Yeah, please. Love the feedback.

Tim Miller (1:34)

I want to get to the book. We have a ton of alignment, which is nice. I have a little skepticism too, so we'll explore all that. But first, coming off Labor Day weekend, I just want to chat with you about a little bit of the politics news.

Trump's this week got his mid-term convention. I've barely talked about it because it feels so unimportant, and as we start to get closer and closer to it, it's feeling more and more sad to me. But I'm wondering if this is a little bit of Hopium on my part or if it's true. It's just like, who would even want to go? It's hard for me to see a lot of excitement for this convention. But what are you seeing coming up this week?

Adam Jentleson (2:13)

I don't think it's Hopium. I think it matches up with the numbers. I mean, Republican enthusiasm is way down. His approval ratings among Republicans are in the 80s, which is fine, but not really great. Usually, he's up in the 90s. So I think it was this holding this midterm convention in the first place is a massive mistake because Democrats want nothing more than to make these midterms all about Trump.

Trump seems to share that goal. So by doing this, he's giving Democrats an enormous gift. He's doing it after Labor Day, which is for many people when they start to tune into politics. So it would be the first thing they see and sort of set the tone for the home stretch.

I mean, I think it's going to be a major gift for Democrats. And that's even before we know what kind of crazy stuff he's going to say at this thing. So this is a week of news about Trump and how the party is his and how he's on the ballot. I think that's, you couldn't ask for a better gift if you're a Democrat.

Tim Miller (3:05)

It also, I think, is going to be like, I can't imagine it's full. They're going to fill a basketball arena for this? People just want to go and sit. I think about those turning point conventions I went to. And it's just speaker after speaker. And sometimes the place would be a quarter full of people in front of the Democrats. It's just like, who wants to hear Mike Rogers talk and then Roger Marshall?

It's kind of a boring prospect. The one thing Trump has always had over the Democrats is he's entertaining to a certain type of person, right? And he can dominate the conversation. It feels like he's lost that a little bit. I mean, we'll see.

Adam Jentleson (3:43)

I think he's lost a lot of his riz. I mean, he's lost a lot of that magic that he used to have.

Just objectively, he used to be a big crowd pleaser. He would hold these huge crowds wrapped for hours as he riffed on this and that. But I mean, look at the bicentennial that he decided to, again, make all about him. Nobody showed up to that. You've got a bunch of things recently where he sort of made a big deal out of it and then people just haven't showed up. I think people are tired of this guy. I think they're sick of him. I think Trump fatigue is setting in a big way across the country with Democrats with independents but also among his supporters. We'll see. I mean, I'm not going to underestimate his ability to...