Michael Steele: Tripped up by Their Own Lies

**Tim Miller** (0:12)
Hello and welcome to The Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show, co-host of MS Now's The Weeknight, also a former chair of the RNC. He was Lieutenant Governor of Maryland. It's Michael Steele. What's up, Chairman?

**Michael Steele** (0:25)
What's up, Big Tim? How you doing, baby? Look at you, looking good.

**Tim Miller** (0:29)
I'm doing good. Well, you think so? I don't know. I'm at the end of my wick, man. I got, my vacation starts tomorrow.
I got one more after you. So I don't know. It might be a little rough.

**Michael Steele** (0:42)
That's all right, baby. All right. Don't worry. We got you.

**Tim Miller** (0:44)
I'm just trying to sprint through the tape, sprint through the tape. Man, there was a lot of shit happening yesterday.

**Michael Steele** (0:51)
Yeah.

**Tim Miller** (0:52)
So we're going to play with a lot of people. There's a confirmation hearings for the new attorney general, the new director of national intelligence. The vice president was on Joe Rogan's show and had some interesting theories.

**Michael Steele** (1:05)
Yeah.

**Tim Miller** (1:06)
Much to get through. I guess we'll start with Blanche. It feels like the most important story.

**Michael Steele** (1:09)
Yeah.

**Tim Miller** (1:10)
This president's own attorney being attorney general. Why don't we just go straight into that? John Kennedy, my senator from Louisiana, just asked about his relationship with President Trump, and I think it sums up the whole deal. Let's take a listen to that.

**JD Vance** (1:25)
Are you and President Trump friends?

**Todd Blanche** (1:29)
I'm his lawyer, was his lawyer, and now I'm the deputy attorney general.

**Tim Miller** (1:34)
They call that the Kinsley gaffe for old Michael Kinsley.

**Michael Steele** (1:38)
The thing about it is these guys just cannot help themselves. Right now, a lot of them, because they've had arguably a lot of success bullshitting people and pushing through narratives, and upending so much of not just culture and economics, but the political dynamics that have always been in a very important balance between Democrats and Republicans, between our country and the world. Now, they sit there in their arrogance and in those moments like that.
It gets better when the guy is sitting there referring to himself as the president's lawyer, like, dude, this is not how this works. This is not the role you're supposed to be playing, but it is the role Donald Trump wants in the play. And that's the critical thing, I think, Tim. You've talked about it, I've talked about it. All of these actors are on the stage because that's where they want to be, and they're doing what they want to do for one person and one person only. Their self-value is zero. They have no self-worth. I don't care if you're Marco Rubio, I don't care if you are this guy, right?
The reality of it is you give yourself over in a way so completely and so fully. It's the only way you get on the stage, it's the only way you stay on the stage. So there were so many revealing moments yesterday between both of those, the DNI, the attorney general nominees, and how they responded when asked very simple, direct questions. That's when you see that butthole clench up real tight, right? It gets real tight and they get real nervous and they just start hubba da, hubba da, hubba da. And then the truth slips out.

**Tim Miller** (3:30)
Yeah. I mean, there were definitely two ways to go though with Todd Blanche. There is the psychology of this. Like why do you want to humiliate yourself like this? Why do you want to be this person? I guess, you know, and then there is like the serious nature of this thing. You were around chairman, you were around after Watergate, right? How old were you back then? I don't want to age you, but.

**Michael Steele** (3:51)
Oh, Watergate, I was 15, around 15

**Tim Miller** (3:55)
Yeah, okay. So it's kind of like my version of the Clinton stuff. And it's like, look, that's formative. You know, we made all these changes because the president of the United States was corrupt and he was using the power of the Justice Department to go after his political foes. And like, that's not how things should work in a rule of law country. And we realized, hey, okay, we got to make some changes. We need to be some more rules, some new laws, some new norms, some new mores to like prevent this from happening again. And like, here we are. And John Dean's still alive. All these people are still alive. Nixon's not, but like, it's not as if this was a lesson we learned in the history books even, right? You know, like a lot of people lived through this and we're just like, no, fuck it, we're going back.