No One Has Seen McConnell in Weeks—and His Office Just Recycled an Old Statement

**JVL** (0:00)
Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend, Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark.
Sarah, happy Friday. Also, happy Friday to people who are hearing this show for the first time. If you are tuning in to get The Bulwark pod, you're getting this little secret thing while Tim is on vacation.

**Sarah Longwell** (0:22)
It's a real treat for you.

**JVL** (0:23)
What a treat it is.
Because Sarah and I tape at 7 o'clock in the morning, and so you get this weird bedhead show. So this is a show that you may not be familiar with. Sarah and I do it every Friday. We do it in secret. It's just for members of Bulwark Plus. And this is a little preview of it. Maybe you'll love it. Maybe you'll decide that just taking Tim for free isn't enough, and you want to become a Bulwark Plus member and get all of this stuff. Sarah, they should do that, right?

**Sarah Longwell** (0:55)
They should. Look, we don't pay well very much. And listen to how my voice sounds. This is an authentic morning. The first person I've spoken to is JVL on this podcast and all of you.
We do a punchy show, but I gotta tell you, The Secret Pod is one of the earliest podcasts that The Bulwark has. It's one of the very few things we put behind a paywall. JVL and I talk about some news of the day, our first drafts. We have Secret Pod rules, guys. Part of Secret Pod rules is that we're allowed to be wrong on this show because we're gonna tell you, we're not sure if we think a thing. It's a great show. People love it.
It is the member staple for this show. And so if you are not yet a member and you wanna know what happens on the other side with the commenters, and I'll just say this too, we only read comments from our community, the people who are rocking with us. You guys wanna comment for free on YouTube and yell at us? We're not gonna read that.

**JVL** (1:48)
Maybe Tim does, but I'll just be very honest. I don't, like in terms of my time each day to engage with community, like I try to give like at least an hour, an hour and a half every single day to community engagement. And so I do have to prioritize it. And so I tend to prioritize it with the Bulwark Plus members. And again, this isn't a value judgment. It's not saying I don't like you guys.

**Sarah Longwell** (2:16)
I spent a lot of time in the chat this past couple weeks because I've written some triads and...

**JVL** (2:22)
How's that going for you? Did you read those? Nope.

**Sarah Longwell** (2:24)
Did you read those?

**JVL** (2:27)
Literally, I didn't just so I could troll you.

**Sarah Longwell** (2:29)
My favorite comment is somebody was like, Sarah finally figured out how to read the triad. She started to write the triad.
Hey, okay, yeah, so people go do, we're gonna jump into the show, because JVL, I got something I want to say to you. We've not, you've been out and I've missed you.

**JVL** (2:50)
Missed you too, best friend.

**Sarah Longwell** (2:52)
Tim is out. I've been carrying this whole thing, you guys all know.

**JVL** (2:55)
You haven't.

**Sarah Longwell** (2:55)
Nobody's, I've been writing, I've been podcasting.

**JVL** (2:57)
You put the bulwark on your back and just carried the whole thing.

**Sarah Longwell** (3:01)
I'm in the comments. But I got into this thing with Bill, and you know how sometimes your best content ends up being like a throwaway thing that you ended up going down this rabbit hole on. But I got into it with Bill about something that's just been on my mind. You and I have talked about sort of my broken man theory before. But I started to talk to Bill about the inverse, which is one of the reasons I get sort of obsessed with how terrible the men leading us are right now is that I've always really loved a good man. And I went on a bit of a rant about this on the Monday show with Bill. And then– but I've been thinking about it ever since. I got a big reaction. A lot of people emailed me about it.
And I was reflecting on what it is about– like why I feel this. And the thing is, is I've been very lucky. I've been surrounded by good men. And sometimes people think lesbians– I don't know if people watched Chasing Amy, but there's this– you know, some of the stereotypes of lesbians, where they don't like men, you know, they're– the feminist stuff gets– makes them hostile to men.