Sarah Longwell: Dems, Go on Offense FFS

**Tim Miller** (0:12)
Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Friday. As promised, we got a mail bag, and I'm here with the publisher of this year, Bulwark. She has a book out. I do. September 8th, How to Eat an Elephant, One Voter at a Time. We'll put the link to the show notes. We haven't bought it yet. I don't know what you're doing. Please preorder it now. Also, the show notes, a friend of Maryam Tahmasebi, whose just horrific story I talked about in the podcast earlier this week, reached out, and with a GoFundMe for her and her family, they've been in the Dilley internment camp for like four months, even though they're legal residents. So we'll put that in the show notes as well. Appreciate any support you have.
Double duty today, girl. Thank you for doing this.

**Sarah Longwell** (0:56)
I just finished a Long Slug SecretPod with JVL. Actually, it was a great SecretPod. Go listen to it.

**Tim Miller** (1:01)
I mean, this is what you're getting as a Bulwark Plus member, the SecretPods. You might as well take advantage of it. I have one overlap topic just because we have to do it with the SecretPod. But besides that, it's all freshies for people. Okay, that's what we call it.

**Sarah Longwell** (1:15)
Freshies?

**Tim Miller** (1:15)
Yeah, skiing. When you go on the mountain, if it snows a little bit overnight, you get freshies.

**Sarah Longwell** (1:21)
I never heard that.

**Tim Miller** (1:22)
No, it's a little Colorado slang for you.
The Kennedy Center, there were some announcements yesterday. The Board of Trustees, which is Trump and his pals, approved a resolution calling for a new inscription beneath the center sign that would read, restored and renovated by President Donald J. Trump. It also voted to close the venue for two years of renovations and rename the center's grounds President Donald J. Trump Plaza.
This decision faces some legal obstacles for people to pay attention. Trump had added his name to the building already. The court said that was not allowed. The judge, I think, said that the law makes crystal clear that the center is to be named for President Kennedy.
They've had a tarp over it, I guess, since then? Do you ever drive by? I do. The tarp is up?

**Sarah Longwell** (2:10)
The tarp is up. They don't want anyone to see the building without Donald Trump's name on it. And because people, including our people, went and camped out there when they were supposed to be taking his name down, they didn't want anybody to see that, right? Because the only thing Trump cares about is his sort of fragile little ego.
And so, yes, they've tarped it. And now they basically, they clearly went back to the drawing board and said, how do we get his name on this? And one of the things that this is the board's doing, but if you remember, they stripped, they took, kicked everyone off the Kennedy Center board when Trump came in, put Rick Grenell in charge of it, I believe, and then stacked it with a bunch of other sort of Trump toadies. So their big goal has been shutting down the Kennedy Center and figuring out any way possible to get Trump's name on it.

**Tim Miller** (2:56)
Yeah, that was Rick's consolation prize after he lobbied to be Secretary of State. And they're like, you know, I think we'll put the gay over at the theater. One of the things I promised people after Trump won was that I was like not going to pretend to be outraged about things. You know, like we all only have so much kind of room in our heart for rage if we're not going to stroke out. This has been a story that I've struck. You know, I'm not a theater queen. It's just, you know, it's one of my weaknesses. You are.
Should I be really mad about this? I mean, aren't we just going to take his name off the fucking plaza as soon as we win again? And so it's kind of like this is stupid. Or is there a reason for me to be really more mad about it than I am?

**Sarah Longwell** (3:34)
So I think all of the reflecting pool, the ballroom, the Kennedy Center, they all sort of don't matter substantively, but they matter a great deal sort of metaphorically.
Because it is, this is the example of how we are all being dominated by Trump's ego. He pays attention to these things. He doesn't pay attention to the material needs of Americans. He walks us into a stupid war. He will go on the record and say, yeah, I don't care if Republicans lose. I don't care if inflation is up. Like, I don't care. I love the inflation, he says.