What Happened to Rudy Giuliani?

I'm Charlie Sakes. Welcome back to the two the contrary podcast. Hell of a weekend. Donald Trump is on a losing streak in the courts, spent most of the weekend on a really unhinged bleat storm. I think the unhinged feels like kind of a euphemism after one judge actually two judges blocked his slush fund and another judge ordered him to take his name off the Kennedy Center and he says, you know, if they don't want me, I'm just going to wash my hands of the whole thing. And then he cancels the centerpiece concert of freedom to 50 and replaces it with a MAGA rally. Let's dive into all of this. And by the way, congratulations making it through the month of May. Welcome to June. And joining me on our first podcast in the month of June, our good friend John Avalon, author, historian, pundit, renaissance, man, good to have you back, John. Good to see you, Charlie. As always, thank you. I'm really interested in talking to you about your piece in the Atlantic about what happened to Rudy Giuliani because you know, this is one of those things going, you know, Rudy Giuliani, you know, could have been a contender. He, you know, he could have had schools and airports named after him. You were actually a speech writer for Rudy. You knew the guy. So I'm really interested in getting your perspective on what the hell happened to that guy. Can we just talk a little bit about what Donald Trump is doing to the 250th anniversary party as an historian? I mean, this is one of those, those, those milestones in which America has a chance to come together to, you know, reflect upon its values where it came from, what happened 250 years ago when we first rejected kings. And Donald Trump has decided to make, I mean, it could be about so many of these things. But Donald Trump has decided to make it about himself, which is not the most shocking story of the week. Is it? No, it's, it's completely predictable. But of course, it's also tragic. I mean, I, I think the entire tenor of America 250 has been damaged by Donald Trump because this should be a moment where we come together as we did the bicentennial, the sequestentennial is an awkward word, but the quarter millennia is a, you know, is a time for us to come together. But Trump's malignant narcissism, his impulse to act like a king is so contrary to American values in the most patriotic, nonpartisan sense. That it's, it's, it's alien. I'm worried it's alienating a whole generation that already we needed to do a lot more work in in terms of bringing them in to the, the, the American firmament, the idea that we are a great and a good country, but our greatness comes from our goodness. It's the Lincoln idea. And of course, the core Lincoln idea of that, that right makes might Trump avowedly and his administration avowedly in their own words believes that might makes right. That's an inversion of our best traditions. And so if you were trying to fray America's civic fabric, if you were trying to run down a democracy and its sense of self and being part of a broader noble project, if you were trying to destroy the idea of American exceptionalism, you could not do more than Donald Trump has done every day of his second term. But especially as we get closer to, to America's 250th, it's a tragedy, but we need to reclaim it as patriots and separate it from partisanship. Sometimes metaphors are almost too much on the nose. No, we, we, we, we, we, I know you're going to come up with ideas of paratives. The, the, the, the picture, which if you're watching on YouTube, you'll be able to see the picture of what he's done to the White House, just seems like this iconic moment. I cannot get it out of my head. The before picture of this, you know, pristine White House and the south lawn and what it looks like right now with the East Wing being a hole in the ground and that giant cage going up for his UFC match in, in, in just in terms of the insitification of the White House, it does feel as a, that's kind of a metaphor for what Donald Trump is doing to America. I think Kevin Williamson wrote something over the weekend about how he went from the greatest generation to the White Trash generation, like into a very short period of time here. But what do you think about this? I mean, did you have that physical manifestation of what he's doing? It's unfit away trash. It, yeah, I think it's, it's unfair. Not a term I'm comfortable saying, but it, look, it is a perfect metaphor. And of course, history will notice. And it, the, the Trumpists, I want to even say Republicans and certainly not conservatives who twist themselves into knots trying to rationalize the actions, the behavior that they would. Loudly and rightly condemned of a Democratic president to one tenth of it. But you can't get more indelible than the image of the bulldozed East Wing built by Teddy Roosevelt torn down without consultation with Congress or the American people. Being a giant hole in the ground. And then the erection of a ultimate fighting championship, you know, arena on the White House lawn at across the $60 million to fight on Trump's birthday. Yes. It's, I don't know, Charlie, I don't know if I'm putting it in here, but are you familiar with the film, Idiocracy? I was just about to say this. I mean, you know, every day it feels like that movie was a documentary. Yes. Not, not, not, not a parody. Yes. Idiocracy. Idiocracy. Everyone should, should go watch it. Luke Wilson stars. But it, the, the, the UFC cage on the White House lawn is, is what, you know, not that long ago seemed like the most surreal satire set in some future degraded America. Where everyone has become collectively dumber and has fixated only on money and sex and democracy itself as a punchline. It's literally taken from the film and it's happening in real time. And the fact that there are conservatives who were tying themselves up and not trying to excuse it rationalize it explain it. This is a degradation of our democracy. It, it, it makes America look bad in the eyes of the world. It, it, it's defining deviancy down, but that's to general phrase for it. To quote my face. It's also not conservative in any way whatsoever. We just underline that once again that, that in terms of the, whether you're talking about respect for our traditions, for the founders, for the values of classical architecture, which they all claim to be in favor of. This is not conservative and we see this over and over and over again. And look, I, at this point, I think there's so much sunken cost of so many Republicans who are willing to go, go along with it. But it does feel as if we're in the simulation, speaking of idiocracy, where, you know, keep pushing how far can we make these guys go? What can we make these guys actually defend? Can we make them defend the UFC, you know, fight on the White House lawn? Maybe somewhat trivial. But the slush fund, you know, I'm sorry, making a switch. This is a segue, but I'm with you. The slush fund may be the bridge too far for some of them. I mean, if only they'd been warned that they were going to go this way. What did you make of that? That is the kind of action that in the eyes of history is inexcusable. It is a moral. It is outright corruption, a plundering of the public treasury to give money to criminals, some of whom attacked our capital and assaulted police officers. Again, I hate to keep doing this thought experiment, but in the spirit of the politics of the golden rule, which we desperately need to restore. Otherwise, we're not going to have a country. Imagine what Republicans would say if a Democratic president did this one tenth of it, one tenth of it. No, tried to suit the government with a bogus suit. Had their justice department settle for $1.8 billion of the taxpayers money, explicitly to be paid out to partisan henchmen who broke the law and assaulted our capital and police officers. And with it, Kameh Katozl saying the IRS would forever and in perpetuity in all caps never investigate or uphold tax laws as it relates to Donald Trump, his family or their corporations. It is every bit as surreal and breaking of satire as the UFC cage on the White House lawn. I'm really glad you connected the dots that this whole idea that they would throw in the thing where Donald Trump never has to pay taxes again, never has to be audited again doesn't even have to file taxes because the IRS is basically pledged that they will never and it's not just Donald Trump members of his family and his business is like, we don't there's no precedent for this anywhere in the United States now on Friday. So for two pretty significant setbacks on the court were the judge in the original case the bogus loss it would be was suing the IRS she has re-opened the case and looking to see whether there was some fraud committed here. There was another judge who put a hold on it. But I thought it was interesting that you had a number of Republican legislators who have done something they did not do spoke out against it. It sounds like there was kind of a meltdown in the closed-door meeting of the Republican senators before they low-long holiday. Because it's insane. And because they're most of them are past their primaries and because election days around the corner. And it's totally undefensible. Totally indefensible. So I don't want to give too much credit. Although I have said Charlie that maybe we would see some more Republicans getting some spine once the primaries were over. And certainly people like John Corne and Tom might join Tom and Bill Cassidy might join Tom Tillis in speaking out even more clearly and righteously. Unless the, you know, that feels they might fear that it would compromise their, you know, lobbying partisan economy, lobbying contracts down the line. But I hope that's not the case because I think they're all patriotic people. But the corruption pissed off. And they're pissed off. But they're pissed off too. Right. Good. Well, we know that sometime is a necessary precondition for courage, unfortunately. That said, what I really object to is the soft corruption that made so many of them shut up for so long. It's when otherwise reasonable, ambitious people who rationalize dealing with Donald Trump because they say, well, he's popular in our party. Maybe there's a side order self interest, you know, if they're, if they're running for election, maybe in the case of the Treasury Secretary or anyone who goes in front of the Congress for oath to an office, where they all act like everyone else is a fool for understanding why they have to go along and defend whatever he says. Of course they can't say Donald Trump won the Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Doesn't everybody get the joke that that's a litmus test for my advancement and ability to serve the American people? And so of course I've have to lie. Of course I have to defend the indefensible. Of course I have to compromise the, my integrity and the integrity of the office I seek. Because otherwise I won't get ahead. That has become so baked in the cake that they look at everyone else is crazy for not getting the joke at the expense of their soul, frankly, and our country's soul, the soul of America. Yeah. Because what, what harmed is it caused, right, to just humor him to go along with all of this. Of course we're living in this. Speaking of which, you mentioned John Cornyn since you and I spoke last, of course, there's an illustration of what's happened to the Republican Party. John Cornyn is not just defeated for reelection. He is blown out by the Trump and doors candidate who is arguably, and I wouldn't, I'm going to take out the word arguably, the most corrupt immoral candidate south of Donald Trump in the country, Ken Paxton. I mean, first of all, that is amazing. The Republican voters. It's one thing in a binary choice when you're voting between Democrats and Republicans say, well, we have to swallow this because, you know, otherwise, whatever's going to happen. But they didn't have to vote for Ken Paxton. They could have gone with John Cornyn, but they wouldn't have been impeached and dited and accused of adultery. I mean, the list of, I actually tried to print out whistle, blow, retaliation, his own staff quit and turned him into the FBI. I mean, this guy is so bad. His own wife quit. And John Cornyn, who had spent all of these years building up the party and sucking up to Donald Trump goes down in flaming defeat. At some point, I mean, the Republican party now is just littered with the corpses, the carcasses of people who belatedly discover that loyalty only goes one way with Donald Trump, hasn't it? Of course. And yet, and, and, and it's all enough course, right? This goes back to the great Winston Churchill quote, "A pieceman is feeding a crocodile hoping it eats you last." And you know, when John Cornyn is posing for those deep thoughtful photographs, reading the art of the deal like it's a new addition of the New Testament, I mean, this is what you get. But you're right because it's a deeper issue, right? Ken Paxton beat him two to one, crushed him. And yet in the case of Bill Cassidy, we could go through the list. Bill Cassidy, Jeff Flake, John Cornyn, if Bob Corcor. If any of these cats had decided they wanted to run as an independent and liberate themselves from the insane hot house of these partisan primaries, they'd probably win. But we've gotten a situation where the parties think of the purpose of our politics, the politicians, do whatever the party says. And therefore they had described wisdom to it. There must be some wisdom in backing Ken Paxton, who's been indicted and turned over accused of fraud and adultery and bribery. The people have spoken. So therefore it is a victory for democracy if we just roll over and try to imbue it with some sort of supernatural talent and leadership skills on the part of Donald Trump. It's a mob boss mentality. It's a cult. It is. And to your point about running as an independent for people, I think that's not practical. In fact, it happened twice that I can release a Marcoski lost in a Republican primary, ran as an independent one, was returned to the United States Senate. Didn't Joe Lieberman do the same thing at one point? To the level of motto. So who's a model of rectitude and a very successful governor? The governor. Okay, so you mentioned John Cornyn. Now here's a plignant moment. I don't know whether you caught this over the weekend. John Cornyn posted something to X, which I found very point. I wrote something rather uncharitable about how pathetic John Cornyn was that he'd been sucking up to Donald Trump so much, you know, only to be thrown under the bus. But he gets it, but too late. So this is what I'm going to hold up the copy of the tweet. And it's very simple. An old but apt, fable, Cornyn posted. A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim. So it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid the scorpion might sting it. But the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown too if it killed a frog in the middle of the river. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion, why did you sting me? But knowing that we will both die to which the scorpion replies, I am sorry, but I couldn't help myself. It's my character. And that's it. That's the post. John Cornyn gets it. He's the frog Donald Trump. So he doesn't mention Trump's name, but you can tell that he does, he does not need to. John A.S. Cornyn, weighing in with the belated wisdom, of course, it rings a little hollow to be obviously on two fronts. First of all, all eminently knowable. I mean, the great civic family had been warned. Yeah. We reelected a man who incited a mob on the back of a lie to attack the Capitol to try to overturn an election. That's a mark that whoever voted for him, if you're listening. Like, we got to come together as a nation, but that's on you forever. The eyes of history will judge America because of people who made that disastrous decision and don't give me your what about is and about some other issue because that's the fundamental issue. It always comes down to character. If you write history books, if you read history books more importantly, you know it always only comes down to character when it comes to the presidency. That's all we got. This is the key point. I think back over the last 10 years and it was that fundamental break on the part of Republicans and conservatives who were telling us three in the 1990s, you know, the character matters and then decided the character did not matter. And I think a lot of the story is not about left versus right and not about liberal versus conservative. It is about this issue of character, which brings me to the piece that you wrote about Rudy Giuliani and what happened because this feels like speaking of metaphors for everything that has happened. Rudy Giuliani who was America's mayor, you work with him and you wrote a piece, what happened to Rudy Giuliani, which is a fascinating question. So John, answer the question, what happened? How do you go from this guy who could have been this iconic American? Was a plausible candidate for President of the United States to being the drooling punchline that he is now? I'm sorry to be unkind, but it is pretty bad. That is unkind, but it's part of the tragedy. So I was Rudy's chief speech writer in his second term during, including through 9/11. I was in my 20s, I think I was 27 during 9/11. I went to work for him and I'd previously done work on volunteer work on the Clinton campaign, been a White House intern. I was, and at the time, and I'm very much my politics are very sort of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, third-way politics. Right. But Rudy at that time, that broad script, right? I mean, on the center right rather than the center left. But he was what I had called basically a law on order progressive. It was pro choice, pro gay rights, pro healthcare, pro immigrant. He was tough on crime. He was physically responsible, physically disciplined. He performed welfare, actually took one of the folks who'd been the architect under Tommy Thompson from your home state, Wisconsin, brought him New York. One at every seven New York, everyone knows the crime declines statistics. And they really are extraordinary. If you think about it, the city was averaging over 2000 murders a year. That's six a day. And yes, it's coincident with the crime epidemic, but policing strategies were not working. Rudy revolutionized policing strategies with CompStat and quality of life policing. You know, cuts crime and all the major crimes, I mean, by two thirds. I mean, it's extraordinary. But one out of every seven New Yorkers was on welfare when Rudy came into the office. One out of every seven, 1.1 million. And eight years later, he'd cut that number in half two. He'd taken a deficit, turned it into a surplus while reducing taxes. And I mention all this because to me, the greater tragedy and the peace, I know enough not to read the comments or take them into account. And I got wonderful feedback from a wide array of folks. I mean, all political spectrums. But there are some folks who can't look past the last act. The point of the column is we shouldn't judge anyone by their last act. This has been a tragic last act. He has destroyed his reputation and lit it on fire and his personal finances in service of Donald Trump. And part of the tragedy though is that we shouldn't, we have cut ourselves off from accessibility to the policies that were so effective. And that 20 years of Rudy, followed by 12 years of, sorry, eight years of Rudy, 12 years of Bloomberg, those 20 years turned around New York City, but not only New York City, they helped set a model that helped turn around urban America. I remember a great new, new Republic cover story that I read in college by Peter Biner, which makes, we'll make Peter Field old, called the New Progressives. And it was about Rudy, but it was also about people like Mayor Dick Ruden of Los Angeles and like a wide of Cleveland, a John Norquist of Mill Waukey. And Steve Goldsmith of Indianapolis, all these third way mayors in effect, who were not conservative, many were Republicans, but not all, but they had the latitude to take on the bureaucracy that had been rationalizing the idea that all you could do was manage decline in cities. And it was, people were dying because of this. People were fleeing the cities. Our country was fraying in fundamental ways. And Rudy helped set that model. And because he has destroyed his reputation so thoroughly, it's made all those policy wisdoms much less accessible for people. And that itself is a tragedy. But on a personal level, I can speak to the question. Why did he do it? Because he has agency here. You know, the headline is what happened over the Giuliani, but it didn't happen to him. This was something he chose. And especially as you go through his legacy and what he could have done, because Rudy Giuliani had multiple alternative paths that he could have taken in life that would have taken him in a completely different way. I mean, there was a time when he was, you know, probably with the most admired American, he had this record. And yet he chose to do this. To explain that choice to me. - So I'm happy to, but I was with him during 9/11 and I learned an almost amount from him, not only in that time, which is why I tell the backstory of his policies because people have forgotten it, it's important. So a couple of things. First of all, I just do a counterfactual to put in perspective what you just said. If Al Gore had won the 2020 race, I think Rudy Giuliani would have been elected president in 2004. - Possible. - Right. I mean, all other things being equal. Can't be, I have certitude when it comes to counterfactuals and generally I hate counterfactuals. But just to throw that into sharp relief, shall we say. What happened to Rudy? I believe is that he let his worst impulses overtake the better angels of his nature, particularly in two points. And I make this point the piece. One of his most characteristic quotes and the one that most resonated with me was to be locked into partisan politics doesn't permit you to think clearly. The other characteristic quote that explains his long career as a really successful pioneer in US attorney, who, you know, Italian American US attorney broke the back of the mob was laws of search for the truth. He really believed it. - Deep right at that time. - He got locked into partisan politics and he stopped thinking clearly. And the ultimate insult is that he started peddling aggressively Trump's big lie and therefore made a mockery of the idea that laws of search for the truth. I started to notice a decline around 2015 where his just filter and judgment was often private. It coincided with the death of his best friend, Peter Powers, lifelong best friend, Goodman. And he was not initially a Trump supporter. He had never been close to Donald Trump, even when he was mayor, didn't particularly respect him. - Right. - But once Trump was the nominee and he was more of a jet bush, Chris Christie guy, but once Trump was the nominee, part of being in that sort of Fox News ecosystem and spending a lot of time giving speeches to conservative audiences, you know, you start, you know, getting high on your own supplier, you become a product of that hot house. - Well, you said you'd spend when he was having the ex-mayors syndrome where he was addicted to attention, who addicted to having headlines, being addicted to be the center. So this was like a drug to him, right? That he could be a player as long as he was within that world. - Well, yes. And yet he, you know, this is something that happened famously to Ed Koch, right? Ed Koch could not, you know, the former editor, like, you know, he would just write movie reviews in the newspaper and just say outrageous, like, you know, radio shows, like just, you know, you get addicted to that attention where it gets much darker with Rudy is because of the animus he starts to feel irrationally to my mind towards Obama and Hillary Clinton. And then he starts going on TV and as a sort of designated attack dog, shill for Donald Trump. And he reflects back that Fox News ecosystem in a way that, and then of course, as with all the cautionary tales we've told, doesn't even get anything in exchange for the destruction of his reputation. Did he think he was gonna be a attorney general? Did he think that he was going to get that reward? I assume he did. - He wanted to be Secretary of State that had been reported. He had been spending a lot of time since 9/11 traveling the world. He had a fairly detailed worldview. Pretty hawkish. But, you know, obviously informed by 9/11, but more than that. That was taken off the table. He had been in his late 20s, early 30s, number three at the Justice Department. I don't know if that was ever offered, but you know, certainly qualified from a resume standpoint, more qualified than some people who served as a Attorney General. Under Trump. And yet ended up with nothing. And ended up sort of going on these, you know, Ukrainian phishing expeditions and sort of, you know, you just can't follow what he was talking about. He became really a hostage to that hot house. - Okay, well, let's talk about that. So, so he, he goes, he supports Trump. He gets nothing from him. And yet, you know, gets sucked into this world. As you describe, you know, that he forgot the law was asserted for truth and instead pushed Trump's baseless big lie about a stolen election. He became susceptible to conspiracy theories, leading these shady phishing expeditions in Ukraine. And by the way, it was not even go into the kind of conspiracies that he was peddling because they just make no sense whatsoever. And, you know, this contributed in part to Trump's first impeachment. And so, and then January 6th, he's calling for a trial by combat. So, part of this is you get, you make a partisan choice. You like the attention. But there's something else. How do you go from being this respected prosecutor who cared about the search for truth to the bizarre conspiracy theorist who is holding press conferences in front of the four seasons, you know, excavation. I mean, is there a mental break days or cognitive decline? Is there, I mean, I am fascinated by just watching people's brains get broken. - As you know, there's something unofficially called the gold water rule in journalism, particularly television journalism, where one does not surmise about a public political figures health because we don't know. I don't know. I do know, as I say in the piece, that beginning around 2015, I started to notice a concerning and accelerating lapse in filter end judgment. And it had been reported he was drinking at the time, but I will tell you he was never a big drinker at all during the significant amount of time I knew him. That was not sort of an open secret that people were trying to hide, not at all. As I also say in the January 6th, if we really want to be accountable, I have one line that matters a lot to me because I stayed in touch with Rudy for all our significant disagreements, even surreal moments where I was anchoring a story about Rudy's sort of devolution on CNN. And I had to sort of make a disclosure and do my, you know, but I don't think "Trial by combat" was a slip of the tongue. I don't think we fully know still what Rudy and Bernie Karek and other people were talking about the Willard Hotel, but this was not an accident. And "Trial by combat" is and Rudy is a very educated guy. That is a classical term of art fraught with bad history. And I'm not trying to let him off the hook, but I do think and I do deeply believe that the essential teamism of partisan politics when it becomes hyperpartisan and hyperpolarized, it stops people from thinking clearly. They put their partisan teamism ahead of patriotism and even their own principles. And that's about human nature and maybe some people are more susceptible to it than others, but I think that's an extreme example of what we've seen all too often. - And it goes to the whole issue of being occult, that people behave in a very, very different way. Moms behave in a different way than individuals would behave. But I wanna go to the very last line of your Atlantic peace because I think this goes to the heart of our conversation. If there is a cautionary Coda, you write, it is this. Rudy Giuliani would have been an even greater man if he had tried harder to be a good man. It all comes back to character, doesn't it? That's a great line, I gotta tell you John. He could have been a great man if he had just tried harder to be a good man. What did you mean, what were you thinking there? - Well, I met what I said. But it always seems to me and this comes out of my book on Lincoln. Sherman once said about Lincoln that he was the, some version of the most good man among great men and the most greatest man among good men. And it was the qualities of kindness and wisdom. And that's truly the source of Lincoln's greatness. When you look back and he sort of functions as the Jesus of American politics assassination on Good Friday, but the people who serve as acolytes, that's what they keep returning to. It's the man's kindness and wisdom, the fact that he was, you know, what the definition of character people use sometime in words, you know, what you do when you don't think anybody's watching. - Excellent definition. And it is a perfectly reasonable definition. It's see worthy. And that's why character counts, particularly in a president, but in all our lives. - So why did Americans forget that? Why did Americans, I mean, when I am old enough to remember, we would grow up with the stories about the character of a George Washington or the character of an Abraham Lincoln. And we are in this moment right now. We're talking a week after Ken Paxson is nominated. Donald Trump is sitting in the White House. This was something that would have been completely uncontroversial two decades ago that America is great because it is good, goodness matters. And now American greatness has nothing to do with goodness. How did we get here, John? - Well, first of all, I think we should say it was never a matter of 100% consensus. There were always people, particularly I would say, on the extremes who believed in that classic phrase that smacks of Leninism, you know, you got to break a few eggs to make an omelette, right? And sometimes that's a benign metaphor. But often it said, you know, sometimes you got to, you know, you got to kill the chicken to scare the monkeys. If you go back and look at the origin, which is a Chinese Communist Party phrase, which it speaks to, an attempt to manipulate human nature through fear. When you go back to the early days of the far right, I mean, you know, the Bertrand McCarthy wing, McCarthy didn't particularly venerate character, neither did he, we long, right? And so I don't wanna simply give the impression that we once were thoroughly good, because, you know, one of the things was studying history as human nature doesn't change. There's a great, relatively unknown link in quote that was the epigraph to my book, "Lincoln the Fight for Peace," and he says it the night he wins reelection 1864. And one can argue that really is the most consequential election in American history. I think 16 and 24 are deeply consequential in ways that we will spend the rest of our lifetimes as citizens of this republic digging our way out of. But Lincoln, of course, is, Trump is the anti-Lincoln. And, and Lincoln says this quote on the night of the 1864 election, and it speaks to human nature and politics. He said this, "Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as good and as bad. Let us therefore study the incidence of this as a philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be revengeed." That, to me, is the whole deal. And so we don't need to mythologize the past and say we were all good once. But leadership matters and culture matters. And we did have leadership, certainly the case of Lincoln, not so much Andrew Johnson, who tried to model character. Certainly in the case of Washington, not so much in Aaron Burr. But leadership matters and setting a tone of a culture perhaps aided by being a slightly more religious culture, but that's not a panacea itself. Where there was a conscious expectation that people would try to model good character, that that was a prerequisite for leadership. And if people fell short in serious ways, they would be removed from leadership. And we got in a cultural rut, I think reflecting some of the shallower values of our time, the more transactional values, remember the movie "Idiocracy." Everyone don't care about democracy, as long as they've got money and sex. Like that's the only thing that matters. And if we denigrate character, if we dismiss its importance, understanding that people are flawed and human, but that character on a deep level is the only currency that keeps the democracy running. That's what, the book I'm finishing right now, Teddy Roosevelt, in his speech, citizenship in a republic, which everybody knows is man in the arena. He's talking about the responsibilities of citizens in a democracy. And the whole point is that in the life of nations, as well as individuals, character is the essential quality. Nothing else matters at the end of the day. And in a democracy, citizens need to have character. You can't simply let leaders take care of everything because the country and the government is a reflection of our collective self. And so we do need to start taking the idea of character seriously again. We need to start inculcating it and teaching again, and not in a pie as finger waggy judge metal way, but just say that character counts, that kind of counts, that trying to be good is likely to make you greater. And then greatness without goodness is actually hollow and bankrupt. And that's in less than we need to send, and we need to tell, and we need to model. And for people who go out of their way to excuse, and I don't mean, I'm not even talking about a sex scandal that takes someone down a peg, because that could be an isolated incident or it could be cordoned off from their service. I mean pervasive bad character that's excused time and time again, because it's in someone's short-term partisan self-interest. That's a betrayal of the Democratic Republic. That's a betrayal of the United States of America and the promise of our country. - If that is the legacy of the times and the struggles we're going through right now is that we relearn those values, then it will be a positive outcome. But I do think that there's going to be an interesting debate about what constitutes why character matters, but also, and we're seeing this playing out in some of the races this year. What does it mean to be a man? What is, is it aggressiveness? Is it being bullied or is it service? What really constitutes greatness? Is it an ability to humiliate someone, to crush someone, or is it to raise people up? And so I think all of those things are on the table now that we need to rethink. We need to rethink what does it mean to be a human being? What are human beings for with AI? So we have to wrestle with these fundamental issues that I think that before the current time, We'd been complacent enough to think we're settled, right? We didn't think that we needed to talk about these things. We didn't understand why you had to inculcate character because I think your point is exactly right. If we've learned anything in the last 10 years, it is that character is the alpha and the omega of a liberal democracy that you must have. Yes, but can I ask you a question? Sure. And this is about your journey and, you know, we're very much on the same page. But one of the dark ironies of this is that Republicans and conservatives were the ones who were most vocal, most pious, sometimes judgemental to their fellow citizens, about the importance of character and modeling family values and all the phrases that actually matter. But to me, the dark, weird irony that is sort of inevitable, I guess, in a novelistic sense, but hopefully not in the life of a republic, is the people who spoke the longest and the loudest about the importance of character were the first to abandon it wholesale. I'd still don't fully understand it. Now, I'd love your insights on that. I don't either. It's that, then that was the greatest shock for me. And I'll tell you one of the most shocking moments. I mean, it was shocking, of course, in 2015, 2016, watching evangelical Christians decide that they were going to, you know, change their position. I mean, they flipped completely on the issue of character. This was the biggest shock. I mean, first of all, it was watching evangelical Christians who had gone from 80/20 that character mattered in public life to being 80/20, that it didn't matter whatsoever. But I'll tell you, the moment, I can still remember this, the shocking moment. I was a great admirer of Bill Bennett, member of the former Secretary of Education, who wrote a series of books called The Book of Virtue. Yes. And all about the books of Virtue. And we were friendly. And I really would have described myself as kind of a Bill Bennett conservative at one time. And I remember sitting watching cable news one day in the fall of 2016, when I was very clearly never-Trump anti-Trump. And Bill Bennett comes on and he talks about the moral vanity of never-Trumpers who were not getting in line behind Donald Trump. And when I heard Bill Bennett, the man who wrote the actual books about character and virtue and documented all the ways in which, you know, character and virtue were just part of the American culture say that it was moral vanity to object to somebody of the character of Donald Trump. I remember just being absolutely shocked, but that was just, that was, unfortunately, just prologue for what was going to happen over the next decade. So I find it among the things that are the most shocking and don't even get into people who claim to be fiscal conservatives because I do think that flip on character was the fundamental one. And I think that for a lot of, a lot of the never-Trumpers, it wasn't about the ideology, although we never thought of Donald Trump as being a serious, you know, person or having any principles whatsoever, much less being conservative. It was this question, why would you put someone, this reckless, this dishonest, into this position of trust that came down to that issue of character? So I still haven't figured it out over less than 10 years, except for the incredible capacity for hypocrisy and rationalization. Yes, that too. And I do think it's important that we answer it in some fundamental way, because of course it's still going on every day. You know, when I occasionally go back and do sort of panel debates, you know, you just, you know, the Republicans, they understand their assignment. They've got to basically rationalize and defend anything Donald Trump does or says, or at the very least, have a ready bag of what aboutism to try to deflect and distract. Okay, see, see, okay, so you didn't mention his name, but I'm just trying to imagine what it must be like to be a Scott Jennings. So we don't, whether you have a certain amount of like, just so pride. You know, because you're an historian, you think this way that you think about, okay, how, what will my legacy be? What will people say about me in the future? What, what was the meaning of my life? There are so many of these people that don't seem to think though that way, right? They just, and it's like, there are some things that I just would never do or say because it would embarrass me because I would have a certain amount of pride, because it would be humiliating. And part of this, this culture we're living in, is there a lot of people that just don't seem to care about that? Which always completely surprises me. The willingness to abase yourself by saying some stupid shit on cable television. So I'm not going to join the pile on Scott in particular because I've known him a long time. And, you know, everyone's got their reasons. And, you know, he was originally a Bush McConnell guy. And, you know, very often you're much nicer than me. One of the downsides that people, you know, can play roles, right? They get cast in a role. And this is where I think we do ourselves a disservice when we treat civic debates as sort of extension of worldwide wrestling. Even though, you know, it's maybe great for ratings is bad for democracy. It doesn't necessarily reflect what people think. But I do think this is one of the real dangers of return to the dangers of hyperpartisan chip and polarization that I've been banging on about for a long time. The power of rationalization, I think the road to hell is paid with rationalizations. And you can do rationalizations in any numbers of ways. You know, there's a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump and someone needs to articulate what they believe. It's a lead us not to. It doesn't reflect the full, you know, gravity of our real debates in this country. And so if someone's got to take the sling in arrows, I will. And I might not always say what I absolutely believe, but I will do my best to channel what they believe. And that's a populist expression of democracy. That's what I'm imagining an internal monologue being. Right. Right. And here's the thing. If that causes you to abandon facts, if it causes you to violate principles that are personal and deeply held, it's all in the service of playing a role and fitting in with the party. And again, I'm not speaking about Scott, because I wouldn't do it. But that seems to me the original sin here. It's this impulse to go along, to get along because the partisan economy is how you get ahead. And that is one of the greatest dangers to a democracy. That's putting party over country. No, it is. And this partisan, yeah, use the term partisan economy. People need to understand that that in this world, if you want to fit in, if you own, and it's not just whether you're on a show or you're in elective office, it's the entire ecosystem. And the incentives are to go along with this. And I guess that's the lines. One thing to say, I'm going to articulate this populist message is something else to, you know, basically say, I will defend the indefensible, I will defend the corruption, I will engage in lies, I will engage in conspiracy that I do not believe in. And that's that decision where you decide what kind of a person do I want to be. But in the flood of the hyper partisanship, people don't ask that question. They just want to, they want to fit in. I can't wait to read your book. When's it coming out? Theodore Roosevelt's guide to life will be out next March. I'm finishing up at its right now. So I'm in the thick of it. But I always happy to take time to talk with you because I always enjoy our conversations and I look forward to many more. Well, the editing is based is the fun part of writing isn't it? That's that's that's that's that's sometimes. Yes. I like the crafting of it. Well, thank you so much, John Avalon. He's he's piece about Rudy Giuliani's in the Atlantic. We will post a link to it and thank you all for listening to this episode to the contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will continue to do this because we do need to remind ourselves that character matters. But also that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.