President Trump’s proposed political slush fund is getting pushback — including from his own party. This week on “The Opinions,” the national politics writer Michelle Cottle and the columnists Jamelle Bouie and David French discuss how the president’s “reparations for rioters” settlement fund may be his biggest miscalculation yet ahead of the November midterms.
Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Michelle Cottle: I’m Michelle Cottle. I’m a political writer for Times Opinion, and I am here this week with my fabulous colleagues, columnists David French and Jamelle Bouie. Guys, it’s been a minute since the three of us were together. How goes it?
David French: It’s great to get the gang back together again. I’m glad to see Jamelle.
Jamelle Bouie: Yeah, looking forward to the conversation and glad to be back.
Cottle: Gotten the band back together, and today, we’re going to talk about Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund that will ostensibly compensate people who say they were victims of political persecution. This could, for example, result in some pretty big payouts to the Jan. 6 rioters, funded by U.S. taxpayers. Then we’re going to unpack some of the recent primaries.
So, as always, lots to cover. Let’s get to it. Jamelle and David, I know we have talked many, many, many times about Trump’s corruption and his chipping away at Democratic institutions and norms. Before we get into the specifics, what are you most concerned about with this political slush fund — with the usual caveat that we are taping this on a Thursday morning? And I realize there’s a lot to choose from.
Bouie: Yeah. It’s like, what isn’t there to be concerned about? It’s an illegal — probably also unconstitutional — slush fund, meant to pay off the rioters that the president pardoned at the beginning of his term. You’ve got guys like Enrique Tarrio, former head of the Proud Boys, saying that he’s going to ask for $2 to $5 million from this fund.
And this is ostensibly for victims of the weaponization of government. And what does “weaponization of government” mean in this context? It means people being arrested, charged, prosecuted and convicted by a jury of their peers in fair trials. Like, this isn’t — what weaponization?
It’s nonsense. And so, it’s paying off people, who were fairly convicted of trying to overturn a presidential election, from money stolen from the American taxpayers, for all intents and purposes, and it’s crazy. It’s genuinely one of the most insane things I have ever seen. And we’re 10 years into Trump, right? So, we’ve seen a lot. And this really takes the cake.
Cottle: David?
French: If anything, Jamelle just undersold this. Like, if he’s erred in any way, he has undersold this. And here’s what ——
Cottle: Sigh of caution, yeah.
French: Here’s what I mean about it: I think it might be the most purely monarchical thing that he’s done yet in an already monarchical presidency. And the reason why I say that ——
Cottle: That’s a bold statement.
French: Now, I fully recognize that this is also a man who unilaterally launched a war on a foreign country. He’s been able to look back at past presidential misbehavior in that arena to justify this, and he tries to do that here by looking back at prior presidents who, when friendly groups had filed litigation, had entered into favorable settlements with friendly groups. Now, this is a practice called “sue and settle.” And a lot of those settlements I didn’t like. They were too favorable, for example.
But that is not this. Let’s break down what this is. So, this is Donald Trump suing his own I.R.S. — the I.R.S. that he controls — for alleged misconduct that was committed when — dot, dot, dot — he controlled the I.R.S. in his first term. So he’s suing an agency he controls for alleged misconduct that occurred under his watch. Then, the defending agency is supposed to be the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice is also under his control.
So, here you have it: He’s filing a lawsuit against an entity he controls. This is absurd. And so, when a federal judge looks at this and goes: Wait a minute, is this even an adversarial process? Is this a real case and controversy? I mean, this is one side suing itself. And so, then what happens is, the Trump administration, seeing the looming legal disaster, drops the case, or Trump drops the case. Then his own administration enters into a unilateral agreement with him. That doesn’t just create a slush fund for non-parties to the case, in other words, people who weren’t even parties to this at all.
There’s no judicial oversight. The slush fund is going to be conducted entirely at his own discretion, according to his own procedures with the people that he selects. And then, to top it all off, this same agreement grants him, his family, all the parties to this lawsuit, this sort of in perpetuity, or a version of a civil pardon.
In other words, it has a release of liability against Trump and his family that is extraordinarily broad. And why is this so important? Because Trump has the power to pardon, but the power to pardon only applies to crimes. It doesn’t apply to civil lawsuits. So, if he violated the law as president, he would be subject to civil litigation, even if he pardoned himself, so, now he and parts of his family are immune from civil lawsuits brought on matters arguably unrelated to this very case.
And I know it’s a lot less consequential than a war in Iran. But as far as a matter of assuming power, just grabbing power and using it just entirely to settle scores, to pay off friends and allies — I mean, this one absolutely takes the cake.
And this is an administration so corrupt that, as I was talking in an interview this week, I said the Gilded Age guys are angry right now that they were born in the wrong century, because if they really wanted some grift and graft, now is the time in this administration, and this stands out even in that milieu.
Cottle: OK. So, just ——
French: Other than that, it’s fine. Other than that, totally fine.
Cottle: So, there’s a slush fund for his allies, it’s going to be overseen by his friends — they’re already jockeying over who’s going to be on the panel that oversees this — and blanket immunity for his family. And it’s all going to be funded by us, right?
Bouie: One of the things to mention, though, if you are part of the group overseeing the slush fund, you can use the slush fund to reimburse yourself for all your expenses. So, if you want to, for example, take like a nice per diem — get a fancy hotel while you’re doing the business of the slush fund — under the terms of the agreement, you can use the money to pay yourself a nice little fee.
Cottle: So, what if I applied? Are they going to let me distribute the slush? If it’s my money, I feel I should be involved here.
Bouie: I mean, we should all apply. We say that we were there on Jan. 6, we were in the crowd and we feel victimized.
Cottle: And just see where it goes.
Bouie: We feel victimized by sleepy Joe Biden.
French: By the way, as you guys are talking, I’m remembering another big legal thing I forgot in that whole litany.
Cottle: Oh, oh, throw it in. I don’t want to leave anything out here.
French: OK, just real quick. This is ——
Cottle: Come on, hit me.
French: I can’t believe I didn’t have it in the initial screed, but ——
Cottle: David.
French: I’m so sorry. Incomplete screeds are a podcasting sin. Without question.
Cottle: Thank you.
French: If I’m a normal human being — let’s suppose there is MAGA Mike and Blue Bob. OK? So, if I’m MAGA Mike now, I could have taken my flagpole and used it to beat a police officer, spent time in prison for assault, now I’m pardoned; and now, even though I physically attacked a police officer, I could file some sort of weaponization claim. Maybe claiming I was poorly treated in prison, or something happened in the trial that deprived me of due process. You know, you just use whatever hook. And MAGA Mike, who beat a police officer with a flagpole, could get half a million dollars, or a million dollars, who knows?
Then you have Blue Bob. Blue Bob is protesting ICE in Minneapolis, and let’s say an ICE officer smacks him in the face or tasers him, or pepper sprays him for no reason.
Cottle: Or shoots him in the face. Sorry.
French: Or shoots him. Well, is Bob going to be able to apply to that slush fund? Well, I mean, he can apply, but good luck. But then, let’s say Bob then tries to get compensation through a normal, legal channel for getting compensation from a federal officer who’s violated your civil rights. Well, good freaking luck, because there is this just massive web of immunities that really wall off federal officials from accountability, far more than state and local officials.
But if you’re MAGA Mike and you beat somebody with a flagpole on Jan. 6, there’s a chance that money could be flowing to you. And so every direction you turn on this, it’s terrible, and that’s without justifying one iota of the sue and settle practice I talked about earlier.
Cottle: So, I know that there are two police officers who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, who’ve already sued to try and stop the fund. Is there a legal path, do you think, forward to stop it?
French: That’s a very good question. As far as the merits, there is absolutely a legal path. Just grabbing $1.776 billion from general funds that were appropriated for legal settlements, and use them in cases that aren’t ——
Cottle: Yeah.
French: Those aren’t real cases. There’s a lot going on here legally, but everybody who files a lawsuit has to have standing. They have to show that they themselves have been hurt by this action. And, as a general taxpayer, I can’t say, “Well, that’s 1.776 billion I’m never getting back,” or whatever, that my portion of ——
Cottle: Yeah, that doesn’t count as standing.
French: That doesn’t count as standing. And so, the question, really, is going to be: Who has standing, and when is a case ripe? In other words, when is there actually something to sue? When are there actually procedures to attack? And so, that is a much more complicated question, especially since the Supreme Court has been, if anything, kind of rolling back, paring back standing a little bit.
So, it’s going to be very interesting to see who, ultimately, has standing to challenge that. It’s hard for me to see how this fits within any legal structure contemplated by federal law.
Cottle: Jamelle, do you see a political path forward? Could this be an issue that folds into the Democrats railing against corruption? Could it be effective as a campaign issue? Where do you see this going with politics?
Bouie: As we were speaking, I saw a poll from the American Research Group, middle of the road pollster. They’re not looking like anything crazy. Trump approval: disapprove 65 percent, approve 31 percent. I mention that because, it seems to me, that this weaponization fund, this slush fund, these reparations for Jan. 6ers — quick parenthetical: For a long time, people have been like: Reparations for slavery, reparations for Jim Crow, that’s crazy. That’s insane. How could you ever do that? And meanwhile, with the stroke of a pen, we now have reparations for rioters. It’s very exciting.
Cottle: A protected group: rioters.
Bouie: A protected group, subject to systematic discrimination. So, we got this reparations fund, and I have to imagine that this is wildly unpopular with the public for a couple of reasons. The first is that just by proximity to Trump — Trump is so unpopular that this becomes unpopular by extension. But the other thing is, it’s such a striking example of the president’s fundamental indifference to the economic prospects of ordinary Americans. It’s like Trump saying, “I don’t care about that.”
Reporter: When you’re negotiating with Iran, Mr. President, to what extent are Americans’ financial situations motivating you to make a deal?
President Trump: Not even a little bit.
Bouie: And also, “I’m only going to lift a finger to give money to people who helped me do something that most Americans agree was, at the very least, a crime and was wrong.” This is such a potent symbol of the president’s corruption and disregard for the economic well-being of ordinary people, and just too clever by half-trolling, ha-ha-ha, to $1.776 billion. Like, that’s not clever. That’s just rubbing it in people’s faces.
And I just have to imagine that this isn’t going to cause the president’s approval to collapse, but it’s going to add, once again, in a very potent way, to the distaste that the broad public has for the president. Democrats are already really, really running with this, and I think they should. I think it’s the right thing to do. But if I were a lawmaker, I would say something like, “Listen, even if a court doesn’t overturn this, this is clearly illegal. We didn’t appropriate this money for this purpose.”
And if you notice, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment suggests — or is it Section 4? One of those suggests that we can’t be paying out money to insurrectionists, and these are people who were convicted of insurrection. And so, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who takes a penny from this fund is liable for congressional investigation. And we’ll find some way to do a criminal referral. But we’re going to treat this as if you’re engaged in a crime if you take a penny from this fund. Just put that out there. Just say: “It’s tainted money. You touch it, we’re going to go after you.”
Cottle: David? Anything?
French: You know, on the political side of this ——
Bouie: David’s going to tell me that this would be against the law.
French: Yeah, it’s probably not criminal to take that money. I will say, it’s interesting — we’re seeing this combination of factors happening right now.
Trump is doing this at the same time that he has flexed an enormous amount of control over the G.O.P. at the grass-roots level, with defeating five Indiana senators who defied him on redistricting, getting rid of Congressman Thomas Massie, getting rid of Senator Bill Cassidy. And there are two things that are happening as he does this.
One of them is that he is showing everybody that — and he’s putting these Republicans even more in a box than they were — they’re in a terrible position, for which I have no sympathy. And the terrible position is if they defy Trump, they are in all likelihood going to lose their job in a primary, if not now, maybe the next cycle.
If they don’t defy Trump, they are tying themselves to — as Jamelle just outlined — they’re lashing themselves to the mast of a sinking ship. So, it’s either you go down with the ship or you go down at the hands of primary voters. Those are your two options.
And I said I have no sympathy because they could have put a stop to all this, as we know, after Jan. 6 — any healthy, functioning political party would have put a stop to this after Jan. 6, but they chose not to. They made their bed, but you know what? They also made our bed as well, and we’re all in it. We’re all in this together now.
But one of the things that’s happening is, as he’s targeted Cassidy, he has made a lot of Republican senators angry. Now, what are they going to do about it? Are they going to seethe in the green room, and then continue to do everything that he asks in voting? Or, at some point, are we going to see one or two more people peel away? I can tell you who’s already peeled away — Cassidy. He voted for the War Powers Resolution. I mean, Cassidy is unchained at this point.
But this is the box that Republicans are in; and the larger American public, independents, and, of course, the Democrats, are running away from them as fast as they can. And MAGA never had enough, all on its own, to make Trump president, and they are now alienating everyone who isn’t MAGA. Slowly but steadily, you can see the line moving, but it has been an uninterrupted downward line since he was sworn in, and this is not going to change that trajectory.
Cottle: And it’s not done. I mean, we’ve seen a lot of news, in the last couple days, about how Trump cleared the boards with his revenge campaign, and it’s not done.
He’s already teed up some more victims that he’d like to target. He’s mad at, I think it’s Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania, who has not been all that keen on some of his projects, like the ballroom or whatever. And then, basically, the same day that Massie went down, I think Trump was endorsing Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate race.
French: That made people very angry also.
Cottle: And this is one of our favorite races, David. And that has absolutely gobsmacked Republican senators who have always viewed Ken Paxton — who has such a long list of scandals attached to his name and is a very flawed candidate — as the weaker opponent for James Talarico, the Democrat who is trying for this seat. And now they’re just like, “What is the president doing?”
But I have to say — I’m right with you on this — it’s too little too late, guys. This is what happens when you allow your party to be hijacked by a guy who wants to be king.
Jamelle, what are your thoughts on the primaries that we’ve been watching?
Bouie: Trump’s main concern in all of these things is not so much the viability of the Republican Party in November, but just, can he punish people he dislikes? And should the G.O.P. hold on, can he have people there who will be even more sycophantic and willing to defend him, and shield him, and make Congress as bootlicking and supine as possible?
That’s his only real interest because, frankly, Trump’s autocratic aspirations are not possible without a totally acquiescent Republican Party. A Republican Party that showed 30 percent more fight and a willingness to defend its own prerogatives, and to defend its unsensible ideals, would render Trump inert as a political force.
Massie has been outright defying the president in numerous places. And Trump can’t let that stand, because if Massie had won his primary, it would just send the signal to other wavering Republicans: “Hey, you can do this and hold on. The president’s grip on the Republican base isn’t that strong.”
But as far as winning elections, I think a lot is already baked in, and if you were a Republican concerned about holding onto the House and Senate, the time to act was back in January. It was back in February. Now, it’s too late, and we’re likely in for a hot, expensive summer that people are going to leave, very irate, into a fall, where the price of goods will continue to be high, where the price of fuel will continue to be high, where we might be entering an actual economic slowdown.
And under those conditions, there’s really not that much you can do to save a House majority. Even the recent gerrymandering, the Supreme Court decisions — all those things, I think, are quite bad, but they help you hold the House in a neutral national environment, where all things are equal. They do not help you hold the House when the president’s approval rating is reaching the bottom for a post-World War II president and when the generic ballot is showing — you know, our recent New York Times Siena poll had Democrats up 11. This is in May. If the generic ballot is showing 12, 13, 14, 15 points in October, there’s nothing you can do.
Cottle: And it has been so notable. Trump has been out there bragging, literally, like, “We’ve won all our races” this month. He’s talking about races against his own party, against his own incumbents, in which his vengeance monkeys have spent literally tens of millions of dollars in races that were going to be red and were going to be with conservative candidates.
These are not RINO squishes he was launching this against. So, he’s doing this victory dance, rubbing everybody’s face in this. It cannot be good for the party just strategically.
French: Oh, Michelle, can I coin the term “vengeance monkeys,” with proper attribution? Because that’s ——
Cottle: Oh, you may. You may have my term.
French: OK.
Cottle: Go for it.
French: That’s tremendous. Very vivid. But yeah, Jamelle has called these gerrymanders potentially “dummy-manders,” which is a phrase that I really like. And what Trump has done is he’s cemented the momentum of these dummy-manders, which, when Shane Massey, the senator from South Carolina — I wrote about him over the weekend — got up and refused to go along with the gerrymander that would’ve eliminated James Clyburn’s seat in South Carolina.
And the hope was to turn South Carolina, which is about a 65-35 or 60-40 red state, to seven Republican members of Congress and zero Democrats. And Shane Massey stood up to oppose that. He made two arguments. One was very principled, which is the one I focused on, which is: We don’t jump, we don’t say how high when a president of the United States tells us to jump. There is a separation of powers here.
But he also made some pragmatic points, which are: When you do these gerrymanders — and we’ve said this before — you lower your margin for error. And in my home state of Tennessee, they gerrymandered Memphis, just lickety-split after the Callais decision, and now Memphis has been divided up.
But if you look at the margins, they really decreased. So, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that you could have, instead of the eight-one, you could have three-six or two-seven, because of this.
And so, again and again, the common theme here is just a monumental amount of hubris — that we can do whatever we want to whomever we want for whomever we want, and we will not pay a price. And they can be forgiven for thinking that, because the Jan. 6 president won an election, which has led them to believe that they can do anything. And now, it’s like, mask totally off. He’s not even pretending to be in the sanitation business anymore. He’s just like, “Yep, I’m a mob boss. That’s what I do.”
Bouie: I want to go to that point that they can’t imagine political consequences. I really think this is downstream of something that really has taken off the online right, and part of online reactionary conversation, which is referring to people as NPCs — nonplayable characters.
Like, I think there’s this pervasive sense that — and I’ve written about this before — your political opponents aren’t real; that the protests in 2020 were the product of Soros or whatever, or that the elections you lose are because of fraud and mass illegal voting, or your political opponents don’t really believe anything. They’re just being funded by nefarious forces. Like, a really pervasive, actual belief that the only people who are real, the only political world that is real is MAGA, and everything else is fake or an op or something. And I do think that there’s a basic lack of psychological understanding of the existence of other people.
Cottle: Some Olympic-grade solipsism is what you’re telling us.
Bouie: Right. Olympic-grade solipsism is exactly right. And just from a purely strategic perspective, that’s how you lose wars, right? That’s why we’re losing this war. But that refusal to see the people on the other side as people making decisions, and people who have agency and can take actions, leaves you profoundly ill-equipped for when they exercise that agency.
And you see this again and again with this administration. You saw it with Minnesota. You saw it with the reaction to the National Guard deployment. You saw it with the Iran war — they did not imagine that the Iranian regime were, like, actual actors who could make choices.
And there’s a pretty good chance they’re going to see it in November, when, after insulating themselves for two years from any kind of public response, they’re going to be shocked when there is quite a strong public response against the behavior of the administration. And we all know it’s going to lead to accusations of fraud, to claims that the election was rigged —
Cottle: Oh, they’re laying the groundwork for that already.
Bouie: That they should be disregarded, all this stuff. They’re going to claim, again and again, that this is all fake and should be ignored.
Cottle: OK, so what we’ve been seeing in the primaries is actually a highly energized, mobilized Democratic primary electorate, which — including in states like Texas — has the Republican Party freaked out. And there are a lot of questions about, well, what can Trump do to turn it around?
But as best I can see, Trump doesn’t even really seem motivated to focus on things that could turn it around. I mean, he’s doing his ballroom and his arch and the Reflecting Pool and his war, and maybe he’s going to invade Cuba, and he’s making statements about how he doesn’t care about Americans’ affordability crisis.
What am I missing? What do you guys see that he is aggressively investing in, that suggests he gives two figs about turning this around? Besides rigging the game, of course, but that’s different. Rigging the game is how he likes to play. But in terms of actually accomplishing or telegraphing that he’s focusing on something that voters actually care deeply about.
Bouie: I don’t think there’s any evidence that this even crosses his mind. I mean, it’s two things: First, he himself lives in a world defined by the power of positive thinking, right? So, as long as he is like, “Everything’s going to work out,” he genuinely believes everything’s going to work out for him.
The other thing is that he has organized his White House in a way that he does not receive contradictory information. He does not receive anything but the rosiest possible picture. He’s like: Well, I’m 100 percent with MAGA, right?
Cottle: It’s like my parents. I’m 100 percent with my parents. They love me.
Bouie: He doesn’t understand himself first as president of the entire country, so broad approval ratings just don’t matter to him. And second, if you were in the White House — if you’re Susie Wiles — you can’t tell him that anyway, because he doesn’t want to hear it. It’s bad. It’s bad information. It doesn’t sound good, so he hand-waves it away. This is his thing. Whenever anything is negative, he’s like, “Well, it doesn’t really exist.” And so, that just means that there’s nothing that’s going to turn this truck.
Back in November, after the elections in Virginia and New Jersey, I made the point somewhere that for things to turn around for Trump, you have to imagine him being capable of taking actions that can respond to public discontent. And I said, at the time, that there’s no evidence he’s capable of doing that.
And it’s still true. There’s no evidence whatsoever that he is capable of taking actions that respond to discontent. So, I think that what we should expect, over the course of the summer, is that he’s going to continue to dither and dather and double down on his mistakes in Iran. He is going to maybe try to look for some shortcut to deal with rising fuel prices. I won’t be surprised if they try to repeal the gas tax, which, incidentally, would be great for the president’s fossil fuel donors. They can make some more money. But there’s not going to be any meaningful effort out of Congress or the White House to deal with what, I think, will be quite rapidly rising prices over the summer.
And we’re going to enter the fall, and I really think it’s going to be a speed run of George W. Bush’s second term. We’re going to be in the fall of 2008 with this president pretty soon.
French: I do not believe the playbook here is to provide voters with things they like.
The playbook is going to be to try to re-run all of the previous playbooks in recent history against the Democrats, trying to freeze the party in amber around 2019, 2020; run again against wokeism, et cetera. You’re seeing this with Talarico, for example. Talarico, now, is a real contender. I’m still of the belief that Texas is the final boss of the Democratic Party’s quest. It’s very hard to get over the hump in Texas for Democrats, even with this matchup. But I think Talarico has a far better chance against Paxton than he had against John Cornyn.
Cottle: Wait, no, this is your opening. You have to do your standard Paxton synopsis: Why does he have the best chance?
French: Michelle, he is a multiple times adulterer, corrupt, impeached by his own party, attorney general of the state of Texas, who is an election denier, and who is actually one of the most loathed political figures in America by his peers.
It is very difficult to find anyone who would say, “Yeah, Ken Paxton, great guy. Just an awesome guy.” But then he was headed for impeachment and conviction in Texas, and then his rescue became a cause of MAGA; and ever since then, he has become a MAGA darling, and I don’t think in spite of all the scandal, I think because of all the scandal, at least in part.
I think the more transgressive he is, the more parts of MAGA really like him. And so, the playbook is not going to be: “Ken Paxton, great guy.” The playbook is going to be: “James Talarico, woke, woke, woke, vegan, woke, vegan, woke, woke, woke.” And that’s going to be the playbook across the length and breadth of the country. And what’s interesting is, when you talk to some MAGA Republicans, you can feel that they still seem very confident that when they unleash the woke barrage on the American people, that they’re going to win. And that there’s this conviction that they have, that as much as the American people may hate Donald Trump or may be discontent with Donald Trump, they dislike the Democratic Party more.
And so, look for this campaign to be not, “Look what we did for you to make your life better,” but look at it to be, “Do you want those awful woke, woke, woke Democrats. Have I mentioned “woke” before? Woke Democrats in office?” And that’s going to be the way the campaign is going to be run.
Cottle: OK, and I like to think that this doesn’t work just as well when people are actually dealing with the economic incompetence of this administration. But that’s just me.
Bouie: Also, when you’re dealing with a different electorate. When Trump is on the ballot, a lot of low propensity voters come out in hopes that voting for Trump is going to make them more prosperous. But if, two years, later that hasn’t happened, and, in fact, the opposite has happened. And then you have a bunch of very angry college-educated voters, who are leaning Democratic coming out — yeah, you can run a woke, woke, woke campaign. I think what’s likely to happen is that it’s just going to be a general collapse in Republican turnout and a surge in Democratic turnout, and that doesn’t get you any place good if you’re a Republican.
Cottle: OK. We’re going to land there, and it’s time: recommendations. Jamelle, we’ve missed yours. Hit us.
Bouie: I watched, recently, for the first time, Warren Beatty’s 1998 film, “Bulworth.” And, how do I say this? It’s insane that it got made. It’s a Hollywood production, and Warren Beatty — obviously a huge star — and it is simultaneously extremely cringe-worthy, and also daring and brave in ways.
And did I say insane already? Kind of an insane movie. And I don’t know quite what I think of it, but I do think it’s worth watching both as an artifact of American politics in the late ’90s, both as something actually quite prescient about the sorts of concerns that are going to animate politics 20 years later, and as, I think, a showcase of Beatty in particular, who is one of the most fascinating stars of his generation.
He is obviously extremely handsome and quite smart and savvy, but he often plays these characters, who I could best describe as himbos, who become self-aware and then lose their minds. And that’s the character in “Bulworth,” a kind of vacant guy who —
Cottle: That should go into his obituary whenever that, you know. I’m just saying.
Bouie: A kind of vacant guy, who becomes self-aware of his own vacancy, and then loses his mind. And so, watch “Bulworth.” A very strange movie. Glad I saw it. Don’t know what I think about it.
Cottle: OK. David?
French: Man, it’s always hard to follow Jamelle’s, because mine are just so basic. But here is your basic enjoyable streaming recommendation of the week. Do you remember the show “Jury Duty,” that was, you know, you had a guy who was—
Cottle: I did not watch that. But I do remember it.
French: Oh. Oh my gosh. OK. Well, I have a double recommendation. “Jury Duty” from a couple of years ago, and then the next one, which is “Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat.” And here’s the premise of both: You take one person, who’s a normal person, and they think they’re part of a documentary. This is a documentary about a small business making a transition from father to son, and you bring in a normal guy. And everyone around him is an actor who’s literally insane in just crazy, funny ways. And they’re always riding ——
Cottle: I’m sensing an insanity theme this week.
French: They’re always riding this line between absurdity that’s realistic enough to be funny, but absurdity that’s so unrealistic that the guy kind of wakes up to it and realizes he’s in something. They’ve, both times, selected just, like, good guys; like, just good, solid people, who are like the island in the storm around them. So, it’s both laugh-out-loud hilarious, but then sort of oddly heartwarming that there are folks out there who are just good folks trying to do their jobs with integrity, as the world crumbles around them. So, it feels like a metaphor for, I don’t know, America. But it’s fun. It’s fun.
Cottle: OK. I am going to go with Netflix’s “How to Get to Heaven From Belfast.” I know you think that I have some kind of Irish obsession, David. You may be right, but ——
French: I’m listening. You’ve never led me wrong.
Cottle: This one is a comedy/mystery about three millennial women, who were childhood friends, who get this message to return back to their tiny hometown, because their fourth girlfriend has mysteriously died. So, you start from there and it spirals. There’s conspiracies, there’s twists, there’s turns. It is simultaneously exciting and kind of creepy, but also just drop-dead hilarious.
I don’t know if any of you watched “Derry Girls.” But this is the same folks, and it is absolutely brilliant. I highly recommend it. So, go forth. And with that, I think we’re going to end it. Let’s land that plane. As always, guys, thank you. We’ve solved the world’s problems. I will now be going to prepare my application for the slush fund, and I’ll let you know how that goes.
French: Good luck, Michelle.
Cottle: Jamelle, say goodbye.
Bouie: Oh yeah, I should say goodbye. Good luck collecting your reparations, Michelle.
Cottle: I choose to reject your patronizing tone.
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This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Video editing by Julian Hackney. The postproduction manager is Mike Puretz. Original music by Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Julie Beer and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Video is Jonah M. Kessel. The deputy director of Opinion Shows is Alison Bruzek. The director of Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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