Transcript: America This Week, Episode 69, "Presidential FUBAR"

Walter and Matt talk Colorado, the Transition Integrity Project, and Kurt Vonnegut's unpublished gem, "FUBAR"

Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: Walter, what’s up?

Walter Kirn: Well, I’ve returned from a magical mystery tour. I was on the Bill Marsh Show last Friday. I was on the Greg Gutfeld Show.

Matt Taibbi: I saw that.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They expected little Walter Kirn to lose his cool, but they didn’t realize he doesn’t do that. Not on national television. I felt a little bit squeezed.

Matt Taibbi: I saw this little... There was a really funny moment where you gave that line about how you grew up in a conservative town and all in the family was how you learned what a liberal was. And a liberal was somebody who lived rent-free in Archie Bunker’s house and repaid him by calling him a bigot. And I saw a little flash of irritation go across Bill’s face because he didn’t think of that joke, which I thought was a great compliment. So I think it went very well.

Walter Kirn: It was really being in the lion’s den. I had a CNN legal correspondent to my right with all that that entails. And this show started off with a tribute to Norman Lear, which led to the Archie Bunker conversation. She jumped in and said, “We’ve never had more Archie Bunkers in America than we do now.” I wasn’t sure where that was going. Was I supposed to nod, argue? I couldn’t quite process it.

Matt Taibbi: Well, you didn’t have to because Bill jumped in at that point.

Walter Kirn: Right, right. Yeah, it’s a strange dynamic. And at the beginning of the show or before the show, I was discouraged from interacting with the CNN correspondent, mostly because I think they didn’t want us to make friends, therefore, preventing sparks from flying. That’s a common tactic on shows. They don’t want you sort of spending your dynamism in the green room. They want it all to happen before the cameras. And I had a lot of fun. I mean, Bill’s quick. It’s very different than other shows in that it gets you recognized in Beverly Hills. Greg Gutfeld will get you recognized in Massapequa maybe.

Matt Taibbi: Right. Or a Wawa off I-80.

Walter Kirn: Exactly. Exactly. Or the next day and a half that I stayed in Beverly Hills Christmas shopping, a bonafide star, people coming up to me, they said, “Great job.” I never know what they mean by that.

Matt Taibbi: Well, in Hollywood, that can mean anything from I thought you were a Nazi to I would like to sign you to a six film deal.

Walter Kirn: Right, exactly. Exactly. Oh, yeah. It’s funny. Any kind of mini fame in Hollywood is pretty much equivalent to major fame for a very short time. People see possibilities in you that you never explored yourself. So it was a lot of fun. I hope to go back. And the only thing that I probably strongly disagreed with Bill on was that Gavin Newsom should be the next Democratic nominee, that came up at the very end of the show when he announced he’s going to be his first guest when they get back in January.

Matt Taibbi: Interesting.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. The last time I was on Mar, which was 2014, I was on with Gavin Newsom.

Matt Taibbi: Really?

Walter Kirn: Yeah. Gavin Newsom is like a shark fin. He parts the waters without actually touching them. He’s a very different breed of cat, and he looks away when you talk to him as though somewhere off to his right at about 10 o’clock, there’s something far more interesting than you.

Matt Taibbi: Is that a California thing? I mean, I don’t know. Or is that just a person with interpersonal issues thing?

Walter Kirn: The guy, he’s got hair that others would kill with a dull knife.

Matt Taibbi: It’s fantastic hair.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, fantastic hair. And he’s slim and trim. I had to diet for approximately three weeks on hard-boiled eggs and spring water in order to be presentable on the show. But Gavin Newsom just walks in, plops down, and he’s at his shark fin perfection. So anyway, but that Bill promoted him so strongly and denigrated Biden so strongly at the very end of the show, maybe it was in the overtime section, suggested to me that there’s a memo going around and they’re trying something or about to try something. Who knows?

Matt Taibbi: Well, yeah, who knows? I mean, well, that leads us into the subject of the week, which is this extraordinary thing that happened on Tuesday where the Colorado State Supreme Court in a four to three ruling basically expelled Donald Trump from the ballot in that state on the grounds that he participated in insurrection. So this is a law that goes back to the post Civil War period. It’s designed as is often the case in the wake of some kind of a national reconciliation type situation. It was designed to keep former Confederates from running for the presidency or running for high office. I don’t think it was designed for the situation.

And even though they did have an adversarial proceeding of sorts in the lower court hearing, he’s never been convicted of participating in an insurrection against the United States. So it’s a little weird that way, but it’s going to go to the Supreme Court now. And I don’t know, first of all, Walter, what are your initial thoughts on this? Because this is on top of, I tried to count this morning, my count is different from what the Washington Post. I think I got up to 121 when I looked at the different cases, but it’s however many counts. It’s four different indictments, he’s facing God knows however many lawsuits sponsored by 19 different people and organizations, and he’s still up in the polls. And so this is what the last gambit, what is this exactly?

Walter Kirn: Well, I don’t know that it’s the last, because I read that California is exploring a similar option to keep him off the ballot.