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- [01:24]
Bill Kristol
Your move.
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- [01:33]
Bill Kristol
Welcome to Bulwark on Sunday. I'm Bill Crystal, joined by Sarah Longwell on the Sunday morning at 9:30. What turned out to be an eventful weekend. We were going to have a nice discussion on, you know, what might happen in the year ahead. And no, no big news this week so we could really have the big picture talk. But maybe we should begin with a little bit the kind of big news in the last 24, 36 hours. Anyway, thanks Sarah for joining me and taking your last taking 45 minutes off from your last Sunday of sort of vacation. Did you have a nice break?
- [02:03]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I mean, sure. There's of course I don't want to be hiding from my family now that we're, you know, two weeks deep in this vacation. Yesterday I was like, oh, two and a half hours podcasting about Venezuela. I feel like I'm back. But no great vacation. I'm joking. Amazing two weeks with my family. But it's great to see you. Great to see you. Great to be back talking about politics yeah.
- [02:26]
Bill Kristol
Good to see you. And that was a great show you and Mark Hertling and Sam Stein and Joe Perdicone did yesterday. But before and after Trump's press conference at 11:00am and I think General Hurtling was great as always. He had an excellent piece Friday. I guess just the day before at the Bulwark were worrying about regime, wanting to have regime change without planning for Syria in a serious way. It's hard enough when you plan for it seriously. Right. And he's been through that in Iraq and that he was excellent and you guys were excellent. But talk about is anything if you change your mind about anything in the last 24 hours. And I'd say particularly you watched the Trump thing. I read it afterwards. The Trump statement or press conference in real time. What did that feel like? I mean, when we went into it, we knew that the military operation had been successful, and that was pretty much what we knew. Right. And then he. That he was Trump.
- [03:21]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. I mean, look, there are things in which my instincts from the before times create in me a sense of, oh, Maduro's a really bad guy. It would be great for Venezuela were he not to be in charge. Like, there's like sort of just an objective way in which there's no world in which Maduro being gone is a bad thing. Now it could it be destabilizing. Like this is where like the pro. But then there's. So there's the before times where it's like objectively Maduro bad, him being gone. Good. But then there's what I know now, which is that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth and this administration are to be trusted in no way for having a plan about what we're going to do, nor can we trust them to do things constitutionally. Right. So in the immediate aftermath of this happening, you're sort of pulled between these two tensions of I'm glad Maduro's gone, but is. Did they just do that legally? Like, what does this mean for the future? And so we're all waiting as we're sitting there on the live stream, just trying to get some answers because we. We don't know. One of the things that I keep thinking about is how even though I think that it's good that Maduro's gone, you want it to happen in the context of. Of a foreign policy that is articulated and understood. Right. If we are taking out bad dictators, is that a thing we're doing just in Venezuela? Are we doing it other places? Because Trump actually has a lot of. He likes Dictators. And so, like, what, what is the through line? And so then Trump gets up and speaks. And honestly, the thing that, it's not that I've changed my mind, it's that when you are reacting in real time to what Trump did, you sitting there being like, I'm sorry, what? We're just staying in Venezuela, we're in charge now. Like, these are monumental things. And they both, they, they, they hit you hard, both because you're sitting there going, hey, I've seen this movie before. And if we don't have a plan for getting out, because Trump, Trump can, can sort of be at his best when he gets to hide behind the absolute professionalism and quality of the United States military, right? Their ability to go in, get a job done and get out. And so you think like, well, there's a way for this to be maybe a net positive, but I don't know because we don't have any information about what American foreign policy is. But then you listen to Trump in real time, say, boots on the ground are an option. Total. I always do this with the thumb. It's totally the opposite of everything he ran on, everything he says he stands for, everything that, that a lot of his followers thinks he think he stands for, people like, and people like Tulsi Gabbard and other people in the administration, even J.D. vance, you know that this is not their foreign policy. And so because I'm sort of like, are the neocons back? Is that what's happening right now? And so which there's a real irony. This is, sorry, a side note, but there's a real irony in Trump of 2026 suddenly looking a lot like the neocons of sort of 2015. And so it's more though that after listening to Trump, I was like, wait, we're, we're taking over Venezuela? Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and some group are going to do it. And you realize that on over here, there's this sliver of the professionalism and excellence of the American military and then the total apple dumpling gang idiocy of this administration and you sort of to hold those two apart. And that's the thing that I've been trying to like, reconcile, I guess, in the aftermath.
- [07:05]
Bill Kristol
No, I thought you guys really conveyed that, explained that well yesterday. And I would be even slightly stronger in the sense that if Trump had gone up, even being Trump, and even with not having a coherent foreign policy in general, even without, with all the other obvious things to worry about, the illegality, the lack of Congressional, you know, okay, ahead of time and so forth. If he had just given a normal presidential five minute statement, you know, very proud of our military. This, this guy. It was a bipartisan agreement that he stole the election. He wasn't recognized by us as the legitimate president, nor by the Europeans, nor by many, even Latin American countries. We're going to work with everyone there to have a, we urge peace and calm over there. We're going to work with everyone to make this stable transition. We think Venezuela can be a healthy, you know, active participant in economic progress, blah, blah, blah. Right. I mean I would have even now then said for all my doubts about Trump and God knows Hegseth and Vance and all these guys, maybe they're, you know, this will be done in a semi professional or competent way. It's not even neocon. It's just kind of like normal Bush or, you know, or even, not even Bush, but Clinton kind of just, you know, foreign policy. Right. And you know, that could work out okay. It may not be great, but Panama worked out okay. I mean, Haiti for a few years, we got a little bit of better government there. And after Clinton threatened to go in in 94, you know, there are examples of that, obviously the Balkans. So. But what was amazing about the Trump statement, and again, I didn't watch in real time, our family was showing up for 50th anniversary dinner, which we had last night, which was very nice and happy anniversary. Thank you. Thank you. But we, so, but I read it obviously, the whole Trump statement and then your show, and it was really terrible. I mean, let's say it wasn't even, it goes beyond incoherence and just, you know, bravado. But the bravado was striking. But it's the disconnect between the bravado and the reality. We're going to run the country, we have no troops there. We did actually run Panama for about a month or two after we went in. We had 27,000 people in a country that's one tenth the size of Venezuela, one eighth the size of Venezuela in population. And there was a transition and it was okay. And of course Panama was right next to the Panama, our base there. Very historic American area, so to speak, and that's even Iraq. I mean, the first few months went okay because we did have a ton of troops there that degenerated very badly. We didn't have a good plan afterwards. But here we're saying we're running the country and we have literally no ability to do so. I mean, literally we have no troops There, I don't even know what he thinks he's talking about, about running. He thinks we can just bluster and bludgeon people into doing what we want. Maybe. But then the second thing that was so striking was when he threw Ms. Machado under the bus and said, well, we're working with this, this, this, the vice president who is as guilty really as, as, as the president and in terms of anything that Maduro, of all the bad stuff, almost as guilty of all the bad stuff they've done. And suddenly it's like, I mean, it, it shows how both, I think maybe that they've got some thought of various deals they're going to cut with the new authoritarian government there. But then how's that going to, that's not going to help the Venezuelan people. And how stable is that government going to be, incidentally? Aren't there going to be fights for succession? It's not like you can just make these things work automatically in that respect. You're almost better off cutting a deal in the dura himself, you know, and just if you want to go down that path. But again, she was such an obvious, I mean, so easy to say. We are, of course, we're going to work with people who actually won the election. She's a Nobel Prize winner, she has huge status in Europe and so forth. It's an easy thing to hide behind. Honestly, whatever you privately thought three or six months from now might be happening, the failure to do that, the impulsiveness, the, the bragadocio, the, the, you know, strutting around without anything behind it, it's the worst of. I, I now really am very worried. The sense that it feels to me like the worst of all worlds. If, if you went in and said, we, we don't honestly know what's going to happen there. We're America first, It's be a mess. But we got this guy who was smuggling drugs, who was indicted here, and that shows we're strong, okay, that would be one thing. But to go in, in the way we've gone in, snatch them out, no ground troops, talk vaguely about how we might send some in. Is he really going to do that, what, two, three, four weeks from now? Is there going to be support for that? Once chaos starts to break out in the streets of Caracas and people start getting killed, we're going to then send troops in. I don't believe Trump will do that. Not even sure he should, honestly. Would we support that? I mean, so I got to say, the statement, I am now very rattled in the sense that it's. I thought this could be anywhere between very mild positive to neutral to mild negative, honestly. And now I'm pretty worried that it could be pretty bad. Don't you think? I just feel like. I mean, I think. What's your point? I'm just. These people are in charge, but it's not even the worst aspects of these people are in charge. And the one part of our government that seems to work well, the military and intelligence community, has been ruined by these guys, at least not yet. They're now kind of out of it, really, in a certain way.
- [12:07]
Sarah Longwell
Right.
- [12:08]
Bill Kristol
And the worst people are in it.
- [12:11]
Sarah Longwell
Well, this. And this is. This is where. Right. I guess that was the point I was trying to make is like, you separate the success of the mission that was done by this professionalism, whatever, and now it's in the hands of these menacing buffoons who, yeah, clearly have no plan. Because they were telling us, like, it was like jaw dropping listening to. To that. It was jaw dropping listening to him throw Machado under the bus. Because part of. I don't know if you saw this, but the vice president also came out and said she was going to fight for Maduro's release. Like, it was totally. It did not sound like they had her at heel. And if they're sending in American companies to start extracting oil, which is sort of the other part, to me, that was interesting. And the reason that Machado isn't the pick is because this has nothing to do with democracy. Right. This is one of the big sort of key differences that settles in between the thinking around now. It could have been whether you think it was right or wrong. The idea of nation building in the Middle east was about. It was about like, exporting democracy to the Middle east, which in the beginning, people sort of thought was a good idea. Now later on, people were like, no, it's just a war for oil, whatever. But Trump is explicitly saying, this is a war, we want the oil back. And. Or they're talking about him being a narco terrorist. Nobody's talking about democracy. And so it is unclear, like, if we're just doing oil extraction, is that who we are now? Like, is that why we're doing this? Like, it'd be nice to understand a real strategic reason. And this is where, you know, they don't have a plan. They can't offer you a rationale for who America is in the world and how we will consistently behave in the face of other people's actions.
- [14:01]
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- [15:02]
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- [15:25]
Bill Kristol
Your move.
- [15:26]
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- [15:32]
Sarah Longwell
And I don't.
- [15:33]
Bill Kristol
You know, even the oil thing, as you say, at least it would be, I guess it's back to the early 20th century in a way, which was going into grab resources. That's what nations did back then. They haven't done anything to lay the groundwork for doing that. I mean he can talk about oil companies going back in if there's not peace and security in there, oil companies aren't going back in. Or are we going to accompany them with tens of thousands of troops? Are we going to provide security for the oil companies for every American who goes to work there? I mean this is where I think they haven't, they haven't thought it through. They don't really care. I said to a friend talking about it yesterday afternoon after I kind of got on top of the thing that maybe it's sort of like Gaza. I mean, sounds crazy comparison but you know, he got us these fires sort of and that was good. But then he boasted about how they're going to turn it into the Riviera and all this nonsense and we're going to, you know, and Then of course, it's now a mess. It's not a horrible mess, thank God, as bad as it was, but it's not great. And we're doing nothing. And Trump's forgotten, is not interested and maybe he'll talk occasionally. And I guess I said to my friend, well, maybe that's the way it kind of works out. And his point was very. This is different, though. You've removed ahead of state and it's not so easy to just say, well, I guess we don't really care what happens there anymore. And he's now put himself on the line a little bit with all this oil stuff. What if we're getting no oil out of Venezuela a year from now? That's a totally possible outcome. And the final point I'll make is just what happens on the ground of Venezuela is very important, obviously. And people have this vague assumption still that, well, I guess it'll just be we're just going to wait for us to do the next thing. These people are going to act. They're going to be fights for power. They're going to be. Conceivably, the democratic opposition will go to the streets. Brazil, conceivably regime forces will go first to try to crush whatever there is out there that could cause trouble. Other players can come in. Cuba most obviously, but Russia, I mean, I just think the degree to which there's not a lot of history of smooth transitions in Latin America when you remove the president, you know, and like everyone says, okay, I guess the vice president just takes over and we all just, everyone just kind of goes back to business as usual. I mean, the oil company thing I think is literally crazy. How does he think we're going to get in there? I mean, Chevron was in there, right? With.
- [17:39]
Sarah Longwell
With, yeah, Chevron was, but they were.
- [17:41]
Bill Kristol
In there because they were getting along. Maybe it was bad to do this, but with the actual government that existed. I mean, yeah, I don't know, I feel like the whole thing is. It's so badly not thought through, but also the combination. So I think to have an incoherent foreign policy, but if it's like Gaza or honestly like the Iran, let's say bombing, it's one day, it's one off. Maybe you did some good, maybe you didn't do as much good as you thought it's done. Not a huge amount of after effects, you might say. This is not. That was what I was saying to my friend. And maybe we could end up almost. Best case would be we sort of have forgotten about this in three months, if I could put it that way. But he was, I don't know, he thought, this is big enough that you. It can't quite work that way, both on the ground in Venezuela and in the region, but also here in the U.S. i mean, maybe that gives us a transition here in the US how big a deal do you think this is for us? I mean, politically?
- [18:31]
Sarah Longwell
Well, it all depends, right? It depends on if, if you, if we get mired, if we are in two years from now or even at the end of this year, boots on the ground in Venezuela and it's starting to unravel and, you know, the country is seeing a lot of Pete Hegseth having to answer for whatever's going on, although it'll probably be Marco Rubio, you know, then that's, then that's bad, right? So, because right now you're watching the reactions, or I've been watching the reactions, and the Trump faithful are beating their chests right now. They're just saying, see, he got in, he got out. You know, this is, this is Trump's way. He doesn't get us mired down in these things. But you're like, you don't know that. Like, you don't know if this is. They should be more cautious in their celebrations because they could very well be in a mission accomplished moment that actually, like, is the beginning and not anywhere close to the end. Right. They're assuming this is the end. And you. We might have assumed that yesterday. Like, I was waiting for what he said, and then when he came out and talked, I was like, oh, my God, he is talking about putting boots on the ground, taking over Venezuela, like, this is insane.
- [19:45]
Bill Kristol
And if he doesn't take. And I just make the flip point quickly, is that if we don't send in boots on the ground and it just dissolves into chaos to frack, you know, people fighting each other or, you know, one coup after another. No oil companies go in because it's not stable enough. There's outward flows of refugees again because, you know, there's other people now are scared for their own future. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I guess they won't. We can stop them from coming here, I guess, but are we going to deport people back there? I just think the degree to which we could have a chaotic situation which then does force almost a boots on the ground choice or not. And if you don't choose to do it, that has its own cost, right? I mean, we didn't put boots on the ground. In Syria, to use another analogy. And 500,000 Syrians, you know, fled, you know, migrated to Europe, and we had the migration crisis of 2015. I mean, I just think people haven't really. And this is in our hemisphere, so people haven't really. Yeah, that's what's most worrisome. I mean, I hope it doesn't happen for the sake of Venezuela and for the sake of us. But that thing yesterday was, as I said, I initially thought, okay, he's just. Even when he first said it, when I first skimmed it, maybe he's just being. It's just Trump beating his chest. But there's no evidence of anyone in the government being serious. Right.
- [20:56]
Sarah Longwell
Who are the serious. Like, Marco Rubio is the most serious person there. And he spent his. First of all, he didn't have prepared remarks, so he was definitely speaking off the cuff about people in Havana should be worried, which I was like, or we just doing this on the fly. Feels awkward. But he spent most of his time just kissing Trump's butt and being like, this is a president who means what he said. I mean, that part of it will never stop being so weird to me. Just because it's weird to hear Americans talk that way, because we don't usually. Like, you're used to seeing sort of four very professional people get up. Just the facts. I'll tell you one last thing. Sorry. Actually, two last things. One is because in modern history, we've seen this. We know that it is a lot easier to topple a dictator than it is to deal with what happens in the aftermath. And so everybody who's stating an opinion right now should just know that, like, all they did was the easy part. They did it well. And I think potentially with real justification. On the legality side, I have seen legal theories for what they're standing behind. It's unclear to me how good those are. But nobody seems. Nobody seems sure about how to interpret the legality. And even, like, they notified Congress in real time, like, they're living on the edge of the legality, which might be on the other side of legality and actually be illegal. But it's, you know that, like, international law gets. Gets violated a lot. It sounds like this is a norms more than laws situation. So. But that, but it is just. It's. That's the easy part. The easy part is taking out the dictator. The hard part is what comes next. And they do not seem well equipped to do it, nor do they seem like they have a plan.
- [22:47]
Bill Kristol
And it's. They will. Other countries will be worried. It's not like Ruby is not wrong when he says Cuba is more worried today than they were two days ago, and Colombia probably is. On the other hand, maybe that's good. I mean, it's good. I don't like those people. So it's nice if Cuban. If the Cubans have some sleepless nights. The Cuban government, on the other hand, are we going to go in there? If not a. If you can get worried, you can do things like get more aid from Russia to stop, you know, to cause more trouble. Right. I mean, it's. It's sort of. Bullies are pretty good at sort of just a compound or to really build on your point. Bullies are good at the first step of bullying when they beat up a very weak person. They're not good at establishing stable bullying regimes. And that's kind of what they're promising now. And I do think there'll be a lot of intimidation for a short while, but not so much. I mean, that can last for a while, I guess, but it's not a basis on which to build anything at all stable. And ultimately the bullying leads to a. We're not as strong as. I guess I'll make this point. Trump really seems to have internalized the notion that we are really strong, that we are very strong, but that we can just basically go in, snatch them, blow up some fish, some boats in the Caribbean or in the Pacific, and everyone's just gonna hop to it and do what we want. 30 million people in Venezuela, neighboring governments in Colombia and other countries, which are not small countries that have their own relations to other nations and so forth. I think he's. Why in that respect, he's overestimating American power. Just overestimate his and his own power. I mean, he is one of these guys. So it has. Don't you think the fumes have sort of gone to his. His head in this now and, you know, and he just thinks he can snap his fingers and say, we're in charge. And everyone evented 30 million people in Venezuela and say, okay, I guess they want to do this and we just have to all be quiet and give up our own political determination to. To Trump. And one other thing, which is the footnote, this trial that we're. I mean, he'll be in custody here. In a criminal case. Criminal defendants have rights. The idea that that's all going to be like a piece of cake. I think, again, people, the Trump people are internalizing the notion that, you know, he's. He's perf.
- [24:52]
Sarah Longwell
Walk.
- [24:53]
Bill Kristol
That looks great. He's in jail. That looks great. He's convicted. That looks great. It's not so obvious. I mean, Noriega got off on some of the counts. They, luckily they convicted him on others Back in 1991, 92 took two years. It was kind of a mess. And he really was guilty very directly as the general.
- [25:11]
Sarah Longwell
I've got another example. Donald Trump, a former head of state who staged an insurrection and who broke the law in a variety of ways, was able to get off. The legal system can be unpredictable in that regard.
- [25:25]
Bill Kristol
That's a good. Yeah. I mean, that was very. I think Will Ston has an excellent piece. People should read up on the Bulwark this morning, which really makes the point that Trump is in. Yeah, the, the citing in the context. That's another thing. Yesterday we didn't even mention, like, we're spending a lot, a lot of time on this, but it is important. Actually, he mentioned this is sort of like what happened to him in 2020. That center shipper down my spine. I mean, don't you think that really is a. I'm entitled to do this in the US in 2028?
- [25:52]
Sarah Longwell
I mean, but. But here's what this is. This was the other point I was going to make, is that the other's like a bunch of offhandedly very chilling things. I think people are focused on whether it's legal or illegal. And I got to tell you guys, that part is very murky. And like, because here's. Let me just quick state the legal case that they're making, which is they say that if they're going to go in, right. So we've had a warrant out for this guy. Like, the international communities, they. And he is an illegitimate leader. When we go in to snatch him, the, the bombing that happens around them can then be part of, like, they're saying that's part of the process of protecting the troops on the ground, which is why they don't need to notify Congress. Now, I think that is, it is like, tenuous, but it's not like, totally out of nowhere. And I've been watching like, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have both come out to be like, say, vaguely, roughly, that, like, they need to keep us better apprised. This is murky legal territory. And not that we should rest on their thing, but, like, Congress is not howling like I thought they might be about this. And so anyway, all I'm saying is that Trump is a criminal in all kinds of ways. I don't know that People saying this is illegal is going to get very far in part because everyone is very glad Maduro is gone. Like right now in this moment, Venezuelans are celebrating, the international community is celebrating. Like no one's going to shed a tear over this dictator being gone.
- [27:27]
Bill Kristol
So does that sound right, interrupt one thing?
- [27:29]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [27:29]
Bill Kristol
Venezuelans in caricature in Venezuela do not seem to be out in the streets celebrating because they presumably are still intimidated by the regime, which is a very, very bad sign. If you go to decapitated regime, you need to take over the media and you need to sort of frankly help the people who are going to be your friends. The signal Trump sent by saying we were fine with the vice president means that the country could be not, we're not getting the kind, I mean, the Venezuelans in the US Are celebrating as they should and Venezuela's in exile elsewhere are celebrating as they should.
- [27:57]
Sarah Longwell
Should.
- [27:58]
Bill Kristol
Let's see how many of them are back in three to six months. Anyway, I'm just agreeing with your point that, I mean the illegality is important, but it's not the most important thing. What happens on the ground about as well is the most important thing.
- [28:07]
Sarah Longwell
And I know that'll sound odd to people, but I will just tell you this is like I, I read all about this trying to figure it out because my instinct was like how but like it is extraordinarily gray and like, you know, I, I, I checked in with some of the scholars that I think are the absolute smartest on stuff like this, Jack Goldsmith and, and everybody's like, well, it's a little if then that and, but that is I, I, my New Year's resolution, I was going to stop interrupting myself so much to go on tangent points, but I'm still doing it. I, so I've got to work harder at this. You're gonna have to help me the most. One of the most chilling things that was an aside in his comment is when he lapsed into a thing about how the National Guard in American cities, so he's talking about going into Venezuela and then he, and like we're going to nation build there and then he just lapses into an aside where he starts talking about how they we've gone into Chicago and we've gone into these American cities and why wouldn't they want us there? And here's how crime is dropping. And it was chilling to me to see how connected in his head it was to basically go into American cities and do whatever he wants and how that in his mind was connected to Just going into Venezuela and doing whatever he wants. And that is the kind of thing that freaks me out. Right. There was a bunch in what he was saying also him just talking about how we're going in for the oil, like making, stating that clearly. And if you go back and look at Trump's speeches, you will see that he has been talking about this for forever. It's like tariffs with him. It is a groove in his brain where he has been saying the reason you go into a country is to take their oil, to take their resources. Because Trump has always had a dictator's like constitution. And so it's very consistent for him to do this. But you listen to him talk in the asides, in the part, it is not the prepared remarks. And you can hear how psychotic and dictatorial and authoritarian his aspirations sort of are.
- [30:07]
Bill Kristol
I think it's so important. And Maduro's election in 2024, he said Maduro's stolen election. It was like Biden's stolen election in 2020. Which, what does that say about 2028? I really do think I've notched up one bit my sense that we cannot count on traditional American elections and respecting of election returns and so forth in 28. But that gets to. Let's talk about the next year. So I wrote this little thing, whatever, five paths from very good to very bad. Mildly pessimistic, I suppose, but I think there were some positive scenarios for 26 too. I don't know what do you think? You've thought a lot about this.
- [30:45]
Sarah Longwell
So I just, just to lay out what I thought was an excellent treaties from Bill on the five paths that we could take. They're basically less paths and more scenarios, right. Which, and they, they, they start with the most optimistic and they go down to the most pessimistic. And it's funny reading them from you because I like it's so clear what your lenses are for. What, what makes some a really bad outcome and what makes a really good outcome. And some of them were tethered to like Ukraine and like the state of the world. But what was not mentioned. So you gave, if I recall correctly, and you can, since you wrote it, you had about a 20% potential for the best case scenario, which is like Democrats win the Senate, they win the House overwhelmingly. We, we see an authoritarian retreat, we see public opinion crater for Trump, which allows, and I really agreed with this point. I liked how you sort of pegged public opinion to what Trump is able to do, because I believe this to the core of my being that, and we've discussed this on this show before, that really the only way you get the good outcomes is for the public to sour on Trump in a significant way, like his ability to do things. The extent to which the Supreme Court, I think, curbs him, the extent to which Congress and other members of civil society find their spines, is pegged to public opinion. And so public opinion cratering is almost, is sort of the first step to what Trump can and can't do. Because it will change not how Trump behaves, but how people. Because we live in a democracy where people say to themselves, public, you know, public sentiment is everything. If people think that Trump has everyone's support, they will continue to support him, too. If they think he is going to leave office with no support, they will behave differently. I did think there were a couple places where you were like, the voters see the authoritarian project and reject it. And I was like, no, like, probably not that. And the one thing that I thought was missing from your analysis in all of them is because this is, for me, the central thing, public opinion, which is pegged to people's behavior. Public opinion is going to be most affected by the economy. And so the question that I had when I was reading your scenarios, right, which was sort of like 20% best case scenario, 20% second best case scenario, 20% neutral. And then I would just call it the JVL bottom, which is like the public, you know, basically still supports Trump and authoritarianism is on the march and all of the bad things. Putin gets Ukraine, I would say I kind of lived in the number two, like I thought the above, the, the neutral is kind of the Sarah line. And I think that it's pretty unlikely for the Senate, in part because you can already see Democrats are missing opportunities in places to nominate people that can win in some of the open seats. Like, I would take the. I'm not counting out James Talrico. I hope he does pull through. But like, the Republicans really wanted Jasmine Crockett, they will beat Jasmine Crockett. And so I think, I think the second scenario where you basically say public opinion continues to decline for Trump, Dems can't win the Senate, but they win the House. And it goes in the right direction, but maybe not as quickly as we would like. That feels kind of right to me. But a lot of it for me depends on a couple things. One, does the Supreme Court bail Trump out on the tariffs? Because if they save him from himself and the economy starts to tick back up or rebound somewhat, I think you've Trump, they They just, it mitigates how big the pushback is. But if the, if we slide into a recession in 2026, a Trump session, which is what I predicted in my 2026 predictions, is that we move into recession territory, then I think you start to see a broad, because Trump right now is sitting at 41% approval. And you and I have talked on the show. I think you need to get them to 32%. And so, you know, that's a nine point you got to get. Now you're trying to dig in to people who I listen to in the focus group say Rome wasn't built in a day. You've got to give him more time. They know things aren't good, but they're not going to turn on him yet. And like, those people need to fall off to really get where I think you want to go in the better case scenario. And so for me, what I think about is how do you, over the next three years, diminish Trump to the point where he leaves office right around where George Bush did, and he is seen as a failure? Right. And this isn't me being like an accelerationist. Like, I want things to be so bad, but I do want people to experience Trump as Trump wants to be experienced so that it, like, I don't want him saved from himself because I, I want people to get the full Trump so that they know what they have to reject, so they know what we don't want. Again, the holidays are expensive. You're paying for gifts, travel, decorations, food, and before you know it, you've blown.
- [36:26]
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- [36:28]
Sarah Longwell
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- [37:42]
Bill Kristol
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- [37:49]
Bill Kristol
I mean, I think that was very good. And I don't, yeah, I left the economy out, just was, I don't know. So I, I'm slightly on the bearish side. I mean, I think the recession is more likely than not, but I just thought, didn't want to make everything hinge on that. But I, I take, I take the point. That's a very important variable. It's not in there. I mean, I'd say two points on your last point, which I think is so important. Well, one footnote would be there's a sort of virtuous cycle where public opinion goes down, elites start to desert. The public sees elites deserting a little more than they have. They therefore go down. You know what I mean? So that was my sort of my top 20% thing, which I think is slightly more likely than people have thought. That is to say, if it really does slide another few points, I don't know that it could be just a gradual, you know, you pick up 30 House seats and two Senate seats and that's okay. But it could also be a real landslide and wave in another way and the elite, the court turns against him and so forth. So that was my sort of slightly bullish thought. But I think public opinion is so important not just for 26, but for 28. Ron Brownstein made this point in this conversation we had, which is very, I mean, if you think it's important that Trump or his successor, whoever it would be Vance or some Trump Trumpy Republican, which is presumably going to, the Republican Party will still presumably nominate someone pretty Trumpy, even if his numbers are going down quite a lot. It's a pretty good predictor of holding the White House. The incumbent president's popularity is a pretty good predictor of whether that party's going to hold the White house. I mean, McCain wasn't like Bush in 2008, but once Bush was wherever he was at the end, 30% Republicans were not going to win that election. If the incumbent was pretty popular, the incumbent party at least has a decent shot. And so it's very important if you want to get beyond Trump and Trumpism, to keep knocking Trump's popularity down. It's not a 26 issue. It's a 28 issue, too. I mean, we can attack Vance all you want. You can attack Don Jr. You can, whoever the nominee is going to be, you can Vuya, you can say. But it's not going to turn as much on that. If Trump's overall presidency is viewed as success, we're in super deep trouble in 28. If Trump's overall, this is, in a way, the point you were just making. If Trump's overall presidency is viewed as just a real failure politically, it's bad for the country. Obviously, they have to recover from it. But we're in good shape in 28. And if it's in between, it's, you know, closer. And that's often been the case sometimes where they've been close elections. So I think it's the, I would just emphasize your point about the popular, the public support. It's so important, not just for the next year, but it's important for the next three years.
- [40:15]
Sarah Longwell
And honestly, it's important for everything that comes after. So I think about this a lot that I think people right now, to the extent that they're feeling somewhat hopeful, and I'm glad that they are, because that is better than kind of the hopeless posture of early 2025. We're doomed. We're never like, I think people now are in a thing like, no, no, no, we got some fight left in us. There's, there is, there is, there is room for change. And yes, people are concerned about whether or not we do have a free and fair election in 2026. But, you know, I, I, and I have fears around some of those things, too. But I would say those are, those are getting lessened by the fact that, like, in our big federalist country, some things seem to be holding okay. It doesn't mean he won't try some things. I believe he is very afraid of oversight. He's very afraid of Democrats taking back the House. He likes having Mike Johnson as a puppet. But I think a lot of people are feeling like, no, we're on the march, like, we got some fight left in us yet, and we got some things we can do in 2030. They're going to do another census and things are going to get a lot harder for Democrats. Democrats have got to understand that they have some real structural disadvantages coming their way politically and that the inability of them to win in some of these redder places is going to get harder and harder. Like, they don't have that Senate seat in Montana. They don't have that Senate seat in West Virginia. And there aren't a lot of places that they're finding to pick up new places like Republicans are demographically, because of how people are moving. They're moving. Like, I just, I want people to.
- [41:43]
Bill Kristol
Understand that going because of the Senate, I mean.
- [41:45]
Sarah Longwell
Yes.
- [41:46]
Bill Kristol
I mean, Ron Brownston makes his point extremely. There are 25 states that Trump has won all three elections.
- [41:51]
Sarah Longwell
Yes.
- [41:51]
Bill Kristol
Right now they have 50 Republican senators.
- [41:54]
Sarah Longwell
Yes.
- [41:55]
Bill Kristol
Now, unless you're going to explain how a Democrat is going to win a state, not just these purple states, Georgia and stuff, which is good, but it actually win a state that Trump has won in a Senate race, which hasn't happened in a long time. Yes. Just to make your point, I mean, the Senate's an additional burden for the Democrats, just politically.
- [42:13]
Sarah Longwell
Politically. And so, and I think that the popular vote, which they used to rely on, or like, you know, like, these are, these are. Things are changing and they're not going in the right direction. And so Democrats are going to have to think if they want to save democracy, they want to save America. You cannot think about 2026 alone, and you cannot think about 2028 alone. I need people to look into the future because that's the fate of America. And we have to decide what, whether the march is something where we're like, we are going to build the biggest, broadest coalition possible in order to stamp out what is happening now, the toxic forces Donald Trump unleashed on our politics. Not just Trump himself, but J.D. vance and the future of all the people that are now going to be in the Republican Party. They are Trump light. They are people that he raised up. The voters are people that he raised up. This is a root and branch operation. And people are going to have to start getting their heads around the fact that this is a root and branch operation. And I believe that that case is helped significantly by Trump just doing what he's trying to do. I'm not trying to trick him into making bad decisions. Trump doing the things that he's doing is going to leave people worse off in all kinds of ways. And I think that the economy, if it goes into a recession, that does help accelerate people's understanding that Donald Trump is a failure, which I think creates, however, but sorry to keep it to interrupt myself, but I. Democrats have to be thinking for the long term because what Trump does is just one side of the equation. What Democrats do is the other side. And this is not a question of more moderate versus more progressive. I actually think that framework is silly. It is a question of how are you going to build the biggest, broadest coalition? How are you going to hold people who are the never Trump red dog Republicans into a coalition and bring on a lot of the voters who were sort of Trump populist voters, red pilled voters. How are you going to get Hispanics back? How are you going to think about all of these different groups and how are you going to run candidates who can, who can compete in an environment that's getting increasingly challenging for Democrats Just.
- [44:19]
Bill Kristol
From a structural standpoint, I think that's really well said. The good thing to come close to ending on, I suppose. I mean, no, I really think that's, that's, that's crucial. It's, it's less crucial for 26 itself because that's mostly a referendum on Trump. And if you want to check Trump, you're going to vote for the Democrat. Not agonize too much maybe. I mean there's some, you'll lose a couple of points, point or two with bad candidates and so forth. Very important for 27, 28. Obviously when you have a presumably open seat presidential race where people start to care though even there if Trump is very, very weak, probably Democrats have an advantage going into the presidential, maybe not the Senate, but then so important. I couldn't agree more for the future. And there you're absolutely right. So it's hard to juggle these things, right. You got to be fighting Trump and building your own. A new party really or a new kind of party. I would say a big coalition overcoming. I totally agree. The backward looking moderate versus progressive fights which I don't think really quite addressed the issues that are coming down the pike either. I'd say my negative, my JVL like scenarios focus less on public opinion and more on just power, power. I mean you can write a scenario in America where with ice at 50,000 not, you know, people and $150 million to spend with hex death, controlling promotions in the military with, you know, other, the power Department of Justice going down the path it's going, it just the power ministries become very effective. They're clunk, they're clunky and clumsy and the people running them are kind of clownish. But it's just a lot of power, you know, and, and, and people need to, I think, also think harder about how to undercut Trump's power in this case. I mean, I think Epstein has been very, when we, I think it's terrible and it reflects a lot about America and it's Very much worth therefore finding out the truth about all that. It's also the case that it honestly hurts the attempt to sort of mobilize the Justice Department against, against America. You know, because people look at this and say, well, they're not, they're supposed to release this stuff. Where is this? And they lose faith in Bondi, they lose faith in Patel. They lose, they see that you can have, unfortunately, a situation where the corruption can go down a little more into the ranks than one would like and so forth. So anyway, being a little more power politics conscious, I think is important for the opposition too, because it's important to undercut that as much as possible, partly because you could have the best outcome possible in 2028. And if you take over a country where you've got out of control, you know, DHS and a DOJ that's doesn't have any, you know, memory of professional responsibility and a military that's been corrupted to some degree, that's a very dangerous situation. So that's my, sort of, my more negative one assumes they get away with much more on the power side of things. And I hope that's not the case. I do find, like our liberal friends are very, they're very big on messaging, but they should think a little more about power, actually, and what they could do to stop that. Federalism is a very important part of that. Helping the, you know, putting pressure on the Supreme Court to uphold the district judges who are doing the right thing, putting pressure on corporations. I mean, what if the country. Three years is a stupid example, but what if two or three years from now all three major networks are like Barry Weiss and cbs. What if or, or only Bari Weiss and CBS is, or even this, even CBS is backsliding to normalcy because people are thinking that's, that's ridiculous what she's doing. That's not a trivial little thing. Right? I mean, it is not the most important thing, but it's one of many, many instances where the way in which actual institutions and who controls them and how much power the people who control them have can matter. Don't you think?
- [47:55]
Sarah Longwell
Yes, this is, well, this is when people are like, what keeps you up at night? Me. It's like the fact that Donald Trump's allies are all seizing the means of communications, whether it, and whether it's new allies like Zuckerberg and people who got on board after Trump's second election, or whether it's Elon who I think quite presciently bought X and bought himself an enormous, not just not, it's not like he didn't just buy, he bought himself like the dissemination platform for ideas and now he dominates them. I of course was on it yesterday over Venezuela and listening to the speech and like Elon is all over it. And now you've got the cbs. It's so. Although it's so funny. I was over the break, I was somebody, I was talking to people about the Barry Weiss thing and everybody's like, I don't know who that is.
- [48:41]
Bill Kristol
Yeah.
- [48:42]
Sarah Longwell
And you forget that people, that people will only see CBS in its current iteration without understanding the context under which that is happening. Like, nobody regular people aren't following the fact that Larry Ellison bought it, installed Barry Weiss to get the merger he wanted with Paramount. Like, that's not a thing regular people know about our viewers who are smart do. But like, or, or very tapped in. And I think you're smart. But like just normal people who aren't following it have no idea who she is and no idea why this is happening. And so it is the kind of thing that can go under the radar. And all of a sudden the entire media environment is flooded with Trump sympathetic media stations and platforms, including the social media platforms like Tick Tock and everything else which he has basically, like Tick Tock is going to be owned by his friends too. This is, this is a. Then this is my point about, I need Democrats to have an offense mentality that isn't just reacting to Trump. And this is going to take a change in mentality that right now we have a defensive mentality, we have a, an analysis mentality as opposed to I want to build things, I want to get in the game. We got to go after people. You want, you want things to be illegal, guys, you want people to view them as illegal. If they are, well, then we need a bunch of scholars that we are able to elevate on on that point. Now again, well, whatever I'm not going to get. People are really in the chat, like mad at me about the legality stuff because I think they're listening to a lot of.
- [50:14]
Bill Kristol
I mean, I'm one tick whatever. It's worth more on the illegality side than you. But again, I think you're right. This is not the fundamental issue. Panama happened, the Balkans happened. I mean, things have happened without Libya. Obama did Libya without congressional authorization. It's worth arguing about and discussing. Fundamental judgment on Venezuela is not going to be based on a bunch of law professors debating the complexities of the War Powers act and resolution and whether he notified Congress in the right way and how much the indictment here gives them an out from actually getting congressional authorization and all that. So I very much agree with that. So don't worry about the chat. You're very sensitive to the chat. You know, it's kind of a little.
- [50:54]
Sarah Longwell
Well, I, I mean, I want to take the legality of it seriously, but I just, I went and like, read a bunch of people who know a lot about it, and they were all kind of like, well. And so I was like, okay. Part of it is that I am trying to find where it is where you oppose Trump on what he's doing that I think is most effective. Right. I can't, I can't sort of turn off the strategist in me. And to me, it's, to me, it is on the fact that Trump is going to take over a country. Like, to me, that is the gobsmacking part. That is the unprecedented part. That is the part that Trump's own allies and Trump's own supporters will oppose. And, and so I guess that's why my brain jumps to that and because this is everything going forward. It is the offense mentality. It is. We are going to need a sustained campaign going after Stephen Miller and explaining why Stephen Miller is an evil bastard who is acting extra constitutionally, who is trying to, like, you have to lean into the excesses of what this administration is doing, because that's the part that the American people get uncomfortable with. They're not uncomfortable with the border being shut down. They're just not. They think that's one of the things Trump did. Well, they don't like you snatching people off the street who have no criminal record, who've been here for 20 years. They don't like the National Guard being in American cities. They don't like us going in nation building in Venezuela. They don't like the way that the economy is going. They don't like the tariffs. And so I don't understand why Democrats aren't every day, like, they can't just do this sort of anodyne affordability message, like they should be talking about affordability. That's good. But it's like they get it in like a talking point kind of way, as opposed to a righteous way in which they are fighting for the American people. And for the people who sit in the chat being like, Sarah, still a Republican, her Republican roots are showing. You know, it's funny because I do often separate my own personal beliefs around what I think is the best way to manage an economy versus what I know voters want because voters do want a more populist economic program. They just do. They want including a lot of Trump voters, right? They do want a focus on, you know, just they want to keep their government programs and they want the government to spend more. They just wanted to spend it on America, not foreign things.
- [53:21]
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- [54:21]
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- [54:44]
Bill Kristol
Your move.
- [54:45]
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- [54:51]
Bill Kristol
No, I do find this always in the focus group that he's gotten distracted. He's not fighting for us. He's off on his own vanity projects, whether it's the Kennedy center and the East Wing or Venezuela in a way. Right? I mean, incidentally, I just talked with an old neocon friend yesterday and we agreed that we spent 10 years fighting, you know, the war for oil stuff with Iraq, which I think was an unfair charge of Iraq, whatever the other problems of Iraq. And generally in 30 years fighting this Marxist account of American foreign policy in the Cold War and stuff for those of us who are older. But you know what? No war for oil is a fine slogan for me. Now it's a correct slogan. It is for oil. They're fighting it for Trump Said it's for the sake of oil. And you know what? We shouldn't go to war for the sake of oil. Especially when in this case, I mean it's honestly the economic argument is kind of illiterate too. What it was oil is not wildly expensive. We're not short of it, we're making a ton of it. We're net, I think exporters now on energy and well, because Venezuela has big oil fields, we're going to risk totally destabilizing the region, risk America, risk having to send troops back in and so forth. I mean I, I do very much agree that yeah, this is not the. We need to think hard about what the right message is and different people have different messages. The left's entitled to have their message and the centrists can have their message and so forth. Then is what happens in Venezuela. I guess I'll come bring it back down and ask to the where we began though, and ask. I do think what happens on the ground in Venezuela is non trivially important. Everyone says Americans don't care about foreign policy. If people have the sense the 10 months from now that it's stable, it's calm, oil companies are there, we have an adequate government, some Venezuelans are going back home. That's one thing. If it. I think that's less likely, not impossible, but I hope Venezuela's case that might be the case. But what they're doing isn't pushing in that direction. And to the degree it's chaotic and just a flop, you know, all the bravado that they engaged in yesterday comes back to haunt them a bit. It is mission. It's mission accomplished on steroids in a way. Right. I mean it's like it's declaring mission accomplished. Bush gave that speech. I looked it up six weeks after the invasion. It was a lull where it looked like it had gone well, we'd gotten rid of Saddam. It wasn't. The civil war hadn't broken out yet. But I'm not defending Bush. It was a foolish to stand up there with that backward drop and so forth. But that was six weeks after the invasion. Hegseth and Trump declared mission accomplished. 12 hours.
- [57:05]
Sarah Longwell
12 hours.
- [57:05]
Bill Kristol
Which is literally crazy. And people aren't in that respect. Voters understand some things. One is that you cannot do that in a foreign policy and in a. As Mark Ertling said, in a war, these things take unexpected paths.
- [57:20]
Sarah Longwell
And this is, I'll just say as a matter of strategy, you've got to look forward. Right. Like you've got. I just, I need people to realize that this fight, people are tired because we've been fighting for a decade. But actually like the fight going into the next four years, five years is extraordinarily important. And there has to be a shift away from Trump did these things that were bad and whatever to here is what is happening to the country here is like a different vision for what we want it to be. And so like offense mentality is different from a defensive mentality and it is also a forward looking mentality as opposed to a backward looking mentality. And that is hard because you have to have vision to do that. You have to know where you're going. And so what I'm asking is that while we look Venezuela is a perfect example of them having no vision for where they're going. That means we have to have vision. We have to have vision about a place we're going and a theory of the case. And like it can't be us because we're not Democrats. Like, or we are. We are, we are part of the broader pro democracy coalition that wants to see Democrats succeed in this moment. And we want them to succeed in ways that we may like, not love on policy grounds, but like if it helps them build a durable pro democracy coalition that pulls America back from the brink of Trumpism. Like we're in. But everybody has to start looking forward to the fight and not backward at it.
- [58:51]
Bill Kristol
Such so well said, such a good note to end on and really an interesting one that we'll have plenty of time to plenty of occasions to discuss over the next year, over the next three years. I think you're right. Keeping that 12 year perspective and the 3 year perspective in mind is so is so important. And that was so well said. Sarah. Thank you for taking the time. Go back to see your family for one last 12 hour stretch here before we really get back on the in the salt mines. And so thanks for, thanks for joining me today.