Dubya's "Criticism" of Trump Isn't Subtle—It's Useless

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Bulwark Takes – “Dubya's ‘Criticism’ of Trump Isn’t Subtle—It’s Useless”

Date: February 16, 2026
Host: JVL with Tim Miller

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Episode Overview

This episode dissects former President George W. Bush’s recent essay about George Washington, which many media outlets have interpreted as a veiled criticism of Donald Trump. JVL and Tim Miller break down whether Bush’s purported “subtle” critique has any meaning or value at a time when, in their view, democracy faces an existential threat from Trump’s disregard for democratic norms. The hosts rail against the historical revisionism and passive rhetoric of establishment figures and institutions, question the current use of “nonpartisan” in civic discourse, and call out the broader weakness of those unwilling to take a stand against authoritarianism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Media Reaction to Bush’s Essay

• JVL opens with frustration at the celebratory response to George W. Bush’s essay, noting that multiple outlets have thrilled at “subtle shade” thrown at Trump.
• Tim Miller finds this reading overblown and says you simply cannot contrast anyone’s virtues without implicitly rebuking Trump—because Trump famously rejects such qualities.
  • Quote:

    “You cannot praise the virtues of anyone without subtly contrasting within a virtueless president.” (Tim Miller, 04:27)

• Both agree: The essay could easily be given to an 8th grade civics class; if you didn’t know about the media coverage, you’d never read it as a potshot at Trump.

2. Reading and Dissecting Bush’s Actual Words

• JVL reads out the passages that media claimed were “against Trump” (04:41–05:19).
• Tim emphasizes that everything said about Washington has been said long before Trump’s rise. The virtues listed (integrity, service-above-self) aren’t barbs, they’re non-controversial historical facts.
  • Quote:

    “It was a nice essay about George Washington that could read to a class without mentioning Donald Trump at all… it was not an attack on Trump anyway.” (Tim, 06:20)

3. The Problem with the “Institution over Individual” Bromide

• The last paragraph of Bush’s essay (08:27–08:56) takes the most fire from both hosts.
• Tim Miller calls it an outright lie:
  • Quote:

    “The office is more important than the occupant—turns out, no, actually! …With Donald Trump, the occupant is more important because he has used all of the traditional norms around the office, and he’s absconded from all of them.” (Tim, 09:08)

• JVL adds that Trump has shown the institution’s weaknesses; Bush’s faith in “ballast” is misplaced.
  • Quote:

    “What Trump has done is expose its weaknesses... Not like—and again, it’s just the opposite has happened. And here George W. Bush is to throw us some bromides, which is essentially... apologizing for Trump and covering for him.” (JVL, 11:18)

4. The “In Pursuit” Project – Making History Relevant by Ignoring the Present?

• Discussion moves to the context of Bush’s essay, which appears in “In Pursuit”—a new civic education initiative focusing on presidential history.
• Miller calls out the project’s explicit moratorium on discussing anything from the past 10 years, including Trump’s and Biden’s terms.
  • Quote:

    “How do you make history relevant without speaking to the specifics of the present?” (Tim, 14:44)

• JVL reads a New York Times segment about the importance of bipartisanship and non-partisanship, and both hosts mock the idea that “nonpartisan” now means needing a MAGA supporter involved.
  • Quote:

    “To be non-partisan now, you have to actually have somebody that is an avowed supporter of Donald Trump.” (Tim, 19:02)

5. The Broader Problem: Weakness in the Face of Authoritarianism

• JVL and Tim criticize centrist and establishment figures for failing to “take their own side in a fight”; they see this as complicity.
• They tie passive civic projects, such as “In Pursuit”, and Bush’s rhetoric, into a broader pattern of elite refusal to confront—or even name—the dangers to democracy.
  • Quote:

    “How do you expect to defeat the fascist attempt if you won’t even say no, we’re against the fascists and we are right and they are wrong and they must be confronted and defeated?” (JVL, 18:46)

6. George W. Bush’s Legacy: Complicity by Silence

• JVL is especially critical of Bush’s failure to confront Trump explicitly over the years, calling this silence “unforgivable” and worse than even the controversial decisions of his presidency.
  • Quote:

    “He could have spoken up at any point in time. He probably could have stopped Donald Trump from being elected the first time. … To the extent that they have been just—W himself—totally complicit ... It is unforgivable.” (JVL, 22:25)

• Tim is “more disappointed than mad,” recognizing Bush’s probable intention to “let history speak for itself,” but sees it as a bad judgment call—not as courageous restraint.
  • Quote:

    “I do think it’s a bad judgment call. And I think that he genuinely has… convinced himself that the honorable thing to do after his presidency was... not speak... I disagree with that assessment.” (Tim, 26:23)

• JVL concludes that Bush’s post-presidency makes any “rehabilitation” or redemption impossible, since his passivity in the Trump era displays the same questionable judgment as his presidency—perhaps worse.

7. Closing Sentiment: Weakness and Complacency

• The show closes with a sense of bitter resignation and worry:
  • Quote:

    “Donald Trump was right. This society is too decadent and weak and it was begging to be taken over by a strong man. God help us.” (JVL, 27:42)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Tim Miller (on Bush’s essay):

  “To me, this read, I read it and it read like a very nice essay about George Washington’s traits that you could like give to maybe an 8th grade class as an assignment…” (06:13)

• JVL (on the constitution’s vulnerabilities):

  “…what Trump has done is expose its weaknesses. Yes, right. It has exposed all of the places where there are chinks in the armor and where it can be attacked and perverted and potentially defeated and overthrown.” (11:18)

• Tim Miller (on non-partisan standards):

  “To be non-partisan now, you have to actually have somebody that is an avowed supporter of Donald Trump… That’s just true…” (19:02)

• JVL (on Bush’s failure):

  “…he could have moved 70,000 votes. I do. And to the extent that they have been just W himself, totally complicit… It is unforgivable.” (22:25)

• JVL (on societal decadence):

  “Donald Trump was right. This society is too decadent and weak and it was begging to be taken over by a strong man.” (27:42)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 01:30 – Opening & President’s Day sarcasm
• 04:41 – Reading Bush’s essay
• 08:27 – Dissecting the “office is more important than the occupant” argument
• 13:55 – Introduction of “In Pursuit” and its approach
• 14:44 – Critique of avoiding present-day context in history teaching
• 19:01 – The new definition of ‘nonpartisan’
• 22:25 – Bush’s silence and missed opportunity
• 27:42 – Final statement on societal weakness and complacency

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Tone & Style

• Highly critical, sometimes caustic; alternately earnest and exasperated
• Casual language but deeply informed and passionate
• Unapologetically partisan against Trump and those seen as “soft” critics

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This conversation is a must-hear for those following intra-GOP debates, the struggle over historical memory, and the ongoing anxiety about the resilience of American democracy. The Bulwark hosts ask: What good are subtleties in the face of existential threat? And what happens when the guardians of democracy simply won’t say what needs to be said—or act when it matters most?

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hello everyone, this is JVL here with my bulwark colleague Tim Miller. Before we get started, hit like hit. Subscribe. Follow us on the channel. It helps out a lot and I want to wish everybody a happy President's Day. Especially to all the fascists, neo Nazis, Christian nationalists, white supremacists, and morons who who said that it didn't matter who you voted for because both sides were equally bad?

[C]

Tim I think there's a lot of other people that fit in that category. I don't know why you had to limit it to the fascist white nationalist.

[B]

Well, I feel like this is the.

[C]

Way I Morons was kind of an umbrella category for everyone else.

[B]

You know, I'm just trying to channel the President. So we wake up today to see that George W. Bush has finally spoken out. We had pieces in the Daily Beast and in the New York Times about how George W. Bush has written an essay on Substack about George Washington and he is Subtly throwing shade at Donald J. Trump. Tim, did you read that essay by George W. Bush? I have read that substack called In Pursuit. We'll talk about In Pursuit in a minute because I am hot over these people who refuse to take their own fucking side in a fight.

[C]

Yeah, I have. I read it after I take the pod. Hence us gathering back together, you and me, to discuss this. I want to get into the details. I know you have a lot of thoughts on former President Bush and the way he's positioning himself. I just want to speak a little bit about that point. We've been doing this for 10 years now. The point of how there are such old jabs at Donald Trump. I always felt this way about at funerals, you know, at the McCain funeral and the H.W. bush funeral. And funerals aren't necessarily the place to go, you know, hard as a motherfucker against the sitting president, probably. But, like. But there's always. There would be complaints from the MAGA side that, like, oh, there were. This was inappropriate. Like, they're attacking Trump. Like, here's the thing. You cannot write an essay. You cannot give a eulogy. You cannot speak about the moral values of someone else in your life without subtly dissing Donald Trump, because Donald Trump does not care about or share any of the values that underpin, like, what you would want our, you know, our national experiment or, you know, any. Any personal character traits. Like, Donald Trump's whole shtick is that he doesn't give a fuck about any of that. You know, is that, like, everybody's as bad as everybody else. You might as well just get yours. You don't want to be a sucker and a loser. So, like, if you have a person like that, like, there are going to be subtle jabs at them anytime you compliment the valor of another person because he has none. And so I just want to just say at the top, maybe George W. Bush was subtly contrasting from Trump, or maybe not. Maybe he was just praising the virtues of George Washington. I don't think that we could know, because you cannot praise the virtues of anyone without subtly contrasting within a virtueless president.

[B]

I'm just gonna read you the passages which are being flagged by all of the interpreters of tea leaves.

[C]

Okay, thank you.

[B]

This is George W. Bush's essay. I have studied the corrupting nature of.

[D]

Power and how retaining power for power's sake has infected politics for gener generations. Our first president could have remained all powerful, but twice he chose not to. In so doing, he set a standard for all presidents. To live up to. Washington modeled what it means to put the good of the nation over self interest and selfish ambitions. He embodied integrity and modeled why it's worth aspiring to. And he carried himself with dignity and self restraint, honoring the office without allowing it to become invested with near mythical powers.

[C]

Let's sit with that part. I want to get to the last. Let's just sit with those sections again, just reiterating my point. Any column in history praising George Washington talked about how he restrained himself from retaining power and how he admired Cincinnatus before Donald Trump existed, before Donald Trump came down the escalator and owed to George Washington in what would it be, 1987, on the 200 year anniversary of the Constitutional Congress. Like, that would have said all these same things, right? Like those are just George Washington's traits. Like he did set a standard for all presidents to live up to. Yes, he did put the country's interests over selfish ambition and self interest. Like, those are just true things about him. Donald Trump carries none of those traits. I don't see how this is even relevant. Like, to me, this read, I read it and it read like a very nice essay about George Washington's traits that you could like give to maybe an 8th grade class as an assignment and they like, might learn a couple new items about him. You know, he put down an insurrection in Pennsylvania. I didn't, I hadn't remembered that. Right. Like it was, it's not like a deep, deep theory or history about him, but it was a nice essay about George Washington that could read to a class without mentioning Donald Trump at all. Like an 8th grade teacher could read this to their class, not mention Trump, and like nothing really would be lost from the text of it. Like, it was not an attack on Trump anyway. I'm sorry to obsess over that.

[B]

No, it's, this is, this is the thing that I was trying to, to point to, which is that if you had not read the New York Times and Daily Beast pieces talking about, whoa, George W. Bush throwing shit, if you'd simply been handed the George W. Bush essay and read it and said, is this a critique of Donald Trump, you would have said, no, there's nothing in it about Donald Trump. It's not even a veiled critique. Or maybe what this is is, this is everybody else in the world desperate to see George W. Bush do something.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

And so they are projecting their wishes onto this as if, oh, finally, he's joining the fray. But he's doing it so subtly. And this is of a piece with how, I mean, I hate to hand it to Donald Trump, but he was right. How weak all of these people are and how utterly unequipped they are to resist authoritarianism and fascism. And that's what I want to sort of delve. Delve into.

[C]

Before we delve into that. I paused you there because then the very last paragraph I thought was important because the rest of the Bush essay, like I said, like Trump may or may not be there, depending on how you look at it. The last paragraph is outrageous to me and is the thing that got me the most mad because reading all of it and I just got like, okay, you know, again, this is like a tribute to George Washington, his birthday, whatever. I want more out of Bush. But like, okay, this last paragraph, when he talks about the offense of the presidency is really what rankled me. So would you like to read it or would you like me to?

[B]

I often say that the office of the President is more important than the occupant.

[D]

That the, that the institution of the presidency gives ballast to our ship of state, which.

[B]

I'm sorry, this sounds like it was fucking chatgpt.

[D]

For that stability, we are indebted to the wisdom of our founding fathers governing charter and the humility of our nation's first president. It has guided us for 250 years and it will strengthen us for our next 250 years.

[B]

Well, you know what, George W. Bush, if it strengthens us for the next 250 years, it won't be because you did anything to fucking defend it.

[C]

Can I just say though, no, it hasn't. Right. So this is the part, like, this is the part that gets a lot like the rest of it was just an 8th grade George Washington essay, which is fine and appropriate. This last paragraph is wrong. It is, it is actually a lie. It's a lie. Really. It's a purposeful omission of what is happening right now. And the omission is so severe it ventures over into being a lie. I just want to re. Emphasize some of those things. The office is more important than the occupant turns out. No, actually, honestly, that might have been something to say. Up through the year 2015, it turned out that the office was more important than the occupant. In the case of Nixon, it turned out that the office was more important than the occupant, kind of. In the case of Andrew Johnson, that was a little more borderline. But. But not. But no, like we've learned with Donald Trump that the occupant is more important because he has used all of the, you know, elements of the. The traditional norms around the office, and he's absconded from all of them. He doesn't care about any of them. And. And he's only used it to where it benefits him. Like, he uses the. The importance of the office to his benefit at times, but when it becomes a hindrance to what he wants to do, he just ignores it. Then again, the institution of the presidency gives ballast to our ship of state. No, it does not. Apparently, we thought. We may have thought it did at one point, but there's no. No one can look at what's happening right now and say the institution of the president is giving ballast to our ship of state. The courts are giving ballast to our ship of state. There are, you know, there's something.

[B]

The jury system.

[C]

Yeah. That's giving ballast to our state. Yes. The office of the President.

[B]

Bond market ballast to our ship of state.

[C]

Yes. The office of the presidency is not. Okay. And again. And it has guided us for 250 years. No, really, Actually, it turned out it guided us for what, 242 years. And it's weakening us now. Things like this are weakening us now, not strengthening us. So to me, it was like that last paragraph. It's like, maybe he meant this as a. As some kind of, you know, sly attack on Trump, but to me, it reads as, like, apologia for him, honestly.

[B]

Right. And here's the phrase, the wisdom of our Founding fathers governing charter. Again, this is exactly wrong. The Constitution is a wondrous document in many, many ways, but what Trump has done is expose its weaknesses. Yes, right. It has exposed all of the places where there are chinks in the armor and where it can be attacked and perverted and potentially defeated and overthrown. That's what has been exposed. Not like. And again, it's just the opposite has happened. And here George W. Bush is to throw us some bromides, which is essentially the same thing as just apologizing for Trump and covering for him.

[C]

Yeah. We're saying it's not the big of a deal. Maybe because I was about to backtrack a little bit for my word of apologia. But, like, it's essentially arguing that it isn't that we will survive this, that it's not worth getting upset about. And so in some ways, Tim. Yeah, right. It's kind of a defense of his lack of. Of action. Right. Because it's like the office, the governing charter, the ballast of our ship of state, those things are more powerful than this. One man and maybe not. I guess the best you could say is that all of those claims are deeply in question at this point and we're going to have to work to make them true. Or get lucky.

[B]

Yeah.

[E]

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[B]

So I'd like to talk about In Pursuit which published this, please. Okay. In Pursuit is being run by Colleen Shogun. You may have remembered her. I remember her because early on in Trump 2 she was, she was the national archivist, head of the National Archives and she was fired by Trump, but then hadn't been fired by Trump. And so there's this weird moment where Trump had said, yes, she's fired, but nobody in the office. Like she was still sitting in her office. And anyway, so she was in fact fired by Trump and she has established this series of essays to make history, quote, relevant. Here's the New York Times. While not speaking narrowly to the specifics of the President, we are taking the long view of things she said. The lesson of presidential humility transcends time here. I'm just going to read to you from the New York Times.

[C]

Can we just come? Sorry. How do you make history relevant without speaking to the specifics of the present. Isn't that how you make history relevant? By learning the lessons and making them revel or respond to the specifics of the present? Isn't that the point?

[B]

As it turns out, Tim, they are specifically avoiding the president because they're going to talk about presidential history except for the Biden and Trump terms. So there is a moratorium on discussing anything that has happened in the last 10 years.

[C]

Great.

[B]

Those things are verboten to discuss. We may not. I guess the transcendence has to in order to transcend the present, you have to pretend the present isn't happening anyway. So we are going to have chronological essays on each American president up to Barack Obama and some of the first leaves by a bipartisan mix of prominent public figures and scholars, including three former presidents and seven Pulitzer winning historians. Future installments will have Mr. Obama on Abraham Lincoln, Bill Clinton on Theodore Roosevelt, Fox News host Brett Baer on Dwight D. Eisenhower, balance both sides and Chief Justice John Roberts on William Howard Taft. That's great.

[C]

That should be a good.

[B]

That's great. Again, we have to go back to Colleen Shogun here. Do you recall why she was fired, Tim? Because I'll give you the 32nd version if you don't.

[C]

It was because it was something related to the classified documents.

[B]

Yes. So after the Mar A Lago classified documents criminal prosecution that was all begun by the National Archives realizing it was missing a bunch of stuff and talking with Trump and his lawyers trying to get it back. Trump refusing and eventually going to the FBI and saying, will you guys talk to him? Because like the law requires us to have these documents back. So Trump on the campaign trail had said, you know, one of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to replace and get rid of that corrupt archivist and we're going to replace her. Of course, the problem with this is that the National Archives started this process in 2022 and Colleen Shogun wasn't appointed until 2023. So she's not even the person who did the thing that he's angry about. But that doesn't matter. He had to fire her anyway because we wanted to make sure that he had his people at the National Archives. And I, I want to this is part me hating on the New York Times, part me hating on Colleen Shogun. Just going to read this to you. Asked if she was concerned that In Pursuit would be Dismissed as partisan, Dr. Shogun pointed to the fact that it is supported by more perfect a broad Civics Coalition, including 43 presidential centers from Washington's Mount Vernon to the Obama Presidential center in Chicago. But ultimately, she said, the project will have to stand on its own merits. So again, the President of the United States fired the national archivist for no reason whatsoever except that he was mad that the archives had reported about his federal criminal activities. Criminal activities to the FBI and the New York Times, in doing a story about this, has to be balanced by asking if they are concerned that what they're doing might be dismissed as being partisan, as if that's the worst fucking thing in the world, you know, does anybody ever ask Trump, are you, are you concerned that having DHS agents shooting people on the streets might be dismissed as a partisan act? Mr. President, no, nobody fucking cares about that. And, and here, instead of just saying get bent, New York Times, what the fuck are you talking about? Look around, see what time it is. Colleen Shogun is like, well, we are, you're super bipartisan. And you know, ultimately we have to be judged by what we do. I. How do you expect to defeat the fascist attempt if you won't even say no, we're against the fascists and we are right and they are wrong and they must be confronted and defeated.

[C]

I have a couple thoughts about this. Number one, there is this, there's been this redefinition of partisan now where to be nonpartisan now you have to actually have somebody that is an avowed supporter of Donald Trump. Yes. Like that's the only way to be non partisan. Because to be honest, I do believe Hugh Hewitt was involved at the Nixon library at some level. So there might be some Nixon library people that are Trump friendly, but there's none at the W. Bush library. There's none at the H.W. bush. I'm quite certain that the Reagan, that there's none there. There's been some like internal issues at the Reagan thing where they've been like desperately trying to find somebody that just kind of likes Trump. Okay? Right. Because it's just like college educated people that know about history and care about the presidency don't like Donald Trump unless they're paid partisan hacks like that. That's just true. Like around the country, that's just what has happened. And all of those people have been thrust out and Donald Trump has replaced them with, with MAGA folks who are on board with his soft, authoritarian mission. And so it's like if you, if you go along with that game now, right, Even if you're trying to be a nonpartisan historian, like, even if you're giving them the benefit of the doubt on all this, which is just like, you know, Colleen Shogun thought there's some benefit to having a program that, that honors the great traits of our past presidents and the wisdom of Brett Baer. Yeah. And we're, and we're not trying to get involved in partisan politics. This is again, just for, okay, there's a role for things for school children to read about presidents but like to then participate in their fake game. Right. Where it's like we have to find some like Trump people. Now you're complicit. You might not want it to be, but you're complicit in the effort of redefining all of this, of just accepting their premise that in order to be nonpartisan, you have to be in the Trump culture. And maybe that is the case now because Trump has taken over the Republican Party, in which case I think that we can just set nonpartisanship aside as a value that's something that we care about anymore. You know what I mean? I don't know. Because they don't give a fuck. They don't care.

[B]

Nobody's asking the Republicans. Oh, are you concerned that this might be dismissed as partisaning?

[C]

Right. Or evangelical church leaders who are giving their homilies or et cetera. You could go down the list of kind of right wing institutions, institutions like they don't care about that. And so would I prefer he did.

[B]

The Republican National Convention from the White House?

[C]

Yeah. And would I blew up the hatchack country where we could have bipartisan historian institutions where people get together and sniff their farts and debate the merits and demerits of past presidents and have people from all ideas. Yeah, I would prefer that. But unfortunately one of the parties got taken over by an authoritarian that tried to end the democracy. And so if you're going to write about the strengths of our democracy and how it has been forged through humility and founding documents and how important all these things are, then you have to be able to say in a clear eyed fashion that the current administration is an attack on all of that. Because they are by their own words, they are.

[B]

Final piece, George W. Bush. So I was not the biggest fan of George W. Bush as he was both running for president and serving as president. I think he made a lot of mistakes. I think some of those mistakes were foreseeable, some were not. I have been sort of post presidency. I am on the. You and I are on different sides of this. I think like, you know, some good did come out of Iraq, some good did come out of Afghanistan. People can disagree as to Whether or not it was enough to counterbalance the cost of it. The thing that Bush has done that I find totally unforgivable is his silence through the Trump years, because this is not like, you know, he made a judgment call and it didn't turn out the right way. This is a long time horizon. He could have spoken up at any point in time. He probably could have stopped Donald Trump from being elected the first time. I mean, Trump gets elected by 70,000 votes, right. If George W. Bush comes out the week before the election and tells Republicans, look, stay home, don't. You know, you don't have to vote for Hillary Clinton, but by God, you can't put this man. I think that if he and Paul Ryan had done that, they could have moved 70,000 votes. I do. And to the extent that they have been just W himself, totally complicit, which you can't even say he's doing well because of, you know, party loyalty or anything, because Trump attacks him relentlessly.

[C]

Yeah, right.

[B]

I mean, Trump hates the entire Butch Bush family. He goes after them all the time. And W. Is just like, well, I'm gonna paint my landscapes, go back to my ranch, clear some brush, get up my painting board and the easels. I. It is unforgivable. Is this too much?

[C]

Well, no. I mean, look, I understand it. I feel like I am less sympathetic on the Iraq question and more sympathetic on this than you, and that's. You want to hash it out?

[B]

Tell me more.

[C]

Well, no, I mean, it's wrong. It's bad. I'm not sure it mattered. W. Left so unpopular, and at some level, the Democrats were kind of hurt by being seen as part of being part of the bipartisan establishment. And, you know, so some. Some ways it cuts both ways. And. And look, you'll see all the blowback on the left from people about. Liz Cheney just tried to help, and that's her fault that Kamala lost. It's like, sorry for. Sorry for trying.

[B]

Maybe.

[C]

Maybe some more people with your ideology should have tried. Okay, we'll set that aside. But, you know, Hassan Piker said he can't endorse Kamala, but the Bush thing, would it have helped? Maybe. Should he have done it anyway, regardless? Absolutely. Absolutely.

[B]

If not the first time, maybe after the insurrection or maybe before the next election. Right. Maybe in 2020. There's so many opportunities.

[C]

Yeah. I just find myself more disappointed than mad about it, for whatever reason. And, I don't know, maybe that's more about me. It's really unbelievably Disappointing for me.

[B]

I think it makes any rehabilitation or second consideration of Bush impossible because I think Bush's conduct since the Trump moment arrived has revealed him to be a coward in important ways. Or if not a coward then to have such bad judgment.

[C]

I think the latter part, it becomes.

[B]

Hard to then overlook judgment failures during his presidency.

[C]

Right.

[B]

If you're going to say like, well, that was a judgment call. It was a close call. Knowing what we knew at the time, you don't really know right now getting to see how horrible his judgment is. You just can't give him the benefit of the doubt on anything.

[C]

I think the latter is more fair than the former because I do think it's a bad Judge McCall. And I think that he genuinely has. This is going to seem preposterous to everybody, but I think that he genuinely has convinced himself that the honorable thing to do after his presidency was to not speak, was to just let history speak for itself. I disagree with that assessment, but I think that, I do think that it's genuinely held. But yeah, the other element of this is, it's just sad and unfortunate is that like H.W. wouldn't have done this and John McCain wouldn't have done it and H.W. and Barbara were, you know, I mean, they were not going to be on TikTok or whatever had they left. I can't speak for them. But, but their malice towards Trump was rabid. I mean, they, they, they hated him in a deep way. Yeah. And they fought. Yeah.

[B]

Mitt Romney fought against him.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. I mean, this is again of, of people to recently hold the Republican nomination for president. Name the one who just kept his mouth shut.

[C]

George W. Bush.

[B]

Yeah, he's the one. I don't know, man.

[C]

Pretty boy Mike Pence said more.

[B]

Yeah. Yes. So there we go. George W. Bush. Yeah. I feel like we had a, was a Denny Green. You know, they are what we thought they were. He is what we thought he was. George W. Bush with his subtle jabs at Donald Trump, these liberal historians who can't even take their own side against the people trying to destroy them. Donald Trump was right. This society is too decadent and weak and it was begging to be taken over by a strong man. God help us.

[C]

I forget who was in charge of the show at the beginning, but that's jvl. That's classic JVL right there. I'm Tim Miller. Subscribe to the feed for more garment rending comment below. If you have any disagreements or quibbles. Oh yeah, we love quibbles and we'll see you all soon.

[F]

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[B]

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[E]

Let's see.

[A]

Payroll, check. Inventory check Insurance.

[C]

Ugh.

[B]

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[E]

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