← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Bill Kristol
Hi, I'm Bill Kristol. Welcome to the Bulwark Live on Sunday. I'm very pleased to be joined today by old friend and colleague Tom Joselyn. We worked together over the years at the Weekly Standard and Tom has since written for the Bulwark. Trained originally as an economist and worked as an economist and knows a lot about why these tariffs are crazy. But we're not going to focus on that exactly today because after that Tom worked on the Middle east, on counterterrorism, and then on the Trump phenomenon. Here at home was the top, a writer, key staff member on the January 6th committee report. January 6th committee, key writer of that report. So, Tom, and now senior fellow at Just Security, very fine outfit connected to nyu, which you should all look at the website and see a lot of good legal analysis as well as Tom's not entirely less legal than war. I don't know, what should we call it here?
- [00:51]
Tom Joselyn
Legal adjacent, I guess.
- [00:52]
Bill Kristol
Legal adjacent analysis. Anyway, Tom, thanks for, thanks for joining me today.
- [00:56]
Tom Joselyn
No, thanks for having me, Bill.
- [00:57]
Bill Kristol
And we're going to talk about something Tom and I were talking about just on the phone this week. I thought this is really worth half an hour of our discussion with all of you, which is people being surprised at how extreme Trump is being in the second term and what's going on. These people are kind of crazy and the conspiracies. And Tom said this is always what was going to happen. The MAGA loons are in charge. And so Tom, explain.
- [01:21]
Tom Joselyn
Yeah, I mean, you know, you saw what, you know, our sort of, our conversation came out of the fact that Laura Loomer, this far right extremist, was at the White House and having a meeting with Trump. And after her meeting, you know, three, you know, NSC staffers are fired and the director of NSA and the top deputy are fired. And you know, there's some reporting now, a lot of reporting that she, these people were on her basically her list of people who should have been fired by Trump. And the Trump essentially took her recommendations and, and followed through on it. And the question, you know, there's a lot of people who are watching this and thinking, you know, my God, how can Laura Loomer have so much influence?
- [01:55]
Bill Kristol
Say a word about just who Laura Looma is.
- [01:57]
Tom Joselyn
Because it's worth, I mean, she, I mean she isn't, she's a, you know, right wing nutter. You know, I mean, she's known for 911 conspiracy theories. You know, last year, Bill, she was traveling with Trump around the 911 anniversary. And it Caused the big stir and the campaign was like, okay, we have to back away from this and kind of distance ourselves a little bit because she's so known for being so extreme. She, she's somebody who, a couple years ago, she jumped a fence at Nancy Pelosi's home in California to stage a protest. You know, she's posted all sorts of crazy stuff online. 911 conspiracy theories, extremist stuff, you know, anti immigrant, you know, xenophobic hate stuff. I mean, all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories and nonsense. She's well known. And you know, the interesting thing about Laura Loomer, though, that kind of came out in this New York Times reporting about her influence with Trump over this, these firings is that she described herself as sort of the, describes her mentor as Roger Stone. And that's a key fact here because Roger Stone, I think is a seminal character in the evolution of how MAGA and right wing conspiracies evolved into a dominant force now in our politics. He's some, he's the longest serving political advisor to Donald Trump. He's somebody who brokered the relationship between Donald Trump and Alex Jones back in 2015 when Trump goes on his show and endorses him. He's somebody who's been on Jones's show many, many times as a guest host on InfoWars. And Stone is one of the premier conspiracy theorists of our time. And he's been injecting this into our politics for a long time. And so for Loomer to be, you know, say that this is the guy who was her mentor makes a lot of sense. I mean, this is how she probably helped get connected in the Trump world. You know, last year too, she, there's another fact for you. She floated this idea that Ron DeSantis's wife was faking breast cancer last year or faking cancer last year as part of this, you know, gambit against DeSantis when he was challenging Trump as in the primary. You know, so, so this is somebody who, what I would say about Laura Loomer is she's crazy. She traffic some crazy stuff. But it shows how this crazy conspiracy theories have been weaponized as a political weapon by Trump and by the people around Trump to push their agenda forward. And this is really what's driving MAGA and driving Trumpism and his policies. The Magaloons, they really are in charge. This shouldn't surprise anybody. You know, this is, this is a, this is a really key pillar of Trump's base of Trump's political support. And it animates a Lot of what drives him in his agenda.
- [04:12]
Bill Kristol
I think you said somewhere that the conspiracism isn't just a sidebar or footnote to Trumpism and to their ascent to power. It's really at the heart of it. So explain.
- [04:24]
Tom Joselyn
Yeah, Conspiracies. I mean, you know, it's always been with us, right? I mean, the paranoid style has always been in American politics. We've always had conspiracy theories, you know, well, on the John Birch Society, you know, and the Birchers and that whole phenomenon which was tapped down so many decades ago. So this is something that pops up routinely on both the right and the left. But what I would say is what's very different about the moment we live in and really over the last decade is I think Donald Trump's key insight was that this online community of conspiracists who are really extreme in their views is much larger than a lot of people realize. So for example, you know, I saw this documentary on Alex Jones and I camera was the NBC one or the HBO one. There was this documentary on him and one of his producers was saying, I think correctly, that Jones's audience for any one of his productions could be as large as like the NBC Nightly News. You know, that's how many Jones, just.
- [05:15]
Bill Kristol
To be clear, he's the Infowars guy, right? Spread the theory that the kids killed at Sandy Hook were.
- [05:22]
Tom Joselyn
Yeah, sorry, I'm assuming everybody knows Alex Jones is. Because he's so toxic. I mean, he's the one who's, who spread the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory that this was a government operation to kill kids, to pretend, to pretend to kill kids were killed in order to take people's guns away. Right. So he's, he's an anti government extremist and conspiracy theorist who's well known for traffic in 911 conspiracy theories, trafficking in kind of gun conspiracies and other things. And you know, he's somebody who's deeply unpopular amongst the mainstream but has been very Much Embraced by MAGA, by Donald Trump, by J.D. vance, by Elon Musk, Roger Stone. A lot of these people at, you know, sort of core players in MAGA are Alex Jones guys, they're Infowars guys. And that's should be troubling to us, right? Like you have the Infowars mindset, is basically running the government right now, which should be real wake up call for anybody who thinks that there's some sort of sanity at the end of this MAGA rainbow.
- [06:13]
Bill Kristol
You know, Laura Lure thing is incredible because she was tweeting against Michael Waltz, the National Security Advisor, and claiming that maybe signal, the signal gate text thing was a setup or whatever. Or that. Anyway, she wants Walls fired because he's also a Neo guy. People like, he was friendly. People like me and you 10 or 11 years ago. Very well, quite a while ago. And. And I remember joking to someone like, this is midweek, I suppose. I mean, this is just Loomer tweeting. But of course, Trump is seeing or being shown these tweets and next thing we know, they'll be on the phone together and, you know, Trump will be acting on some of it. And then the other person just laughed and I even was kind of half joking. And the next thing, literally, she's in the White House, she's on the phone with Trump. And I think three, at least three, but maybe more national security senior staffers of Waltz were fired. For now, Waltz is there for now. His deputy, Alex Wong is there, but she's gone after him with the most vitriolic. Just kind of racist.
- [07:08]
Tom Joselyn
Racist? Yeah, I mean, it's racist.
- [07:11]
Bill Kristol
Chinese American, I guess. And for now, they're still there. And then the director of the National Security Agency is a four star general, very well respected, I gather, and very not political. I didn't know. I don't know if you've ever dealt with him. I haven't. But yeah, Republican members of Congress respected him, Democratic members and stuff. He's fired because Laura Loomer thinks he's bad, because he was, I guess, connection.
- [07:37]
Tom Joselyn
To General Millie was the premise of it, you know.
- [07:39]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. He was put there in the Biden administration and Millie was chairman of Detroit Chiefs. I mean, I mean, what kind of level of, I mean, that is, that should really, I mean, it's more alarming than, oh, they're a little, their doctrines are a little crazy or they're not personally the most admirable people in the world or whatever. Right, Yeah.
- [07:57]
Tom Joselyn
I mean, this is the point though, right? Like, why is the President of the United States taking time out of his schedule to meet with Laura Loomer? Right, right. And the thing that's difficult for people like us, I think, to accept is that this online community of conspiracists and extremists has a lot more political sway and power now than people want to accept. Right. This, this lunacy really does drive Trump's agenda and drives Trump's politics. It's a key component of his whole political coalition. You know, when he goes on the Alex Jones Show InfoWars in December 2015 and praises Jones and his audience and he brings them into his political coalition explicitly. He does that. That's there's a direct line from that moment to a lot of the crazy we're seeing now is a direct line between that moment in January 6th is a direct line to the crazy stuff we're seeing now and the way policy is being implemented. And this is a phenomenon. You know, I pulled this, you know, as we were preparing for the show today, I pulled this quote from. I was thinking about how to best illustrate this to people, right? And I went back to hillbilly Elegy by J.D. vance. You know, J.D. vance used to be a somewhat normal Republican or seemingly normal, right. Somebody who, who certainly didn't entertain conspiracy theories as part of his political platform. And in fact in hillbillyology, which he gained a lot of fame for, he warns about this on the right and he writes, and if you just forgive me for a second to read couple passages I think are very illustrative. He writes, you know, many try to blame the anger and cynicism of working class whites on misinformation. Admittedly there is an industry of conspiracy mongers infringe lunatics writing about all manner of idiocy from Obama's alleged religious leanings to his ancestry. He says, but every major news organization, even the off malign Fox News have always told the truth about Obama's citizenship status and his religious views. In other words, he was saying that, you know, even right wing media at that time was basically holding, had a dam against this conspiracy theories. For the most part they were keeping that bay, you know, but he, he went on to say many in the white working class believe the absolute worst about their society. And he, he includes a sample of stuff, examples that he had that he personally had witnessed, right? His friends and family members were emailing him things or texting him things. And one of them was that Alex Jones had this 10 year anniversary of 911, he had his documentary suggesting the US government was, you know, at fault for it. That was one of the things that his friends and family members had texted or emailed JD Vance and JV say this is crazy, right? Like this is obviously not true. And he had other things about how the Newtown gun massacre was engineered by the federal government. That's a key Alex Jones conspiracy theory. You know, the government, this deep state operation to pretend these kids were killed. Which is obviously disgusting, obviously. And he had, he had a couple other, other examples and he says the list goes on. But here's the, here's the key Point from this, from hillbilly elegy, and I'm going to connect us to where J.D. vance is today. Okay. He writes, it's impossible to know how many people believe one or many of these stories, but if a third of our community questions the president's origin, meaning whether or not Obama really was an American, despite all evidence to the contrary, it's a good bet that the other conspiracies have broader currency than we'd like. This isn't some libertarian mistrust of government policy, which is healthy in any democracy. This is deep skepticism of the very institutions of our society. And it's becoming more and more mainstream. So J.D. vance writes this. I don't know, hillbilly allergies. What? 2015, I think 16. 15. 16. Somewhere in there, right, he's warning about this phenomenon J.D. vance is experiencing in his own communities. He's seeing in his own own phenomenon. He's warning about the influence of people like Alex Jones and his conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories from the far right like Laura Loomer and others. Right. Flash forward to J.D. vance of today. So in 2021, J.D. vance gave a speech and ProPublica did a transcript of his speech when she defended Alex Jones. And he said, you know, yeah, he's, he, he, he, he traffics in what people call some crazy things, but everybody believes crazy things. And there was a lot more truth in what Alex Jones had to say than like Rachel Maddow or somebody like that. MSNBC, you know, you talk about the J.D. vance of today. This is somebody who, you know, he recently was, of course, during the campaign, you'll remember, he was the origin of the idea these immigrants were eating cats and dogs in Ohio. You know, I mean, he was the guy who was pushing that conspiracy theory. You know, some of his rhetoric, you know, is echoed the Great replacement theory, which is this white supremacist theory about what's going on with immigration. And from some subject that's near and dear to my heart because of something I've spent so much time studying when it comes to January 6th, he took this, he's, he's claimed that, that the conspiracy theory the FBI planned January 6th or instigated January 6th to entrap Trump's followers was somehow vindicated by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General, which released a report on this, you know, a couple months ago. Of course, the report does exactly the opposite. It says that that's a conspiracy theory. That's not, not based in fact at all. So here's, here's what I'm trying to say here with all this, all this examples, right? Here's a guy who was a somewhat normal Republican or somewhat normal political figure on the rise who was warning about the influence of far right conspiracists like Alex Jones, like Laura Loomer and their types, right? And he's, he's saying this is a big problem, right? But he was warning it was becoming more mainstream after January 6, after Trump's failures during his first term, he embraces this stuff, nor as a basis for his own political power. He, he, he, he welcomes this stuff into his own political agenda in order for him to move forward. In Trump world, in MAGA world, doesn't that tell you a lot about the moment we're at? You know?
- [13:36]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. It strikes me also that these, these things are not static. That is to say, you think, okay, okay, there's a bunch of conspiracists out here, then there's, you know, mainstream, if you want Trumpism, I guess, you know, here. And there's just sort of a balance between them. But it does seem like once you don't have a dam, as you said, a barrier wall against the conspiracists, they drive the agenda and everyone else ends up rationalizing what they're doing. January 6th is a great example of that, Right? I mean, this was something that beforehand was inconceivable to 90%, 80% of Republicans, even 70%, probably of Trump supporters. And afterwards, gradually and pretty quickly though, actually it all got kind of normalized or rationalized.
- [14:18]
Tom Joselyn
Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what they did. It was one of the main things I was worried when I quit my job and went to work for the January 6th committee, because I was very worried about, you know, this January 6th should have been a moment to put, put this conspiracy monster back in its box, right? And say, you know, we, this is obviously leading to real world madness now in a way that is really detrimental for our democracy and threatens the very order of things and how we, how our government functions. But instead, what the right did and what MAGA did and certainly Trump and all the people around is they, they doubled and tripled down on conspiracy theories, trying to deflect blame for, not for January 6, trying to deflect blame for the assault on the Capitol. And so you have today. You know, I wrote a few pieces for the Bulwark on this. The director of the FBI, Cash Patel, is a guy who spent four years insinuating or suggesting that the FBI itself planned January 6th. He actually writes, he Actually said during one of his podcasts, you know, what was the FBI doing planning January 6th for a year? You know, and he, and he did all sorts of. He trafficked all sorts of conspiracy theories on QAnon podcasts and other things. That's what he was doing for four years between, you know, the end of the first Trump administration and becoming the FBI director, you know, and his deputy director, Dan Bungino. Same, same kind of deal. Right. I mean, it's the guy who, who was saying that the January 6th pipe bomb. There was, you know, there were pipe bombs, you know, outside of DNC headquarters and another one outside the RNC or on Capitol Hill. And he insinuated that the, that the DNC one was a setup, was a deep state fake, you know, the FBI had somehow had knowledge of that, that it wasn't letting out, you know, and, and Patel did the same thing. So what this, which should tell you is, right, the thing, Bill, people ask me when I talk about this is, well, these people can't really believe this stuff. Right. Well, a couple things on that we don't really know. I mean. Right, because you don't really know what's in somebody's mind. I mean, maybe these people do get indoctrinated in this crazy stuff. Excuse me, and they start to believe it. But here's the point. Even if they don't believe it, this stuff is so politically powerful that they have to cater to it or think they have to cater to it for their political power within MAGA and within the right wing now. Right. That is what should tell you that that's the warning sign. Right. Is that this stuff is not disqualifying any longer. Instead, it's a source of power, a source of political power on the right to do these types of things. And we can go through. I got, I have a whole list I prepared for here. We can talk more as we go on. But I've got. This is. There are all sorts of examples throughout the administration of this phenomenon. This is, this is what's happened, you know.
- [16:45]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. I mean, I think one good one is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Who 50 out of 53 Republican senators voted to confirm. I actually, that one surprised me a little more than some of the others. I was, I hoped you could defeat what they could hope one or two of these nominees could be defeated. It was so obviously unqualified in so many ways. But, you know, there was some loyalty to Hexaf and being on FOX and, but hell, from having been or worked on the Hill and then Sort of, you know, on their side, so to speak. Kennedy hadn't been, Kennedy had been a. And so forth. He had real political affiliation, was on the left and with the environmentalists, little kooky anti science types, but they were mostly lefty kind of kooky kooks, you know, and the idea that they felt obligated to him, that was because Trump picked him. But the idea that Trump was comfortable with him and the idea that he is actually the secretary of HHS in some ways is even as crazy as Patel being at the FBI or, you.
- [17:37]
Tom Joselyn
Know, even more so, even.
- [17:39]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, don't you think? I mean, we have massive, we have this massive medical and biomedical and establishment and physicians and hospitals and it's whatever, that's problems, it's bureaucratic, it's this, it's that. It's pretty impressive. Done a lot of good for the United States of America and done a lot of good for the world. And this guy, an anti vaxxer and a real kook, I mean, is in charge of the government's part of it and, and having. And it certainly has not. And then he reassured the senators on the Hill. Well, of course, you know, obviously we didn't really assure them, but they wanted to hear that he would be more reasonable in office. So that's what they, that was their justification for voting for him. And of course now he's going right ahead being. So talk a little about that. I'm just really astonished by the Kennedy thing.
- [18:21]
Tom Joselyn
Well, the Kennedy thing though, this, this speaks to the point. I was talking about how powerful this is now as a political constituency, these conspiracies. Right. Because remember, the reason RFK Jr gets to become Secretary of Health and Human Services is that he cuts a quid pro quo with Trump during the campaign. You know, that there was, there was a worry both on the Trump side and on the left that RFK Jr would split the vote and would cause in the swing states, you know, basically either Trump to lose or to win, depending on who you're talking to. Right. But Trump was sufficiently worried about this that he cuts a deal with RFK Jr. Where RFK Jr. Says, all right, I'll endorse you, Trump, as long as you make me, you know, a secretary in your cabinet and you give me hhs. Right. And Trump followed through on the quid pro quo. This shows you how powerful Trump thinks conspiracism is for his political. In fact, I think it probably is how powerful is. And let's talk about, you know, we just talked a moment ago about whether or not these people really believe this stuff or not. Well, RFK Jr. Is a guy who I think certainly since he predates a lot of MAGA and his views predate a lot of what we're talking about, he almost certainly believes this stuff. I mean, he's the guy who said that WI Fi causes cancer and quote, unquote, leaky brain. This is something he told, you know, Joe Rogan. You know, he's, he's, he's claimed the chemicals in the water supply turn children transgender. Right. You know, he's claimed that antidepressants are the real cause for school shootings. You know, not guns, of course, or, or, you know, mental health issues or anything else, but, you know, drugs. He said, you know, he suggests a couple times or many times that AIDS may not even be caused by hiv. I mean, this is the guy who's leading the HHS and he doesn't accept the subtle science on this. This is in addition to stuff like his vaccine conspiracies. Right. Excuse me, claiming, for example, that vaccines cause autism, which has been roundly debunked. You know, so this is a guy who, he rides, you know, one of the, I know some of, you know, Renee Diresto, I think you've done one of these conversations with. Right. She writes in her book about all this. She's a somebody who studied online misinformation, disinformation, these communities formed. And she has a really good summary in the beginning of her book, which I forget the name of it off the top of my head, but I've got here in my Library that from 2014 onward, these communities of these vaccine skeptics really formed online and became very vocal and very influential, very powerful and were able to project themselves into local politics. RFK Jr is a guy who was the leading advocate for that. He was the guy who rode that, who helped create that wave and then rode that wave to political power. So much so that 10 years later in 2024, he's getting a quid pro quo from Donald Trump to be his, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, as long as he endorsed them. That's a dire circumstance. Right? This is, this is a real, this is a five alarm warning that the reality has broken here and that the people in charge are the magaloons and they believe stuff that's just completely outside the bounds of reason.
- [21:14]
Bill Kristol
I mean, one point Renee makes, and I did a conversation with her on conversations with Bill Gusto, which people can look at, look at her book and subsequent articles. Renee Diresta she's googleable, bitterly attacked and slandered by the MAGA people who tried to put her out of business by threatening to Stanford University where she was and unfortunately Stanford didn't really, I've got to say, stand up to the threat since she's now here in D.C. but anyway, one point she makes in the conversation with me, and I think in the book is a lot of research shows that people who believe in one conspiracy theory, one set of conspiracy theories in one area, are much more susceptible to believe a set of conspiracy theories in another area. So it's not stupid for the QAnon people to go after. There's nothing inherently connected about anti vax and Sandy Hook and 911 and these are different things, right? Theory. But it turns out that there and the algorithms of course see this online and start to feed the studies that really showed this that if you're an anti vax conspiracy theorist you got fed 911 or immigration conspiracy theories and then it turns out this network of conspiracists is bigger than one would have hoped. Right?
- [22:25]
Tom Joselyn
That that's, that's basically what we're talking about here. I mean this is, this is a huge audience online. It's, it's a, this is. The gatekeepers of traditional media are no longer the gatekeepers, you know, for all, all the time that the far right in MAGA world complains about the media. Right. The media has no influence over a large section of the population now. You know, I mean that's one of the things that JD Vance even talks about, you know. So yeah, the audience is huge for it. And you just mentioned, you know, immigration conspiracy theories just on that.
- [22:49]
Bill Kristol
I'm just the point, the point Renee makes is that I mean pre online, the anti vaxxers and this is how she got involved in this incidentally is I think a young mom in California whose kid was getting vaccinated, you know, age whatever, six months or 18 months. And not a lot of others were. Some others weren't. And she got alarmed and about this and looked into it. But the anti vaxxers wouldn't have known, sort of wouldn't have hooked up with the 911 people. Right. I mean there was sort of no natural way for that to happen in a sense. You would have your anti vax newsletters I guess and your anti vax discussion groups in the old days or something, you know, and then you'd have conventions maybe and you'd have the same with other areas. And I think this is where the Internet, I think has really Made a difference, a very bad difference. Right.
- [23:33]
Tom Joselyn
I mean, this is the premise a lot. I mean, it's not the premise, it's the finding of all my research on January 6th and you know, jihadism and ISIS and all these different forms of extremism, both violent extremism and non violent extremism, is that the Internet and social media in particular, I think have broken human civilization. I think, I think they really have. What they've done is for all the good they do in connecting people who are sane and reasonable is that they've basically allowed a lot of less stable people to connect and to herd and create these online herds that then manifest themselves in the real world. So the phenomenon you're talking about there, where there's these crossover herds from, you know, anti vax people to 911 truthers to great white replacement theorists to white nationalists, I mean, you can just see how this all starts sort of stewing together and by the way, leads to widespread skepticism of the 2020 election and the fact that Joe Biden won. And that's what gives you January 6th. Right. I mean a lot of the planning for January 6th takes place on social media when people start reacting to Trump's lies about the election and start pre planning for violence. And you know, and the response from MAGA is to deflect responsibility from its own side and from its own conspiracies onto the FBI onto the so called deep state. So in other words, the conspiracy becomes, it's a full circle, right? They basically the conspiracy theorists and the conspiracism causes the event January 6th. And then as part of the whole conspiracy worldview, they then blame the very actors that they were conspiring against. It's a very strange phenomenon. You know, but that's, but that's where we're at. And I think it's a very dire spot. I mean, just to, just to give you one more example because you mentioned immigrant, anti immigration conspiracy theories, right? Tom Homan, I looked this up. I didn't see a lot of reporting on this. He was at this gun Trump White House immigration. He's a guy who's out there talking about rounding up the biggest mass deportations in history. And he's sort of the, the zealot who's leading the charge for Trump and all that stuff. He, he attended this, this, this gun rally last year. Basically the people there, I think essentially worship guns or AR15s. It's, it's crazy stuff. And he was speaking, and he was speaking in front of a podium where they had this crest with a, a cross on it and guns behind it. I mean, just really spooky imagery. But during that, you know, he, he floats the Great White Replacement theory, which is this white nationalist theory that the Democrats and elites are replacing white people with immigrants in order to get more voters, you know, and he doesn't distance himself from it. During this talk. He says, call it the Great White Replacement Theory or whatever you want to call it, I don't care. You know, I mean, this type of thing, right, would have been disqualifying for these people a long, not too long ago. Right now it's baked in to their politics. It's baked in, it's actually a source of power for them. And that's the transformation here that's occurred, you know.
- [26:23]
Bill Kristol
No, that's interesting, if depressing. You know, I'm curious, what do you think about, I mean, I'll just introduce it this way. In 2011, Trump started toying with and publicizing the birther. Yeah, Obama birth of conspiracy. I remember thinking at the time, I didn't like Trump. I knew very, very slightly and met her once, it was two or three times probably. And of course knew of him and his career as a con man, you know, fraudulent type, business person and all this in New York. And a demagogue, hopeful demagogue. He wanted to run in 99, 2000. Anyway, I remember being surprised in a way that he was going to the birther thing because whatever one can say about Trump as a con man and a demagogue and a rabble rouser, it didn't seem like he was actually a conspiracist. I don't remember that in the earlier Trump. He was, you know, just kind of your typical. Typical, but you know what I mean, a certain type of, as I say, unpleasant demagogue. And maybe he already always had a little more of the conspiracy theories, but I don't really recall him being part of that world. And I remember, I wonder if he sensed that that was a big. And I thought at the time, I thought it was a mistake. I mean, it went nowhere. The Obama birth itself was discredited. People like me and many, everyone on Fox, almost literally almost everyone on Fox was like, well, this is beyond the pale and this is embarrassing. And I remember Romney accepted Trump's endorsement. I said, I wish he hadn't even given him the dignity of being on the stage with him for 15 minutes. Romney did it very fast. He was embarrassed by it, as you may recall. And I remember, I don't know if it was great humor, someone said, yeah, it's too bad, but, you know, whatever, it's politics. And we were all kind of, yeah. I wonder if Trump saw a little earlier than most of us how powerful that conspiracy stuff was. He didn't have to get involved in the birther stuff. That wasn't, you know, but he chose to. Right. And I think it probably is more important than people like me realized in 2015. It gave him a certain base to start with. Do you think that's right, or.
- [28:18]
Tom Joselyn
I think you just hit the. I, I, I wish I had said it myself because you just, you just summarized the, the central insight here about what Trump saw that we didn't see. And one of, one of the quotes, too, from that period is, you remember he said something to Mitt Romney, like, throw out the birther stuff because the crazies love it. That's one of the things he said, you know, interesting. That was what, you know, he understood, he saw at the time that there was this huge online community that believed this crap and that it could be a source of political power and that you could get people riled up and for you, and they'd also be very loyal to you. That's this essential insight that at the beginning of his campaign in 2015, when he goes on Alex Jones Infowars in December 2015, that's the, the deal that Roger Stone has brokered for him. Right? Roger Stone, who's this longtime political, you know, whatever, you know, political cockroach who survives every political nuclear war, apparently. You know, he, you know, he sees that this online community is vast, it's large, and will be, could be a key constituency for Trump and his political base. And Trump brokers that deal and goes on Alex Jones and endorses Alex Jones. Alex Jones endorses him. You know, when Trump wins In November of 2016, Alex Jones is again, this incredibly prolific extremist and conspiracy theorist. He gets up from the set of Infowars and he says, that's it, folks. I won. I won. I conquered the establishment. I won. Right? Because of Trump's victory. Because Trump, Trump was for him, everything he wanted to be, and I think everything wanted in the Oval Office. I think that's the point. What you just said, I think sums it up. What Trump saw here that none of us saw is that this crazy stuff could be, instead of a detriment or something that would be disqualifying, would be a source of political power. And that's the, that's the phenomenon JD Vance is warning about. It at a time when Trump is embracing it, you know, that's, that's the key dynamic here that, you know, J. Vance is saying, boy, this stuff is crazy. You know, I'm not endorsing it. And then Trump's out there full bore, you know, going on Alex Jones and endorsing it. So.
- [30:11]
Bill Kristol
And in the first term, whatever Trump thought of its political power, he. So he toyed with it. He also had Mattis and Kelly and Gary Code and all these people there. So it was sort of. He didn't, didn't quite get reflected in too many policies or was reflected temporarily or not temporary, you know, for a while, and then sort of constrained, I guess. Yeah. And now we have all the people who rode the conspiracy wave to power in positions of power.
- [30:36]
Tom Joselyn
That's it.
- [30:37]
Bill Kristol
And that's it.
- [30:38]
Tom Joselyn
Elon Musk, look at Elon Musk is outside of Donald Trump, who's the most powerful person across the US Government right now? It's Elon Musk. Elon Musk, you know, has totally embraced conspiracy theories. So much. So, you know, I did the thread on this on Blue sky, that Grok and a number of people, other people have noticed this too. Grok, which is this AI bot on X, you know, on what was formerly known as Twitter, which is there for fact checking and for other things, you know, not really fact checking, but comment, you know, commenting on threads and you can ask it questions, people ask it, you know, about Musk and spreading misinformation. And Grok over and over again says that Elon Musk is one of the biggest, if not the biggest spreaders of misinformation on X because of his conspiracy theories about COVID and elections and the like. And Gro says this over and over again. In fact, somebody asked, well, aren't you just a leftist then for saying that? Grock, right, he's like, no, this is an AI bot saying, I'm not a leftist. I'm just reflecting the facts and the evidence.
- [31:33]
Bill Kristol
You know, surprise bus hasn't shut down.
- [31:36]
Tom Joselyn
Yeah. Actually, the algorithm, they asked Grock that too. And Grok says if he did that, it would cause controversy. So that's probably why they're not doing it. You know, so it's a very interesting thing, right? I mean, but Musk, again, he's another guy. I keep coming back to him, but Musk is a guy who's embraced Alex Jones just in the last week, you know, he was endorsing and Alex seemingly endorsing an Alex Jones conspiracy theory with Roger Stone on their show Talking about the Wisconsin election where Roger, Roger Stone was saying the Wisconsin election has strong evidence it was stolen for this Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. And, you know, Musk responded like, or something like that on the bottom. Of course, Musk tried to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat and failed. But the point is, again, this is the world's wealthiest man, richest man. This guy has immense power in the US Government. Why does he have time for Alex Jones? And why is he embracing Alex Jones and that type of conspiracism? Why is Donald Trump, why is now. J.D. vance, you know, you can go right down the list of all these people. You know, the, the Magaloons are in charge. That's what we're living through.
- [32:30]
Bill Kristol
You know, yikes. This has not been an entirely cheerful conversation, though. I, I very much appreciate your take. No, it's very important, though, as you said, not fully grasped even by me in our world, I think in terms of, you know, how dangerous this is and what this means for the next three and three quarter years. I mean, with, with these guys in power, maybe they'll, you know, be bugged by reality and wake up. But the trouble with being a conspiracist is get bugged by reality and you don't realize you've been mugged by reality. You think you've been bugged by, as you said, you know, by the deep state or something. Right. And you know, that's the conspiracists who are going to ruin the tariff, ruin the fact that the tariffs are good for the country.
- [33:08]
Tom Joselyn
You know, that's one, that's one of the, one of the points that Renee Dusta makes in her book is that doesn't matter. Like, they just move on from. And I've noticed it myself in my research, you know, it's one of the things, they just move on to the next conspiracy theory. You know, I mean, QANON has survived, you know, what should have been, you know, infinite number of fatal blows at this point in time to the conspiracy theory. And yet it hasn't, you know, we, we barely even touched on that. And that was a major force in the 2020 election. Major force in January 6th and still a force out there to this day. And Pizza Gate, something Elon Musk has, you know, floated on X and endorsed. I mean, this is crazy stuff, but the point is, whether they believe it or not, it's politically strong enough now and vehement now and has such a saliency to what they want to do that they're endorsing it and are promulgating it. Right. So it doesn't matter if they believe it or not.
- [33:55]
Bill Kristol
Right.
- [33:55]
Tom Joselyn
It's. It's, it's politically powerful for them.
- [33:57]
Bill Kristol
No, that's true. And it has its real world effects, obviously.
- [34:00]
Tom Joselyn
Yeah.
- [34:01]
Bill Kristol
All kinds of policy areas. Yikes. As I said before, Tom, Jocelyn, this has been really fascinating. We'll come back and continue this discussion and in a while and. And you'll be writing about it for the Bulwark, I trust. And thank you for taking the time on this Sunday to join me. To join.
- [34:16]
Tom Joselyn
Thanks, Bill. Yeah, I tend to be a Debbie Downer, but, you know, we'll.
- [34:19]
Bill Kristol
No, no Debbie Down. I don't know. I was looking back at the origin of Debbie. That was not worth getting into. But yes, Debbie was correct. It's like Cassandra, because don't be a Cassandra. Cassandra was correct, if I'm not mistaken, in Greek mythology. Right, right. Debbie Downer is probably correct, too, you know, and said it out live or whatever, wherever that, wherever she comes from. Anyway, Tom, thanks for. Thanks for joining me and thank you all for. For joining us on the Bull Work on Sunday.