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- [00:02]
Heidi Heitkamp
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- [01:01]
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- [01:31]
JVL
Hello, everyone. I'm JVL here with Bill Kristol, my colleague at the Bulwark. We are recording on a Sunday evening, June 8, after a pretty bad weekend in America. And what is shaping up, Bill, I think to be one of the most dangerous weeks in American history is that overstating things. I mean, we have a president who is shipping tanks into the nation's capital while taking over the National Guard in California against the wishes of the state's governor and deploying it against the wishes of the state's governor and who is going to stage a military parade in the nation's capital while he seems to simultaneously be seeking a confrontation between American citizens, civilians and the US Military. Am I overstating things?
- [02:31]
Bill Kristol
No, you put it. Well, I didn't really focus on the parade. I mean, I'm again, I think it's kind of horrifying and grotesque, but how much it fits. I mean, the other. I think there's some. Maybe it's a coincidence the two are coinciding. But the thing is, stuff in la, it's not just the National Guard. When you read that presidential memorandum, it authorizes the secretary of Defense, of course, to at least, what does they say? To deploy at least 2,000 of the National Guard under his command.
- [03:03]
JVL
60 days, I believe. Yeah.
- [03:05]
Bill Kristol
What's that? Yeah, Most orders like this 60 days, I believe. Yeah, for at least 60 days, I think it is. So most orders like this are, you know, don't. No more than this is the opposite. At least 2,000.
- [03:15]
JVL
Right.
- [03:15]
Bill Kristol
But it's totally open ended. He could do as many more as he wants and as many active duty as he wants. It's really remarkable. People haven't really focused quite as much maybe as they might have on that aspect of the order. Basically, we're now in a situation where the Secretary of Defense and working with the Secretary of Homeland Security, that is Trump and his wonderful team can decide to use both Guard troops and active duty troops at their discretion. And someone else pointed this out to me, actually I shouldn't say who. Maybe it wasn't a private conversation, but it was someone who's very concerned about what's happening. This order, unlike I gather previous orders, don't say we're going to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles to deal with this particular problem. Like Bush in 92 with the riots in LA or in California. The name Los Angeles is not in the presidential memorandum. California is not in it. It's national. Wherever there are riots or reports, wherever there was a disturbances or reasonable belief. Reasonable, credible belief that there might be disturbances, something like that, you can check on the presidential memorandum. So basically it's the people, as I say, people strikes me, didn't quite notice in the midst of the headlines, mobilizing 2,000 members National Guard, that this is a memo giving authority, you know, laying an open, it's an open door. If there are riots in Wichita three days from now, hey, let's, let's deploy the Kansas National Guard. If they're not quite enough of them, let's get someone from one of the army bases. I mean, maybe you could say, I guess in response that, well, he's always, in a sense that's what he's claiming, had that authority. But to have that memo out there, to have everyone on alert, I very much agree. This could really be a hinge point. I mean, this is really the, the moment where people have talked about the military, US Military in the streets domestically of American cities being used at the President's discretion. And here we are, I think.
- [05:07]
JVL
No, yeah, I mean, okay, a couple things. First off, language matters. And in the same way that it was important that he and Republicans started describing immigration as an invasion in order for them to then go and invoke the Alien Enemies act, the extent to which he is purposely describing all of these things happening in America as insurrections, I think is A pretty clear telegraph that he is trying to socialize the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act. Would you. Would you agree? I mean. Yeah, I mean, maybe I'm just crazy and alarmist.
- [05:43]
Bill Kristol
No, no, totally. And Miller used the word very purposefully in a tweet, I think Thursday or Friday. I think I even noted it at the time. And, yeah, we're one step short of the Insurrection act, but we're also. He's also totally laying the groundwork. A, what he's doing doesn't differ that much, actually. He's found a way to kind of work around it, you might say, find a workaround. And B, he's laying the groundwork for. Some court says, well, you can't do this. You don't have the authorities. Okay, well, I'm gonna have to invoke the Insurrection Act. The court's making me do it. So, yes, it is very. I mean. And we're. Well, go ahead. You were making a point.
- [06:13]
JVL
Well, the, the second. The second point I was going to make was that the. Donald Trump has clearly had a thirst to do this since he first came to office. The idea of being able to use the power of state to commit violence against citizens he doesn't like has been sometimes an undercurrent, sometimes the actual waves that you see on top of. Of the water. And especially after the second election, I think it was. I mean, God knows I've been writing about this since, you know, October and August before the election even. And we were always going to end up here. I think we were always going to end up at a moment where Trump was going to push to use the military against Americans because he wants to and has wanted to for a long time. But this is a thing that you and I and everybody on our side talked about in the run up to the election, whereas in the first administration, there were people in the military who wouldn't do that. All of those guardrails are gone. Right. Pete Hegseth is not going to say, Mr. President, you can't do that. Kristi Noem is not going to say that. And now that we've had a purging of the general staff and in the Joint Chiefs and a bunch of flag officers, none of us know what the military will do. Right. And this is, you know, we're at the. The great unknown of, huh, are people going to refuse illegal orders or not?
- [07:48]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. And I would say, I mean, he's fired some general officers. There's still an awful lot left over, so to speak. So there may be some Sort of older guardrails hanging on for dear life. And especially in the military, I suspect there are and maybe somewhere in the ranks of DOJ and dhs. But you're right, I mean the combination of Hexeth, Christine Ohm, Cash Patel and Pam Bondi and Cash Patel, Steve Miller in the White House unchecked, basically, I mean that's totally, that really is unlike the first term. It's unlike anything we've had in American history, honestly. And not only are they not checking him, they're encouraging him. Certainly Miller is very much so when the others seem to relish it and enjoy it. I mean, I guess two points. Just following up on what you've been saying. I think we've all expected to get to this point. Four and a half months in is pretty fast, right? I mean that's really worth noting. I mean, yes. And it's not as if you get to the point and then you do something and then okay, now we go back to normal. Once he's done it once, he'll do it a second time, a third time, a fourth time. And this is where I get to the. He doesn't have to have broken the entire military now what he has to do now it is now frogs and boiling water is start normalizing. The idea of using the military the first two or three times, I don't know how cunning he's going to be. A lot of will depend on huge amount will depend on random events. He does, you know who, what happens on the ground, so to speak. But the first two or three times, maybe the best actually thing for him is, you know, a couple of 2000 National Guard get deployed here. There's not a lot that much violence. They guard some federal buildings. They actually try hard not to get too involved in actually beating up, you know, American citizens certainly, but even maybe undocumented immigrants. And then it, they kind of, you know, things calm down and they leave it. Everyone said okay, well it wasn't so terrible. And as I say two months, you know, a month from now, there's another case where ICE is provoking things and there was this resistance in witchita and say okay, well we're doing it again. I think this, I think we have to think of this as a four year thing, not as a, you know, one off inflection point, you know, moment. And that's I think the unbelievable. We're starting so early at normalizing something that's so dangerous and that, that really I just, I am unnerved by that and I'm sort of unnerved. I don't know where. What do you think about the react. Well, what other one point I want to ask you about and then I want to ask what you think about the reaction, but I guess I would have expected immigration to be the flashpoint. Did you, I mean, presumably that makes sense, right? But the, the, the mass deportation thing, I was appalled by it. It's kind of horrifying on eight different levels. It's policy as cruelty and so forth. It didn't actually occur to me that once you go, it occurred to me, I didn't really clearly see this. Once you get on the road of mass deportation, seriously, not just talking about it, you're really rounding up people who are just, you know, that is, that gets you to this, right? I mean, there's no way to do mass deportation to go hire people who are trying to get, you know, waiting for their job pickups at Home Depot or, or checking in at a courthouse to do what they're supposed to be doing. And in that respect. So that's, and again, he's only just begun the mass deportation. I come back to that, right. So they're going to be, how many more instances are they going to be? What happens when the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, he decides we've got to get to port them all the Venezuelans. I mean, somehow one thinks he can't just do this over and over and over.
- [11:15]
JVL
The key is this isn't going to happen in Ohio, I think. So. I, I, I was very skeptical of mass deportations for precisely the reasons you say. I just thought like it'll create economic catastrophe. Like, is he going to hobble this the Texas. Is Donald Trump going to be willing to, to make it prohibitively expensive to build housing in Texas and hurt Republicans there? And it wasn't until, I want to say it was after the election, it was November, maybe early December. I had one of these light bulbs when I realized, oh shit, he can just target blue states. Right? You, you can do mass deportations and just go after New York City, Boston, Los Angeles. And that's basically where we are. I mean, it is telling that we are not doing mass deportations in Amarillo, Texas. Right. And the idea is we're going to have like in everything else, there are two separate sets of laws and rules. There are the, those for, for the people who are part of Trump's uma, and then there are those for the part of America which is haram. But, and the extent to which again, you, maybe I'm wrong, but I will be shocked if we get things like mass deportations in Republican led cities like Springfield, Ohio.
- [12:36]
Bill Kristol
I think the ones we've had in Texas maybe have been in the more democratic cities now I think about it in Texas. But California has I think a million undocumented immigrants out of the 11 million or so. And so yes, you can do a lot of this in California. I just thought the mass deportation thing, I think a lot of people thought this. I mean it was a slogan, it was a distasteful and bad, terrible slogan and it would legitimize a lot of bad acting actions. And then they, you know, removed the temporary protected status for 350,000 Venezuelans and they suddenly became undocumented. So the mass of people who could be mass deported was larger than before. And I, I still, it just seems so crazy. But maybe you're right. Maybe you leave the, that would be a very interesting test. If he does not go after the Venezuelas in Florida and only goes after the Mexican, presumably in Central American migrants and immigrants in California. That would really be the, that would be the next step along the path of a kind of, let's call it red state authoritarianism at the expense of obviously the, the blue states. But the mass deportation thing, the slogans at the convention, we were all repulsed by it obviously, but I guess I didn't quite, I didn't internally come to grips with what that meant as part of the authoritarian project and how central it is actually as the excuse for having to deploy the troops and having to deploy ICE and having to get $150 billion. This is not something else we should mention. I think it's 150 close billion dollars in the reconciliation bill for prisons and basically DHS and ICE and some immigration judges too. But it's part of the deportation agenda. So the whole thing. Yeah, it's unnerving. It's unnerving.
- [14:30]
JVL
Well, and it, you know, again we are, we are normalizing the idea of police grabbing people, police without badges identification on or even the ability to see their faces, grabbing people off the streets on their say so. Right. And it starts with well, they're ICE and they're like, well, says who? Right. And all these things. I want to say another, another thing before we move on to two other things. First is extent to which other Republicans who I think four years ago would have been very, very squirrely about all of this, have also gotten a taste for it, I think. And, and part of this is just turnover that like those other Republicans who would have been squirrely are Gone to a large degree they've been replaced by people who are true believers. But even, I mean I, I don't know. Do you, do you get that sense too that there is not a lot of hand wringing in like non Trump Republican circles about geez, can we do this? Is that, you know, is this what we want? Do we want to be. What are the economic ramifications going to be from this? Right. Or this, is this going to drive up housing costs and construction costs? What's going to happen to demand when you start getting rid of all these people who are consumer? I don't get the sense there's any of that coming from the Wall Street Journal type wing of the Republican Party. Is that right or wrong?
- [15:50]
Bill Kristol
We don't know. I don't know yet. Besides not talking to enough of those people these days, having lost touch with a lot of those Trump acquiescence and adjacent Republicans. But let's see what the Wall Street Journal editorial page says. Maybe we already know tomorrow morning. I haven't looked. Not a regular reader, but one should look. I agree and it's important. It would be a good indicator. The Republicans on the shows this morning, my impression is we're not objecting. And I mean Mike Johnson, though he was never ejected, I suppose four years ago either. But you know, it's a piece. I'm not, I'm not just, I'm not troubled by the thought of using Marines to help police the streets of LA or nominally protect federal buildings and federal processes. What's the word they use? It's a very vague word there in la. But you know, it was peace through strength is what I believe in. And it works. I believe in foreign policy, domestic and both abroad and at home, which is really, when you think about it for three seconds, isn't a start. An amazing thing to say, right, that the way in which we determine the Soviet Union is the way which we deal with people, Americans and immigrants and including undocumented immigrants living here in the United States of America. Right. Peace through strength. That's representative government and the rule of law. That's the speaker of the House. And he's, you know, he's kind of, anyway, he's not the worst in terms of demagogy, he's the worst in terms of helping enact all this horrible stuff. But, and he obviously had prepared that. That's not the kind of thing you think of at the moment. So one of his clever staffers said, hey Reagan, peace through strength. And you can say this is peace to strength at home. And no one had the wit to say, wait a second. You can't say what you do. Your policy towards the Soviet Union should be your policy towards people living in America, working in America, in Los Angeles.
- [17:41]
JVL
And elsewhere, and Americans themselves. We'll close out with the protest, but before that, I want to talk about Elon Musk for a minute, because I think this is one of those moments where, as it always seems to be, chance favors Trump. So I wrote, when Trump and Musk had their breakup, I said the first. The very first thing I wrote was, this could wind up making Trump much stronger. And I had written, like the week before, like, it looks like Trump is sort of losing on a bunch of policy angles, but he's winning on power. Like, he's consolidating power. The. The Justice Department no longer even makes the pretext that it might investigate Trump or any of his allies. His use of the pardon power has been way outside the bounds of normalcy. And what Hegseth has done as his remit at the Department of Defense is create loyalty tests for military senior staff in ways that you might see in Egypt. Right. Or Pakistan, but not in America. And I think that we can say pretty conclusively now that Trump has defeated Musk. He did it very quickly.
- [18:55]
Bill Kristol
It.
- [18:56]
JVL
It was not a mutual backing off. Elon Musk went and after 24 hours of hostilities, deleted a bunch of his tweets and made nice with Trump and said a bunch of conciliatory things on X in response to Bill Ackman and other. Other actors who were trying to create some sort of peace. And Trump, for his part, did the opposite. He said, this guy, drug problem, everybody hated him, and if he starts giving money to Democrats, he's going to be in big trouble. I think that again, we have a military parade in the nation's capital, tanks in the streets of an American city, the National Guard being deployed, all in the same week that Trump broke and subjugated the richest man in the world and did it in under 24 hours. This is just like a big red flashing light to me that the guy is amassing incredible amounts of power. Is that, again, I keep saying, like, am I wrong or not? Because I feel like what I'm saying is incredibly alarmist, but I don't understand other ways to describe the reality we're seeing in front of us.
- [20:10]
Bill Kristol
So you wrote, I care. It was a Thursday night. You had a special, a triad, which you sort of said, there's a chance. I think you said you thought the most likely outcome was Trump would defeat must be also there was a chance the other way or a chance of a draw. And in any case, it might be an opportunity to cause disruption in Maga world, which was a reasonable thing to think could happen. And you Spike, you made clear this was a possibility. I went further on a limb actually. Partly prompted by your thing was when I read your thing, I thought, you know what? The first is by far the most likely outcome. It's not just a little bit more likely. And by Friday morning, when I wrote early Friday morning for the Morning Shot newsletter, I sort of decided just to be got on a limb and just assert it. Trump's going to be defeating Moss. He's defeating him. He's defeating him thoroughly. It's not even close. And this is going to strengthen Trump. It's not like, oh, he beat him, but he had to expend a lot of capital and so he's a little weakened for now. The Democrats have a bit of an opportunity. He's going to have to give up on a few things. Quite the contrary. Once you win this kind of victory, it is like Putin over, you know, with pre course, once Pregosin retreats on that. Was that his name on the march to Moscow? He's at Putin's mercy and Trump's made pretty clear, as you say. I wouldn't say he's been belligerent. He's actually done it pretty cleverly in a kind of very calm way, almost just matter of fact way. That's the way to put it. He's at my mercy and I don't need to worry about him much. I think he called three anchors Friday morning right after. I think I wrote my morning shots or as I was writing it, I guess. And Russia's saying, just kind of showing that he wasn't worried and signaling to everyone out there that he's the guy in charge. So yes, you put that. I hadn't really put it. So I think, A, I think that's the correct understanding of what's happened with Musk. B, I hadn't quite put it together with this and it is somewhat accidental, I suppose, that it's all happening at once, but. And again, it's happened so early. I just keep coming back to that. Four and a half months in, where are we four months later? Where are we four months after that? Where are we four months after that? Before then we're half. Then we're one quarter of the way through the administrator, the term. I mean now maybe reverse, God knows things could happen. But yeah, The Republicans don't seem to be complaining much. We'll see if Wall Street Journal types too. We'll see Even honestly if Democrats and liberals, I mean, this, I, I was on a couple of zoom calls and stuff this afternoon. Really good people trying to organize a lot of talk about court cases. Gavin Newsom's probably going to go to court tomorrow and stuff. I'm not against that. They might get a favorable ruling from a federal district judge. Trump just announced that person and appealed to the Supreme Court. I don't believe. Do you believe that the Supreme Court is going to stop Trump fundamentally on this kind, I mean, it's a murky, truthfully legal issue of how much power the president has here. It would require interpreting. It's unprecedented what Trump is doing. But almost for that reason, it's a little hard for the court to say, well, you couldn't conceivably do it. If they get into that business of I'm not going to second guess exactly his motives or maybe they had findings that really was worrisome. And I'm not going to stop the president from, you know, mobilizing the guard if it's necessary. I just find it hard to believe that the courts are much of a barrier. Congress, I mean, in the real world of American, in the history of American politics and the political science of the American political system, Congress is supposed to be the barrier to all of this. I always, and it's not, you know, but just on the Republican, the Wall Street Journal thing, I bet they spend 110 as much time worrying about this as they do about, as they did about terrorists, which are incomparably less important in terms of our civil liberties and the nature of our society. They're not good. And the way he did it is arbitrary and it's too much presidential power and all that. But it's not like what's happening here with the National Guard and the army and the military and mass deportation. And I bet these sort of establishment Republicans will. Maybe they'll demure a little. Maybe they won't, incidentally. Maybe they'll say let the courts decide it. And we're getting back to worrying about what's, you know, making sure the tax provisions of the, of the big reconciliation bill.
- [24:11]
JVL
Yeah. God, I got to make sure the tax cuts get enacted if that, you know, everything else is worth doing. All right, so let's talk about the protest. I'm of like five different minds on the, the protests and, but I'd like to hear you first.
- [24:29]
Bill Kristol
I, my, I am somewhat fixed Minds. I'm kind of anti. Anti. Protest. I am not with those people whose first reaction is, well, I don't approve what Trump's doing, but we can't give him an excuse to do anything. We can't be too vociferous. We can't be too. We can't have. God forbid one human should wave a Mexican flag around in the streets of la. I have never waved a Mexican flag. If someone asked me whether he or she should do it, I would say no. I think it's politically not great. And I also just think it's kind of pointless. I mean, they presumably want to stay here in America and not be deported, so why are they waving a Mexican flag? But, you know, it's a. You have the right to wave flags of other countries. People do it all the time. And it's no excuse for anything that Trump's doing. So I'm anti those whose first instinct is to finger wag at people whose communities are being destroyed, you know, severely damaged, whose families are being broken up, who might know the neighbor or the cousin who's been just seized and is being deported. So I'm, I'm. That's kind of where I am. But having said all that, I don't know, could it play into Trump's hands? I guess, but I'm sort of sick of the playing into Trump's hands. Trump is doing all of this without. Let me come back to this. Have there been a lot of violent protests by immigrants? I don't think so. I don't think so. All the video we've seen is people being grabbed, you know, shackled behind their hands, behind their back. Some of them, God forbid, seized and sent away to El Salvador, others being held for much too long in bad conditions, others being sent away in a more normal way, you might say it's only kept. Not treated very humanely or very considerately. The whole program is terrible. Is it in response to, you know, did anyone do anything to play Trump's hands? As I say, not at all. So I guess now that I'm talking myself into a more even of a. Anti. Anti. Am I saying this right? Anti. Anti. Protest. Yeah. Position or pro. You know, the idea that Trump needs, you know, he's helped a lot by people being too extreme on the other side. I mean, yes, conceivably, in some public opinion poll, but hey, what does that matter? We're not. No one's voting on anything for a year and a half. So I am for fighting this hard at every level, I guess.
- [26:34]
JVL
Yeah. That's, I mean, so part of me, you know, I said, I'm of five minds on this. And one of them is the we gotta fight on every level and you see what works, see what sticks. Another of my levels, that there are 330 million people in America and none of us gets to decide what other people do. Like, if people are going to protest because this is really, this is the most important thing to them, then they're going to do it regardless of what I write in the bulwark or, you know, anybody writes anywhere else and that's their right, you know. But on the other hand, part of me thinks that successful protest movements historically are highly organized and highly unified. And they're also pretty strategic. Successful protest movements like the civil rights movement here, like the color revolutions recently in Eastern Europe, they tend to be again, with a cohesive opposition that is thinking very strategically about where to commit forces and what grounds to fight on. And they don't take a like, well, let's just, you know, let a thousand flowers bloom approach to it. And then the fourth hand I think about is, should we, should the opposition spend any political capital protesting lawful actions by the administration? I am all for documenting the excesses and documenting the lawful actions and making the case to people that they are immoral and that they shouldn't be taken. I mean, everybody ought to walk around with, you know, a GoPro strapped to their head every time they go out to, to the world and start documenting this stuff in terms of like protesting and stopping Ice Age, like, I don't know, like this is America did vote for this. 49.8% of America voted for this. This is what they said. They said we want mass deportations.
- [28:38]
Bill Kristol
Trump didn't make a secret of that. I, I take that point. You know, on your third point, I do think, to be fair, I've been on some of these calls now that I'm hanging out with all these Dems and left. But even some lefties in the Democratic, they've been trying to organize and actually tried to insist on peaceful protests and they did a pretty good job. There was that big protest day a month ago and it was very peaceful. I think they're planning, for example, for the march on Saturday, the military march. They decided not to ask people to come back to big protests in Washington. This is too much of a risk of encounters and someone overstepping and also screaming anti military things. They're asking people to wave American to protest. The main center is Philly and they're mostly dispersed all around the country. And the idea is the whole country's protesting against Trump's grandiose march in the Capitol. They're asking people to bring American flags. I think it's a little better organized than people may realize. And I think it, and I think in a good way. And I think they've tried to learn the lessons of the civil rights movement and all the sort of obvious examples. So they're doing their best. But it's also the case that someone somewhere is going to scream something stupid.
- [29:46]
JVL
And yeah, it's a big country. Right. There's no way to stop that.
- [29:49]
Bill Kristol
That. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, do, I, yeah, on your last point. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, you're right. I mean, certainly there's a distinction between lawful things that are bad, even cruel, and, and breaking the law. And I think there's plenty of things that Trump is doing that are manifestly either breaking the law or sort of nominally obeying the elder breaches of the law in order to basically ultimately break the law. And I think that's the case that needs to be made. The path that we're on, though, the, the slope is so, is very dangerous. And in that respect, that's, I think, the main thing that has to be done, don't you think? I mean, just step, trying to step back a little and alert people to the big, where we're going, we're partway down a slope, we should scream and yell because we already have come down that slope and it's wrong, it's bad to do that. But also this is where we're going if we don't put up the brakes. Now. Who's the we in that sense, though?
- [30:48]
JVL
Well, the we is the people who asked for this. I mean, this is, I, you know, I'm sorry, his, his approval numbers are incredibly robust for the, the actual day to day goings on of what is happening in America right now, for the economic reality, for the, the interest rates, for the hike. I mean, all the, it is, I just don't, I no longer think there is any way to look at Donald Trump and come up with a happy answer. That is basically people did, they didn't mean this. They just were angry about, fill in the blank. They were angry about Hillary's emails, they were angry about inflation, they were angry about interest rates and mortgage payments and whatnot. I find it very, very hard. Eight years in with him doing now exactly what he said and still having a very robust approval writing. People wanted this. Not everyone, but some Very significant percentage of the American population. This is affirmatively what they want and prefer. And I say this, Sarah, all the time, it doesn't have to be everybody. If you get to 35% of the country who wants this, who wants tanks in the streets, who wants the Marines and National Guard deployed against American civilians, like, I, I don't know what a country is supposed to do about that. That's, that's too big a critical mass in order to sustain this experiment.
- [32:26]
Bill Kristol
I think, especially if the. Let's, let's say 30% just to make it simple and then 50. Is it 45% approval now? So let's say 30 want it 15% care enough to, don't object enough to it to, you know, have, have them break from him just because they're Republican, they want the tax cuts or they want other, they care about other issues. But if that 15% won't break, if there's just, if they really don't care about any of this, then it is 45%. And then, as you say, then you're really in a, in a very bad situation and maybe you win the House. And I don't know, there's so much hope in the liberal circles, among our friends, there's. Winning the House is going to make a huge difference. And I've tried to think concretely, well, why actually is it going to make a huge difference? I mean, we're not talking about legislation or anything. They'll have oversight hearings. Trump's not going to. The administration just won't show up. Or they'll show up and stiff arm them.
- [33:16]
JVL
Exactly.
- [33:17]
Bill Kristol
I mean, the degree to which people are sort of think. I guess it would come back to a point you've made many times and you were way ahead of the curve on. And I think many of us, rest of us will work or two to some degree is people just, it's very hard to come to grips with what's happening. It's very hard not to want to revert to politics as normal and, you know, and, and start to think about it as if it's 1994, the 1994 cycle, the 2006 cycle or whatever. And here are the obstacles. And if only the Democrats were a little more moderate, some of their rhetoric and didn't say this and, you know, some of the Harvard students have behaved better, you wouldn't be trying to destroy Harvard University, you know. Yeah, I'm, I'm sort of beyond that in that respect, which, I mean, obviously one should criticize the Harvard students for doing things that are stupid and wrong and I'm happy to, but that's not, we're way beyond that. We're way beyond that. Especially not in a good way. Especially the immigrants. The Harvard students are entitled and mostly well off kids with great futures and they should behave better. The idea that he's going, he's getting these immigrants who are showing up, where is he picking them up? As Miller had told them when they came to the White House, Miller yelled at them, you're not arresting enough people. You can't just arrest certified criminals. You got to go to the 7 11s and the Home Depots and arrest them in the parking lots where they're waiting for their day shifts, their day labor. And that's in fact, as I understand it, in Los Angeles, in Los Angeles and its environs, in Paramount. That's where the actual big arrests were and actually where some of the disturbances began, because those are some of those heavily Hispanic areas. Paramount is 80% Hispanic. I think so, yeah. I mean, Americans don't find that repulsive that these people are working and paying taxes mostly, probably, and in any case working hard and, you know, doing their best and, and, and, and they're being treated in this way. I don't know. I guess I just, I, I, the, the immigration thing for some reason gets at me more in a way even more because of the, some of this, because they do have some of the law on their side. Obviously these people are undocumented, some of them and so many of them and so forth. But I don't know, it's just the kind of stupidity and cruelty and there. I do think the nativism that's so strong that we've seen so much in the reaction to that. That's something I underestimated. Didn't you, I don't know. Did you think, did we think that America was full of people who really hated and resented and were willing these people who were here and who weren't bothering them? If anything, the only encounters people had with them was when they came and helped, you know, build the house next door.
- [35:54]
Dr. Dennis Black
Right.
- [35:55]
Bill Kristol
And maybe they had some encounter that was less pleasant. I don't mean to say that's impossible, but. And did we know that? I didn't know. I didn't understand that there was so much nativism to be tapped and exploited.
- [36:08]
JVL
I mean, it took me a while to find that out, but I would say that I figured that out before yesterday. One of the hallmarks of the Republican party has been people in Alabama whose children go to like the most conservative public school in the world getting upset that some community in San Francisco has. That runs their school differently. Right? This is, you know, like. Like what? What do you care, Cletus, down in. In, you know, Bumblefuck Alabama? What do you care if a bunch of hippies want to rename their kids school and teach whatever, Right? And. But that's the animating. That's the animating principle of the right at this point. It's that somebody somewhere is doing something I don't like, and I'm going to stop them because I have the power now.
- [37:04]
Bill Kristol
Fair enough. But I would just. We shouldn't go on and let people go. But I would just say this is a little different because this isn't someone somewhere doing something I don't like. This is people whose color I don't like or whose national origin I don't like, who are not. Who literally are doing nothing that affects me. They're not taking my job, they're not taking a place at Harvard from place of my kid or whatever. All these excuses, you know, they're living somewhere where they're working, helping to, you know, do. Working restaurants or building houses or something in these cases. That's not all I. Regrets, of course. And. And I am sort of happy to see ICE agents showing up in masks and arresting them and humiliating them. That part I find worse than. It's stupid to dislike a school system a thousand miles away and stupid to. And there's a kind of weird psychological thing of, I don't want them doing that. Okay. It's a kind of bullying. It's a kind of overreach, you might say. It doesn't understand how a free society works, decentralized society. But the immigrant stuff, the cruelty of these, the attitude towards the immigrants is. Is. I feel like it's greater.
- [38:09]
JVL
That's an excellent point. All right, guys. I mean, I don't know what to tell you.
- [38:15]
Bill Kristol
Most depressing. Most depressing hit.
- [38:17]
JVL
Subscribe.
- [38:18]
Bill Kristol
Bulwark. Bulwark podcast ever. Or maybe, you know.
- [38:21]
JVL
Yeah, it's gonna. I. I would just say this. I'm gonna write an emergency newsletter tonight, and I'm gonna get it out because I want people to be thinking about this when they wake up on Monday. This is, I believe, one of the more dangerous weeks in American history. And there are a lot of things coming together in ways that are helpful to Trump and helpful to his project. And buckle up. All right, Bill, thanks for coming out. Follow the feed. We will try to all get through this together somehow. Good luck, America.
- [38:55]
Bill Kristol
Packages by Expedia.
- [38:57]
Heidi Heitkamp
You were made to be rechargeable.
- [39:01]
Bill Kristol
We were made to package flights, hotels and hammocks for less Expedia. Made to travel.
- [39:10]
Dr. Dennis Black
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