← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:01]
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Andrew Egger
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- [01:26]
Andrew Egger
All right, here we are. I think we are live. Hi everybody out there. I'm Andrew Egger, White House correspondent for the Bulwark. This is Bill Kristol, editor at large of the Bulwark. We write the morning shots newsletter for the Bulwark, which you can subscribe to@the bulwark.com we work for the Bulwark. We're at the Bulwark. Go to the Bulwark. Like read, consume the Bulwark. You know, that's what we do. We write this morning newsletter Monday through Friday and we come to you live Tuesday mornings at 10am to talk about some of the stuff that is going on in the world. We've been getting kind of lucky lately, Bill, in terms of just a lot of crazy news that happens to be coming out on Tuesday mornings. In this case even overnight Monday to Tuesday. There tends to be a lot of fresh stuff for us to talk about. We've got kind of a double barreled load of that stuff right this morning in terms of what the President's been up to and in terms of what the global economy has been up to. Let's start with the second one, we are going to get to this later in the show, but let's just sort of tease it up top. Inflation's going crazy right now. Not really unexpected because of the war in Iran, which has plugged up the Strait of Hormuz and has caused gas prices and energy prices in general to go berserk over the last few weeks and months with no end in sight. But Basically, we're up 3.8% in year over year inflation in April. It's the highest since the bad old days of, as everyone remembers, 2022. Not as high as the bad old days of 2022, but certainly not pointing in the correct direction. And we saw a 0.6% spike in, in the month of April alone. So not only is it speeding up year over year, but April itself was just a really, really bad month for inflation. Again, primarily pegged to these energy prices, which is a problem with still no solution in sight. So maybe real quick, before we get to the other business overnight, which is what the president has been up to, let's just take a breath here, Bill. I mean, where are we in terms of the war in Iran? It's tipping over into these more and more unignorable economic consequen, but it just doesn't seem like there's any real energy or any real movement or even any real possibilities of movement for, for the president right now when it comes to reopening the Strait.
- [03:33]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, that's Tuesday morning news, is good news for us since we have something new to talk about, but bad news for the country, unfortunately, quite consistently, I would say, in the last few weeks. And the inflation's bad. It was utterly predictable. And Trump, but Trump is not for, I mean, it was striking to me. It's just a couple of days ago Trump, one of the cabinet secretaries, I think, was asked, and Trump sort of said this too. Is the priority reopening the strait? No, the priorities, the nuclear stuff. That's another discussion about whether that really is so dangerous. This, this dust that's left over from our obliterating the nuclear program almost a year ago. But no, the strait, you know, we can get away with not having it open so now. So I do think this is, this is due to the war. It's due to Trump's policy on the war. It's due to his not prioritizing reopening the strait, either by military means, which I think would be very problematic, or by going for an actual agreement that Iran seems open to. It would be a bad agreement. It would Leave them with a lot of leverage over the strait. Might not get rid of every part of their nuclear, you know, waste that's sitting around. But. But Trump so far is just rejecting Iranian proposals. Iran seems to be enjoying having him over the barrel. And so here we are. Yeah, 3.8% is not good year over year. It's certainly. We'll discuss it later, maybe in more detail. But going forward, I mean, it seems it's accelerating. I'm old enough, unlike you, you weren't born yet to remember the 70s, federal budget deficits, no chance of a tighter monetary policy. That's presumably not what war is going to do. Right. And an oil shock that was a kind of bad decade, the 70s, for inflation and for the economy in general. I hope we don't get that again.
- [05:09]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. The thing that I keep coming back to politically for all of this is it's not like, I mean, you look back to the first term, Trump's first term, and the giant shock that was Covid and the way that that scrambled all sorts of systems. And it was not easy for the president politically, it was not easy for the country. But at least he could kind of make the argument. First of all, this just kind of came out of nowhere. No one could have predicted it. And it's not like we could have done anything to stop it from happening. Maybe they could have done different to control it better. But like, it was sort of this exogenous shock. Right. And people kind of gave Trump more of the benefit of the doubt because of that. And at the same time, things were pretty good before. Right. I mean, he could kind of plausibly make the argument that the economy had been humming along until there was this shock and that, you know, you couldn't really judge his economic record based on this. He made all these arguments and these arguments were in part persuasive to some people, but for these reasons, all this stuff is completely different. Now, everybody knows that the prime mover of all the chaos that is happening right now in the Middle east and elsewhere is Donald Trump, that this is his war of choice that he signed us up for without sort of consulting anybody or even sort of going to Congress first to build consensus on it. And that's why the energy shocks are like this. And not only that, not only that, but he was in a terrible political situation even before. Right. I mean, you go back to, I remember writing after last November's off year elections about, gosh, it sure looks like Democrats are just sort of cleaning up in every race, sort of across the board right now, they're significantly overperforming where they were in 2024, just one year later in November 2025, and that Donald Trump had one year to try to kind of turn some corner and put some things back together and address these concerns that were cropping up and these growing fears that affordability under President Trump wasn't going to be like what voters thought it was going to be like, and that he was going to need to make up ground relative to November. And so not only has he not made up ground, he has significantly lost ground across all of these economic indices. You know, not only from the terrorists, not only from, like the stuff that was preexisting before, but now again from this, like, in your face, can't miss it, can't avoid it. War in Iran. Yeah.
- [07:25]
Bill Kristol
And just one last one exclamation point on that. I mean, you pay more of a price politically if you're president. You pay a price for bad news, period. Let's not kid ourselves. Whether you're responsible or not. Having said that, you really pay more of a price. Voters are sensible in this way. You, if you can plausibly be said to have caused the bad, your policies caused the bad effects. Cause and effect does matter. Some real world cause and effect. And here we have just. You put on the tariffs, everyone said they'd be inflationary. He's fought this war and allowed the strait to remain closed. Everyone said energy prices will go up and that'll be inflationary. And so what? What do we have? Inflation. You know, I think it's a very easy mess. Messaging is sometimes complicated. You know, we could have had fewer deaths relative to other countries and Covid, et cetera, et cetera. There are some things you didn like about it, you know, the social distancing, but it was a price worth paying. That's a more complicated political message. Then he put on the tariffs. He chose the war. In both cases, it was entirely his policies supported by his party, opposed by the Democrats. And here are the effects. Right. Pretty easy political argument for the Democrats.
- [08:26]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. And if you are a Republican or Republican sympathetic or want to see Republicans do well in the midterms, I cannot imagine that you are very comforted by kind of the messaging line that they have taken to try to blunt this attack, to basically continue to pivot back again and again and again and again and again to Joe Biden and inflation under Joe Biden. And wasn't inflation worse under Joe Biden? And don't you remember how bad things were under Joe Biden. And isn't it, and isn't it ridiculous how, how much more the media cares about inflation now than it ever did under Joe Biden and all these sort of bank shot attacks. It's just, it's honestly just really, really, really difficult for me to imagine these, these paying off in any way. Joe Biden has not been president now for a year and a lot more than that. Right. And he is receding further and further back into the rearview mirror. And Trump was elected in part because voters trusted his promises sillily, as we said at the time, but because they did in fact trust his promises that he would fix these problems, not continue to exacerbate them further.
- [09:23]
Bill Kristol
And Barack Obama hasn't been president for a decade. And if I'm not mistaken in this, we were talking about this beforehand in his late night, you know, I don't know what, you know, parade isn't really the right word, fire hose of, of truth social posts. He was not just attacking Biden, he was attacking Obama quite a lot. Right. Barack Hussein Obama and stuff. So. Yeah. So that's, yeah. Is that really. I don't know, maybe his base, his base likes that. I suppose maybe some of the base is shrinking some. Right?
- [09:52]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the problem is the base is 35% of the country. You can't win elections with, with 35%, no matter how hard, no matter how hard they vote, no matter how enthusiastically they pull that lever, no matter how much torque they put on it when they're at the machine, still just one vote and there just aren't enough of them to make a governing majority. But you gestured toward the other big thing that we were, we were going to talk about, about the overnight. I teased this right at the top. I said there were two developments. One was the inflation number and the other was the President's. He's been going on these sort of personal odysseys lately on truth social. I don't know if people have been following along with this. Every once in a while we will, we will write them up in morning shots. We'll talk about them on here. It seems a little like I sort of struggle with doing it too often just because, you know, you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes back. It's, it's, it doesn't seem to be that good to be spending too much time sort of in the unmediated company of Donald Trump's social media mind. And yet the contrast is really striking. There's all this stuff that's going on in the world all These gigantic problems that the President should in theory be solving or at least figuring out how to avoid personally making worse like he's been doing. And, and yet he keeps going on these sort of like odysseys of, of, of sort of social media consumption and just sort of continuing to bathe his own mind more and more and more in sort of the warm bath of his, his truth social platform, which he created to be like this sounding board and echo chamber for just him to post in, nobody else posts there who matters. Just the president posts there. And then his army of sort of sycophants sort of reflect the world's most insane memes back at him. And he reads them and he likes them and sometimes he reposts them. So this is, we should just take a quick jaunt through some of these things that the President has posted just in the last, I guess, 12 hours, 15 hours, something like that. Some last night and some this morning. But Matt, I don't really care what order we go in. Just give the people a flavor of what's going on here. So, yeah, you were mentioning this. You were mentioning this, Bill. These are just a couple of the posts. There are actually quite a few more, all keyed off of Barack Obama's supp. Treasonous conduct at the top of the Russia investigation in 2016, there were calls specifically to have him imprisoned and arrested and incarcerated for treason. That's one thing. Barack Obama, who has not been president now for how many years? More than a decade. Quite some time. Is it more than a decade? I guess, going on a decade. I can't do basic math. We're going to put Obama in prison. That's part of what Trump is up to these days. Let's keep the good times rolling. This is the wildest of them. Just from a sort of. Obviously it's worse to actually talk about putting a former president in prison, but if you saw a family member posting Democrats love sewage with this AI generated meme on their own personal social medias, you would feel a certain kind of way toward that person. And your eye rolling might be even overcome by a certain amount of sort of like personal concern for sort of like the, the judgment and the prudence and the sort of view of the world that's being put on display here. I don't know. I don't know. Bill, do you have family members who are like meme posters? I know I do. I don't know if I've ever seen quite this level. But is this something you bump into with friends and family on social media?
- [13:13]
Bill Kristol
I've got to say, thankfully not really. But you would be concerned, wouldn't you, about the actual well being of that person? I mean, I don't mean to be too at all histrionic. I just think one would be, I mean, is this person, well, is this person unbalanced? Is someone helping take care of him or her? And in the case of Trump, well, he's President of the United States, so that's really, really wonderful. You know, do people even like this kind of thing? I mean, it's so stupid.
- [13:38]
Andrew Egger
Well, it looks like, you know, between 1.3 6004.54, 5000 people or bots or you know, Malaysian traffic controllers, I don't know, somebody on there is hitting the button and, and making notifications ping on the President's phone, making him feel good about this sort of thing. But yes, I mean, it's, even in the first term, it's sort of hard to imagine ever seeing this sort of just like pure ID from the President in this way. Let's keep them rolling. We got more. So this is good. I mean, like, it's true. The stock market has been going very well. Stock market tends to point up and to the right. It's been the one economic indicator that has been pulling pretty well. This was kind of unfortunate timing though, to tweet this out, you know, minutes before we got inflation numbers which have since sent it. Not, you know, it's not like, it's not like the stock market crashed today, but, but we're a little low from, we're under 7,300 from, from trucks. Trump's stock market all time high. There you go. That's just one. Let's keep them, keep them going. This is nuts. This is just a video that he reposted contextless, of a random black guy committing a random act of sort of civil disorder. And the sort of slop that you see from a lot of right wing accounts, a lot of contextless stuff, the implication of which tends to be black people do bad things and you shouldn't want to be around them. This is obviously just J.B. pritzker, governor of Illinois. There you go. He's a fat guy who eats junk food. And that's the point of this particular meme. So that's interesting. The other Trump posted a different thing I thought I saw the other day that was, that was about how much better health outcomes are getting during Trump 2.0. And it was like a side by side picture of J.B. pritzker and how he's a Lot trimmer than he used to be now. So. So we're getting a little bit of mixed messaging from the, from the President here. I don't know. We can. Is there anything else that I think that's fine for. People get the idea this is the sort of thing the president is spending his sort of free moments doing. You know, he goes, he goes home from the Oval Office, where all the people who are paid to kind of butter him up and keep him in a perpetual state of sycophant adulation, like the ongoing tongue bath, you know, on the taxpayer dime, all that stuff happens. And then he retreats, you know, back to the presidential residence and he, you know, gets in bed and he gets on his phone and he goes and hangs out with the people who do that for free on their own time on the Internet. So it's kind of like a. That the President's awake for, you know, what, 16, 17, 18 hours a day, of which maybe 70% of that time is spent getting this sort of adulation reflected back at him. I don't know. What is this? Is this. What do you think, Bill? Is this different? Is this. Is it? Is it. We're like a decade into this. Like, we're all. We're still talking about it. It's still the same guy. Is it. Is it different than it used to be?
- [16:23]
Bill Kristol
No, I think it's worse, don't you think? And I mean, I think it fits in with the other things that are worse. The megalomania, the narcissism, you know, the kind of. The lack of. The desire which he has succeeded in fulfilling, of not having anyone around who would ever say no about anything, including important things like starting a war in Iran, that you haven't figured out at all what you're going to do in the conduct of. So you have Hegseth instead of Mattis or Esper, and you have other such types in the national security side, but also just the personal side of Trump seems to have deteriorated in this way. Just the unabashed racism, I guess, that the picture of the black, I guess he's a criminal. We don't really know. But anyway, seems to be doing something not great at grocery store. I think it's five years old, maybe. I mean, it's just, as you say, it's just slop. I mean, it has nothing to do with anything. It's not like, you know, there's a Democratic policy that released this person. You know, it's like just. And so the racism. I wrote about this in the morning shots about the South Carolina legislature today, which Trump wants to. And the Republicans down there may redistrict. And Trump wants them to, to get rid of the one black member of Congress from South Carolina. James Clyburn said they could have seven white members for a state that's a quarter black, but an all white congressional delegation. Presumably something that South Carolina said before. It's amazing. I didn't realize this until I was writing this little piece. If I could just take one more second on it. Clyburn was the first black Congress, a member of Congress in South Carolina when he was elected in 93. Since 19, since 1897. They had to Reconstruction, no blacks elected in South Carolina. And then they managed to keep it going for like 20 years, 30 years after the Voting Rights act anyway. So that's, that's what's on. That was also on Trump's side that he posted around 7 o' clock last night before he really started going crazy around 10 o'. Clock. The real torrent of tweets, I guess, of truth socials comes after 10pm Which, I mean, God knows. Yeah. Anyway, beside the pure racism of it, there was plenty of racially inflected stuff in Trump 1 and in MAGA then. But I now it's just again, like everything else, it's just unleashed, unconstrained. It's escaped the escape, containment, to use a phrase that I think you used maybe in, in morning shots last week. I like that phrase, escape containment. I'm going to start using that a lot, you know, and so the racism's escape containment, but everything else and the, and the, and the narcissisms, escape, containment. It's not good. It's not good that he's President of the United States, really, you know.
- [18:44]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, I've been saying that, Bill.
- [18:48]
Bill Kristol
I'm not trying to persuade you. I'm just, I'm agreeing with you. I'm agreeing with, with you.
- [18:51]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. More, more and more we at the Bulwark are coming around on this notion that Donald Trump, bad, bad selection, not very good for the country, doesn't speak so well of our electorate. All of these things. I don't know, I keep coming back and this is something I wrote about a little bit last week as well. I keep coming back to the fact that I just think this stuff plays different than it did in the first term. Not just that it's worse, but also I think it's worse for him. Like on a political level. I think, I think everybody sort of, at least, at least Republicans, you know, there were a Lot of people who were not necessarily die hard Trump fans who allowed themselves to be sort of like cajoled or, or lured into this sort of accommodation with Trump in the first term, where they gave themselves permission to sort of compartmentalize all of the crazy lunatic nonsense on the grounds that most of the normal indicators were like, doing okay for the most part. You know, the economy was again pointing up into the right things. Things. Things were sort of ripping along and doing just fine until Covid. But I already talked about how, you know, by and large voters kind of gave Trump a pass for that and they, and, and so it gave a lot of these sort of like Republican leaners and independents, this sort of, this sort of rubric to basically say, well, you know, I don't like the mean tweets, but everything else is fine. And the mean tweets aren't, aren't, aren't really doing anything. They're not, they're just sort of this like, thing Trump indulges in when he's not being president. And now I think people just don't feel the same way about this. And the reason they don't feel the same way about this is that the indicators aren't as good. I mean, everything is, everything is worsening, all the everything. And it's not just that it's Trump's fault, even though it is Trump's fault, but just the fact of the matter, the baseline fact of people's economic anxiety being higher and them just having dimmer prospects for the, for the immediate and the long term future for themselves and their kids. They just don't think that nobody sort of feels in their bones that things are going great right now. And when, when you don't feel in your bones that things are going great right now, even before you, like, have connected any of the specific things that the President is doing to making it better or worse, you, if you look out and you see just the craziness, the mania, the nonsense, it no longer strikes you as this thing that is easy to silo off from that sort of malaise that you feel. It's much easier to look at it and say, oh, maybe the reason that everything is crazy right now is because the President is crazy and he's doing crazy things because he's crazy and he's saying crazy things because he's crazy. And all of that is actually contributing to this, this sort of problem that we're having with all this stuff.
- [21:27]
Bill Kristol
And I mean, with all the craziness, you know, who hasn't deserted Trump at all the Republican Party Republican elected officials in Congress and if anything gives Indiana, the showing of the Trump supporters in Indiana last week will probably, you know, remind members of Congress that, oh, they can't cross Trump. I mean, it's astonishing after everything we've seen and the real policy, I think you're right to stress this, the real policy results of this. But the Republicans are on board. They're on board the redistricting, the aggressive redistricting in the south, not as a single Republican member of Congress, maybe someone from a state like New York or you know, some northern state that isn't quite as invested in getting back to the good old days there on race said, you know, it's kind of problematic that we're doing all this in Alabama and Mississippi and South Carolina and Tennessee. No, I don't think anyone has So I mean the degree to which and I do think, and this is we both made this point about the ballroom and stuff, the Republicans, they're going to have to vote for a lot of this. They're certainly not criticizing a lot of this. So in that respect, you could distinguish if you wanted in 2020, Trump lost. In 2020, Republicans gained House seats. I remember so on that night and being sort of depressed here on the, on the live stream for the bulwark, not depressed, but it's like, you know, it's great that Trump lost, don't get me wrong. But you know, this is not a repudiation, full in repudiation of Trumpism. It doesn't come to grips, I don't think with what Trump, the damage Trump has done or Trumpism could do. This is November or whatever date it
- [22:50]
Andrew Egger
was before January 6th, before January 6th.
- [22:52]
Bill Kristol
And there's January 6th, there's everything else and he gets immunity, his own, his own judges like him, an immunity decision and other decisions and the Voting Rights act anyway, I mean and you but there's been very little, who knows what rethinking there is in private. I mean so many of these people incidentally are Trump were elected in the year of Trump. There's still a certain amount I think among our friends and our ex friends maybe in some cases. But among the, you know, general, among conservatives, but even among the general pundit class, they still want to believe that they're, well, they're the normie Republicans and that's a lot of them out there now. It is a lot of them in the country, I think. But in the actual elected officials. I was looking at the South Carolina delegation just to make sure, you know, this Morning writing the second item in Morning Shots after your excellent first item, which we should get to in a second. And just reminding myself that I was right, that it was 6 to 1, you know, Republican, Democrat and also white, black. And I forgot every Republican Clyde was elected in 93. Joe Wilson was elected in 2001. I think every other Republican member of Congress from South Carolina, which would be five out of the six, was elected in the Trump era. And that's true of a lot of these members of Congress. And it's true a lot of governors, it's true of a lot of state officials. And one forgets how much. I mean, one forgets. But I forget. Let me say someone who was around Republicans for quite a long time before Trump still sort of think, well, that's kind of still got to be some chunk of the Republicans. But it is still some chunk. And a lot of them have just gone quiet or very meekly object to one or two things. But the degree to which it's his party. And again, that's shown in all the votes to confirm all these, everyone from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. To Hegseth. It's shown in the we'll see what they do on the ballroom. I guess that could be this week that they'll vote on that reconciliation bill. But I do think it means for the midterms, though, that it's pretty easy for Democrats to say. It's certainly true of the war votes on the war. They didn't overturn any of the tariffs. So pretty easy for Democrats to say it's not just a Trump problem, it's a Republican Party problem.
- [24:46]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah.
- [24:47]
Bill Kristol
Let me try to talk about your piece. I want to, I want you people deserve to hear about your piece, your excellent piece on the Trump scam real quick, real quick.
- [24:53]
Andrew Egger
Let me try to do something with fear and trembling that I haven't really done before, which is throw up a comment. Hopefully this will just work fine if I just click show. Yeah, this is interesting. I found this. I think people are getting Indiana wrong from Neil New Deal Dem. 2187. Anytime in the last 10 years, Trump would have knocked off all seven of the Indiana Reps. 2 surviving actually shows a loss of power. I think there might be something to that. I haven't really thought about it in those terms. From your lips to God's ears, Mr. New Deal Dem. I, I do, I do want to talk about this bill. Like you're saying this, this piece I wrote in Morning Shots today. Before we do that, let me, let me cut real quick. Hopefully I'm not zagging Matt with this, but let's do a quick ad read here and then I will talk. I'm not going to read it. Sam's going to read it in absentia and and then I'll talk about my piece from From Morning Shots this morning.
- [25:34]
Ad Host
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- [26:47]
Andrew Egger
I don't think there was any call for Sam to throw his own parents.
- [26:50]
Bill Kristol
I had the exact same reaction. I'm sure is excellent. I but yes, throwing his own parents under the bus. We'll have to have a little talk. I mean I'm not gonna talk to Sam. I'm just gonna let his parents. I'll email.
- [27:01]
Andrew Egger
I think I'll email.
- [27:02]
Bill Kristol
I'll text his parents to make sure they're aware of this.
- [27:04]
Andrew Egger
However, you know not everybody has two physician parents. I mean he could have gone that direction with it. You're not out there. I actually don't have to do this because I can just text mom. But you now out there, you might not have the same. I don't know. Maybe, maybe, maybe Zoc doc. Who knows, who knows what goes into that specific ad. Ready? But we don't need to. We don't need to belabor that point. We were talking a little bit about how Trump has basically by now lost literally everybody but the base. Right. This is an ongoing process. He keeps hitting new approval rating lows. Presumably there is further for him to drop. But he still, we have not yet seen and maybe will never see any like true mass defections from that sort of core of the core, the 30 to 35% of the country who are just real hardcore MAGA people and kind of filter everything they see in politics and kind of hold it close, very close to their own identities, that Trump is sort of this world historical figure and sort of the savior of our moment and all these sorts of things that has been really good for Donald Trump. Obviously. I don't think I'm sort of surprising anybody by saying that is sort of the, the, the beginning and the end of his staying power as a contender, which is part of why it has been so weird over the last couple of years to watch him sort of so shamelessly abuse these people in terms of all of these scams and grifts and just really silly sort of business ventures that on the one hand are just completely corrupt and shouldn't be happening, period. Like the President, United States should not be able to sort of enrich himself just by trading on his political sort of popularity and notoriety and the possibility of access to him, which has been most of what he has raked in in terms of these crypto deals with oil barons and spy sheiks in the UAE and all these sorts of things where he's brought in billions and billions of dollars to his own personal wealth in the presidency. But the, the weirder thing to me, I mean, I guess part of me understands if you have the ability to be totally corrupt and you, you don't have any sort of moral scruples or any sense that you're going to hurt politically for this or that anybody's going to stand in your way. Yeah, I guess I can see why a morally bankrupt person might go out and get, you know, billions of dollars in sort of quid pro quo crypto money from, from other foreign nationals. Really bad thing. But I can see it's intelligible to me why a human being would do that. The thing that is so much less intelligible to me is why in addition to doing that, you would also run this sort of endless procession of rinky dink littles nickel and dime scams on your own people, on your own core base by selling Trump NFTs and Trump sneakers and Trump guitars and Trump watches. And all these sorts of things. So in morning shots this morning I wrote about another one of these things that has sort of bubbled up in the news recently. Was launched last year, last June it was, it was Trump Mobile. This, this mobile phone, mobile phone company. You've probably seen these sorts of things. You know, there's a lot of these, these companies now that, that aren't the big wireless carriers but they piggyback off their networks. You know the, the Mint Mobiles and Cricket wirelesses of the world. This is like that. But maga, it's, it's, it's, you know, they, they launched it last year. It's, it's, you know, it piggybacks off the T Mobile network. Unlike Cricket Wireless and Mint Mobile and all these others. It's not like significantly cheaper than just having having a plan with the big carriers. You pay 40, $45.47 a month for your wireless. Get it. Because that's what the president is. 45, 47. And, and, and, and the, the, the big pitch connected to all of this is this phone, that phone that we just showed a screenshot of, the Trump phone, the T1 solid gold Trump phone. It's got, you know, Trump on it there. There you go. There it is again. American flagship. What's interesting is this is a mock up that was shown last year and the phone itself is sort of a black box. They keep promising that it's going to come out. There was a reporter, I think it was for the Verge or maybe for 404 Media, who got on a zoom call with some Trump phone executives a couple of months ago and they sort of held up a phone that actually looked very little like this totally different camera configuration. It was still solid gold, it still had the logos and things. But the phone is a big question mark. Anyway, the thing that I wrote about is that last June when this thing was announced, they immediately started taking pre orders and Don Jr. And Eric and his compadres in Trump Mobile, subsidiary project of the Trump Organization, they basically had this big rollout and they said the real Americans, the real American patriots out there have been being underserved by sort of big wireless for too long. And we're so excited to get in there and give real Americans, you know, the real good, good value cell service that, that they've been missing all this time. And the sort of, all of that is silly. There's a lot of these sort of right wing companies, Patriot Mobile, these sorts of things that are trying to do the same thing already, but they don't have the personal seal of approval of the Trump family. So that's, that's sort of the, the business idea here. But the real scam is that they immediately start taking pre orders for this phone, right? And it's not just pre orders, it's slapped down $100 deposit like a down payment on this phone starting in June 2025, which they say at that time will be rolling out by August 2025 or September 2025 at the latest time goes on, they keep taking more money in for pre orders. They keep making little changes to the phone. It was originally billed as being made in the USA very prominently in all of their materials. They no longer say that it's not actually being manufactured in the USA at all. But more to the point, there's just no phone. They haven't shipped any of them. Here we are in May of 2026, you know, going on a year from when these people were supposed to have their phones in their hands and, and still nothing, still no communication from the company. The we brought up some reporting from the International Business Times that they have already brought in more than half a million preorders. Something like $60 million just has changed hands for these, these phones that are supposed to become $500. And this is, this is amazing. This is a change that was made last month to the terms of service on the, on the Trump Mobile website. A pre order deposit provides only a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile later elects in its sole discretion to offer the device for sale. A deposit is not a purchase, does not constitute acceptance of an order, does not create a contract for sale, does not transfer ownership or title interest, does not allocate or reserve specific inventory, and does not guarantee that a device will be produced or made available for purchase. So I guess if you pre ordered this, you're just kind of at their mercy. You're just kind of waiting around to see whether you, the forgotten. Who's the forgotten man now, right? Like they, they, they literally seem to have forgotten your pre order and I guess they'll get around to servicing it eventually. And I just don't understand it. I mean like it's, you're, you're pulling in again billions of dollars in oil money from random Chic. And, and this is the, this is the sort of like nickel and diming scam that you feel the need to layer on top. Am I crazy? Like what, what do you, what do you make of all this? Bill?
- [34:00]
Bill Kristol
That paragraph is amazing and should be somehow kept. You know, we should return to it every now and then if only there were like part of the US Government, something called the Justice Department or a Federal Trade Commission or something that could look into these kinds of scams and maybe investigate people for it. I'm old enough to remember when people got investigated for, for stealing money from, from people and that's what they're doing. And of course no one's even thinking about investigating it. I'm sure in Tai Blanchard's Justice Department or in the FTC or whoever might be accountable for that kind of.
- [34:30]
Andrew Egger
Just to butt in real quick, there is one thing I should say about that because I didn't mention it in Morning Shots, but maybe I should have, which is that there have been Democrats who've been calling for explicitly this thing. Elizabeth Warren sent a letter that was basically saying, hey, this company is changing its own contract terms to basically say maybe you don't get a phone after all, after taking in all this money on the promise that you would soon be getting a phone mailed to you. Right. I mean, that's so, so, so some people are saying that, but. Sorry, carry on.
- [34:58]
Bill Kristol
No, no, that's, it's. Yeah, I'm sure that she's gotten a very, as I said, I'm sure she's got no response at all. In the old days she would get a polite response brushing you off if you were a senator writing such a letter. But yeah, they're not looking into it. I'm sure they'll do nothing. Maybe they'll eventually be. It won't be gold, but you know, a, a gold looking golden colored phone that, you know, the people will be delivered or maybe not incidentally, I guess that's an interesting question to keep following. But you know, it's funny, back in 2016 when Trump was running early 2016, still running for the nomination, this is one of the first times I think, I think I knew Tim Miller slightly from just Republican ish circles in D.C. but we didn't really know each other at all well. And we intersected because we both had the thought that in stopping Trump, the fact that he was ripping off so many of his own supporters and of people who really didn't know better. I mean, it's one thing to extend your point even further about ripping off foreign oil sheikhs or whatever, it's one thing to rip off, I don't know other wealthy people, that's not great. But obviously it's okay. They can take care of themselves. If he's stealing money from Deutsche bank, you know what, we're not maybe gonna have A heart attack about that. Or at least not be so sorry for big shots at Deutsche Bank. The Trump University thing, which you may recall was really an unbelievable scam and rip off of credulous people who didn't have college degrees and who thought this is going to make me a successful business person. And they ran this thing for a while and it was all fake and all nonsense and it produced nothing for anyone and they pocketed some money and then closed it down. I remember Tim. I think Tim was involved with a group that actually put up ads on Trump University. I think I just publicized it a little bit, as much as I could then at the Weekly Standard and it had no effect basically. And I remember thinking that, God, this is not like normal. I mean, if you're a candidate and you're engaged in scams and scams that really go after your, you know, kind of, what's your base? The less it didn't Trump say at the time that he liked the less educated voters they were, they were good to him or something.
- [36:50]
Andrew Egger
But I like poorly educated.
- [36:53]
Bill Kristol
So I mean, I, I don't know, I mean maybe he just. It's amazing that it just. Now, 10 years later, here we are with these fake golden phones.
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Andrew Egger
I really love it.
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- [38:28]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it's an amazing. It's an amazing thing. What can you say? It's bad, I feel, but I genuinely do feel bad for the people who are like this, locked into the ecosystem, that it's, that it's like, please, sir, may I have another? One thing after another, the way that their phones are just like a constant barrage of these scam texts and scam emails and just like constant solicitations to send money to Donald Trump or to the Republican Party or to any one of these other candidates who have aped his fundraising tactics. I mean, they're like, getting factory farmed out there for their money in exchange for being just like really loyal political supporters. And it's a gross thing. Okay, that's enough about that. I have a bad taste in my mouth talking about this stuff too much. We should turn back. We teed it up at the beginning that we would turn back to talk a little bit more about inflation and the numbers that we're getting in today. And as luck would have it, we have Katherine Rampal. Look at that. Surprise. Mystery guest for Bulwark Live here. Bill, are we losing you?
- [39:23]
Bill Kristol
Is that the plan I should suck off? And plus, you don't need me if you got Catherine. I endorse everything Catherine has to say, some of the things Andrew has to say. And Catherine, I will watch, but I've got to do a couple of things here at home before hustling into the Bulwark for our big meeting. And later, I guess the meeting's tomorrow. Happy hours today. Right, Right. That's. That's the key, let's be honest.
- [39:41]
Andrew Egger
That's right.
- [39:42]
Bill Kristol
So see you guys later and go ahead, talk more about it.
- [39:47]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, Somebody, Somebody asked. Somebody asked in the comments a minute ago why I'm wearing a tie. And that's the reason why we're doing, like, headshots and stuff at the Bulwark All Hands meeting the next couple of days. So I, you know, had to, had to dress up a little bit, presumably. That is, that's not also why Catherine looks great. Catherine always looks great. Thanks, Catherine, for coming on to talk about how bad the economy is doing right now. Wow, these are like. I mean, these. Am I, am I right? You look, I. We do these. These economics numbers come out, these inflation numbers come out. They always drop, like 20 minutes before morning shots comes out. I'm working on, like, finishing up six other things And I don't have like a great grasp because I'm not an economics reporter of like what any given one means. But this one seemed pretty easy to interpret. It's just a lot of inflation very quickly, which is bad. Is there anything else to say? Oh, no, you're muted. You're muted. Unmute, unmute. Oh, now this will be really.
- [40:38]
Katherine Rampel
Okay, Sorry, I must have.
- [40:39]
Andrew Egger
Good.
- [40:39]
Katherine Rampel
You. I must have come back. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay, so, yes, bad numbers, worst in a few years. It is mostly about energy prices, as you can imagine. I just pulled up the numbers in front of me. Let me just. I don't want to get it wrong, but it was basically like 40% of the increase was about, was about energy. So not that part. Not a. Yeah, energy prices accounted for 40% of the month to month increase. Look, in some ways it's not surprising that the numbers went up as much as they did, although they did actually exceed expectations. Economists were expecting them at like 3.57% and they're at 3.8%. So not materially different, but like, still bad. And I don't even know that you needed this report to really get the gist of what's happening here. Obviously, consumers out there can just drive down the road to their local gas station and they see a giant billboard advertising the fact that prices are going up. And that's the main force behind all of this. But I think the other takeaways from this are that Kevin Warsh, who is expected to imminently be confirmed to chair the Federal Reserve, is screwed. Right. He got the job because he promised that he would cut interest rates, which is the only thing Donald Trump seems to care about for someone in that job. And it is basically impossible for him to deliver on that promise anytime in the near future. If you look at where markets are, they do not think. Market participants do not think that interest rate cuts are on the table this year, maybe not even next year. So, yeah, numbers bad. Probably going to get worse if I had to guess, the longer that this war goes on and going to set up a, you know, and sort of an inevitable fight between Donald Trump and yet another one of his Fed appointees.
- [42:36]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah, man. I mean, I guess I'm. It's hard to predict the future on this, on this sort of thing. How do you expect this to go? I mean, do you, do you think that Warsh, as a guy who was sort of specifically tapped in to do this job, if he turns around and tells the president, look, man, like, you know as much as I do how much I really want to deliver for you on this. But here are the reasons why it is just genuinely impossible right now. Do you think it is likely that or do you even think it's plausible that the President was sort of cut him a little slack here or could Wash end up getting Jay Powelled like immediately? Could he be like in the, in the really hot seat, having criminal investigations thrown his way, all these sorts of things?
- [43:14]
Katherine Rampel
Well, I don't know. I mean, I think Warsh is a very personable guy. I think he probably has a good relationship with the President and thinks he can use that relationship to his advantage and that maybe he can convince the President that this is not the necessary path or not even the viable path to cut interest rates. One thing he sort of may have going for him, and I'm interested to see how he will use it, is that the Fed chair does not unilaterally control rates. There is a 12 person committee that sets rates. And even if the chair himself, in this case likely to be Kevin Warsh, said, damn it, I want rates to be lower, he could not force that, that outcome upon the Fed because he just doesn't have the votes for it. So one question I have is, does that mean he can just like conveniently throw the other voting members under the bus and be like, look, man, I wanted to cut interest rates, but I just couldn't corral the rest of the committee to go ahead and do it? The problem is like, we'll know because it's a public record who votes which way. So I don't know that that's really a possible option for him. But I mean, maybe that's his get out of jail free card. It's just like, look, I could, I couldn't marshal the troops. And even though I really wanted that to happen, I kind of had to go along. The Fed is supposed to operate more or less by consensus, or at least in practice it has operated more or less by consensus. It's not that common to have, except until recently, a lot of dissents from how the committee votes. So maybe that's how he gets out of it. And he tells the President, I wanted to deliver for you. And he tells the committee member something else, I don't know. But again, like, his vote will be public. So if he were to be an outlier and everybody else votes in a different direction, first of all, I think that would be unprecedented. But second of all, Trump would know and it would be embarrassing for Warsh as well. So I don't know, I'm sure. Warsh. Well, I hope Warsh has gamed this out, including because of the, you know, weaponization of government against the likely predecessor for him, Jay Powell. So I don't know how he's thought about this, but he is entering a very, very difficult situation.
- [45:47]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, it's so weird. I mean, sitting here hearing you talk about it, it's reminding me so forcibly of the way that sort of various senators or various members of the House kind of have this sort of constituent managing role that leadership helps them out with, with, with certain tough votes where it's like, okay, if I'm the Republican Majority leader and I've got like say 53 votes to work with in the Senate, I only need 50 to get there or 51 to get there. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll let like my most vulnerable members sort of like slip away for these sorts of like base managing or base massaging reasons. Like, okay, as long as this thing passes, it's okay. You guys can, you guys can, can I have the, I have the extra wiggle room or extra slack in the line to let you guys go take a different vote. It's sort of preposterous to imagine the same sort of thing happening at the Federal Reserve for these specific votes that are sort of like, like also bass sort of emotion massage. One for the President. Yeah, exactly. But I guess, I guess that's not an outlandish possibility.
- [46:54]
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- [47:00]
Andrew Egger
I really love it.
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- [48:19]
Katherine Rampel
I mean it is kind of an outlandish possibility because the, the vote in question that we are talking about is the chair, right? It's not about like in the case of until recently, Stephen Myron, who was the CEA chair at the, the Council of Economics chair under Trump, did not resign his position when he was appointed to the Fed board by Trump. That was unprecedented, first of all. But he was always the dissenter saying I want lower rates, I want lower rates. Even when the rest of the board was saying, no man, we're not doing that. But his vote didn't really matter because again, he was one of 12 and he was not the boss. Now we're talking that hypothetical that I laid out and look, I don't know that it's likely to happen, to be clear, probably unlikely. But that hypothetical that I laid out, that that could be sort of a, an off ramp for the presume, presumably incoming chair Kevin Warsh would mean that the boss is the dissenter and everybody else is against him. And that as far as I know, has never, ever happened. Again, one of the central jobs of the chair of the Fed is to sort of like get everyone on more or less the same page and again, most of the time they vote unanimously. So the idea that he would be the outlier, maybe to appease Trump, maybe to avoid. I mean, this is probably all fantasy on my part, to be honest, because I just cannot imagine that happening. But it is an option, I guess. Otherwise I don't know how he's going to manage up, you know, and that's part of his job. Now, it's not supposed to be to be clear. The Fed is supposed to be politically independent, has been politically independent for many decades. He's not the person who's in that job, whether it's Jay Powell or his predecessor Janet Yellen, or any of the others that preceded them. Their job is not to manage the expectations of the President. Their job is not to do what the President wants or explain to the President why you're not doing what they want. Your job is to just set Fed policy, set monetary policy. And the idea that this is even having to enter potentially Kevin Warsh's consciousness is just totally topsy turvy, totally bizarre. And a really very bad state of the world. But he has to be thinking about it because how else is he going to, like, not destroy the Fed? I don't think he wants to destroy the Fed. I don't think he wants to destroy Fed independence. And I think probably in his mind he can walk that tightrope and he can do what's good for the economy and manage Donald Trump. I wish he didn't have to be in that position, but I'm not sure he can actually achieve both objectives at once.
- [51:06]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. There is so much more that we could talk about about all of this. I should probably wrap us up here in just a minute because we've already been going for, for 47 minutes now of this, this morning, shots live. Look at us. Look at us go. Of course, you've, you've been around a lot less time than that, so maybe you're just sort of still champion at the bit to get all your takes out. But, but I want a real quick pivot just for a minute away from just the sort of like broad economic policy stuff to, to the, some of the sort of like, political ways that, that the White House and, and just sort of Republicans more broadly. After a lot of sort of happy talk about these right at the beginning of the war in Iran, they are now sort of finally waking up to the reality that these, these price hikes aren't going away, that they should probably stop telling Americans they're about to go away because that's just going to make them matter. And now they are sort of belatedly trying to find some policy levers to pull to, to at least sort of give the impression that they're trying to do something. So I just want to mention two real quick. We had some reporting in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that the White House is pulling back some of its own sort of protectionist policies on beef imports. If we can get that one up there. Yeah. The administration is planning to temporarily reduce tariffs on beef imports as soon as Monday. According to people familiar with the matter. The move would suspend the annual tariff rate quota, which applies a higher tariff rate after a certain level of beef imports are reached on all beef exporting nations, blah, blah, blah. Basically easier to import more beef because the price of beef is getting crazy and the President wants to see it go down. I agree. The price of beef is getting completely out of control. This is one of the things that still hits me like upside the head every single time I buy it. Other than gas, those are kind of the big two. But Speaking of gas, that's the other thing. We're now getting this. The president has been calling for a gas tax holiday at the federal level, suspending the federal gas tax because people are noticing that gas prices have been going up like crazy and maybe they would be happier if they were a little bit lower. You start to hear this sort of thing at times of gasoline crisis. Joe Biden called for the same sort of thing a couple of years ago when, when the war in Russia had, had prompted a big, a big energy crisis at that time. It is kind of funny. I mean, we'll just do one, one piece of sort of empty calorie hypocrisy that we can all laugh at a little bit. Because one of the people who is spearheading the charge for Trump's gas, gas tax tax holiday this time around is my old buddy, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who has, who has introduced legislation to do exactly that. And here is just for fun, like an old clip that CNN dug up of how Josh Hawley responded when it was Biden who wanted to suspend the gas tax a little, a little while ago.
- [53:41]
Bill Kristol
The tax holiday is just silly. It has no chance of passing Congress. It will not reduce gasoline prices. It does nothing, of course, to help any energy companies increase fracking or pipelining or refining.
- [53:54]
Andrew Egger
It does nothing.
- [53:55]
Bill Kristol
This is one of the dumbest things
- [53:56]
Andrew Egger
I've ever heard of. I mean, what Joe Biden can do if he wants to have any effect
- [54:00]
Bill Kristol
on gas prices is to suspend and reverse his idiotic green New Deal policies that are causing this crisis.
- [54:10]
Andrew Egger
You just pull out idiotic green New Deal prices and you chunk in Iran war. And you can imagine a Democratic congressman, you can't really imagine Josh Hawley saying it about this particular gas tax holiday. But yeah, I don't know. You got anything to say to the senior senator from Missouri before we split your. Kathy?
- [54:29]
Katherine Rampel
I don't know. It's pretty awkward, huh? Like, I'm sure he's super embarrassed if he's seen that clip montage that you just played. No, I'm sure he's not at all.
- [54:38]
Andrew Egger
He's so smooth, man. He's really slick.
- [54:41]
Katherine Rampel
Yeah, I don't know. I do want to comment on the beef prices thing. I do like that sometimes this administration understands that tariffs raise costs. Sometimes that lesson does penetrate. I just kind of wish it existed like every day and not just about beef prices because clearly they, they get that if you cut the tariff rate quota here, effectively, if you reduce tariffs on beef, that may have some relief for customers, for Consumers in this country who purchase beef, if only they would realize it's the same thing for pretty much everything else. But I guess we're not there yet.
- [55:24]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah, well, we're going to keep following it. We'll see what's going to happen. It really does seem like this is just sort of a no win bind that they've gotten themselves in with the straight of Hormuz and in addition to all the sort of like pre existing torque that was on the economy with the tariff pain and all that sort of stuff. Although they are having a little more trouble recently getting those tariffs to stick as I'm sure you and JBL talked about on Friday. But, but, but yeah, I mean it's, it's a trap of their own design. They are nonetheless trapped in it. And we will keep following along. We'll be back later to talk more about it. The, the number, the number of people watching this have just continued to go up. Which, which, which leads part of me to think that we should just keep yapping for another six to eight hours and just see at what point it actually crests and starts to diminish. But we're not gonna, we're not gonna do that. Uh, we're gonna wrap it up, leave her wanting more. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Go watch the replay, you sickos. If you just, if you really can't get that much, I should say before we split, I have one piece of bookkeeping here just to tease our shows that are coming up soon in California. We're getting close to our next tour stops. Sarah, Tim and Sam will be in San Diego and LA next week. Still really mad that I did not get invited to these particular events. I love San Diego in particular and LA. LA's okay. Do not wait to buy your tickets. We have all the details for you@the bullwork.com event and we will drop the link in the show notes as well. Come see. I would say come see us. Go see them I guess is what I need to say. Because again, I'm not going to be there. Bummer. Write in. Write in and talk about how mad you are that I'm not going to be at the LA show. If that. If you want to do that. But yeah, we'll leave it there. I'm Andrew Egger. I'm White House correspondent for the Bulwark. We had Bill Kristol before he and I write the Morning Shots newsletter. But we swapped him out to talk inflation for Katherine Rampel, our economic whiz of the Bullwick. Catherine, thanks for coming on and talking a little bit about all this stuff.
- [57:11]
Katherine Rampel
Thanks for having me.
- [57:12]
Andrew Egger
And thanks everybody out there for tuning in, especially if you have been here for the long haul. These usually don't go this long, but we we had a lot to talk about, so we'll be here again next Tuesday. We hope you'll go to the bulwark.com subscribe to Bill and My Morning Shots newsletter. Why? Why get us only once a week in video form when you could also get us five times a week in our much more considered, erudite, well polished up text form. So that's a possibility if you want to go to the bulwark.com regardless, thanks you all. Thanks to you all out there for watching and we will see you next week.