← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
A
Protein packed meals in 10 minutes. TikTok's got millions of them.
- [00:04]
B
Could you whip one up in under eight?
- [00:07]
C
Probably. But hey, it's not a race. Grab the recipes on TikTok and start
- [00:13]
B
cooking
- [00:16]
A
day or night. VRBoCare is here 247 to help make every part of your stay seamless. If anything comes up or you simply need a little guidance, support is ready whenever you reach out. From the moment you book to the moment you head home. We're here to help things run smoothly because a great trip starts with the right support. And hey, a good playlist doesn't hurt either. All right. Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, here with Bill Crystal. You are not imagining things. This is not MAGA Mondays. I'm not Andrew Egger. This is Morning shots live. Tuesday, May 5th. Happy Cinco de Mayo, Bill.
- [00:58]
B
And happy Cinco de Mayo to you. And just to be clear, Andrew Egger has not been fired, disciplined, benched, or suspended yet. He's just has a bad sore throat. And so Sam was happy, I think, to, to step in.
- [01:13]
A
Thank you.
- [01:13]
B
Thank you for stepping in. Thank you for stepping in, Sam.
- [01:16]
A
As far as I understand it, Andrew is at Trump Tower now getting one of those taco bowls that Trump tweeted about 10 years ago for synchron. Just can't stay away guy. He loves him so much. All right, we're going to talk about some stuff today. We got a host of things to discuss. Ballroom shenanigans. Pete Hagseth had a little briefing this morning. What else do we want to talk about? Bill, we'll, we'll make it a potpourri. We can go different places. You want to go. I want to start with the ballroom. So setting this up last night. Well, I guess I gotta stop. Step back a little further. Republicans in Congress are considering a reconciliation bill. And not to bore listeners right out of the gate, but reconciliation bill is something you could pass with the party line vote in the Senate. In the House, it allows you to just do budgetary things. So it has to be related to dollars and cents, which is why they probably can't do the Save America act in there. So anyways, they're going to do the second reconciliation bill and requires all the committees to put together what they want in that bill. And so last night, the Senate Judiciary Republicans put together their wish list for what they want in their portion of the reconciliation bill. And it's a doozy. There's tens of billions of dollars for ice, even though ICE already has more money than they can possibly. You know, deal with and then on top of that, and this is what we want to focus on because it really got my goat. There is a provision in there for 1 billion that's with a B billion dollars to allow for security adjustments and upgrades related to the what they call the East Wing modernization project. You can see the actual language on there. I'm just going to read it out loud so people know how this works. And then Bill can just opine. In addition to amounts otherwise available, there is appropriate to the United States Secret Service for fiscal year 2026 out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, $1 billion to remain available until September 30, 2029 for the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House compound to support enhancements by the United States Secret Service relating to the East Wing modernization project, including above ground and below ground security features. All right, Bill, I have my thoughts. What are yours?
- [03:35]
B
I guess let me make two points. One bigger point about that reconciliation bill. It is pretty striking. The point of the reason for this bill, it's unusual timing and usually they use reconciliation for much bigger amounts of money and tax bills and so forth, is that they want is that the Democrats won the showdown on Department of Homeland Security funding in the sense that they were able to fund the whole. Then the Republicans ended up conceding in the House and they funded the rest of DHS with no new money for ICE and Border Patrol. As you say, they didn't need that new money because unfortunately they got tens of billions, actually over 100, 150 billion I think right. A year ago in that reconciliation bill. But Trump promised to get it. The Republicans promised that God forbid that I should be deprived of any of the money they need to run their horrible detention centers and go around persecuting Americans on the streets of their cities and so forth. So they've got that bill, most of which is is ICE and Border Patrol money and then this extra 1 billion for Homeland Security. So it is actually for two of the Trump administration's least popular projects, I mean, which is interesting. And I, well, let me make a broad point about that and then we can come back to the ballroom, which I think is also interesting. I mean, I. So you say, well, why, why is, I mean Trump's, at times Trump pulled, in the past Trump has pulled back on issues that he knows aren't popular and, and still does sometimes and did a little bit on, on obviously ice. He got rid of Christine Ohm and they're less visible in Their persecution of people. And then after the killing of, of, of, of Gooden Petrie and, and Freddie and, and, and that kind of thing. But, and this, he's become less. What I'm struck by is this, that Trump doesn't care. Trump doesn't care about the polls. In some issues he still does. But in general, the megalomania, especially with stuff that he is attached to him. And this gets to the ballroom, the megalomania, the narcissism, the wanting to put his stamp on things for the future, has overcome the kind of normal political constraints which if you're a Democrat, is pretty good because it means you can run on this billion dollars for the ballroom, you know, for the rest of the next six months. He's making Republicans take something that's a Trump weakness and make it a Republican weakness. Good for Democrats. On the other hand, from a sort of next two and a half years point of view, we've got a president who's less constrained than he was because one of the reasons presidents back off foolish policies is public opinion turns against them. And this case and some of this stuff, at least the megalomania is overcoming the, you know, the political calculation.
- [05:55]
A
I mean, look, I find it outrageous. The whole premise of the ballroom, the whole salesmanship of the ballroom, was that this was going to be paid for with private funds. Okay. Then it started at $200 million and Trump said, I get done under budget and on time. Then it got up to 300 million, then 400 million and now it's taxpayer funded and the note and it's a billion and a billion billion. And the notion that they're going to say, and actually, let me play a game with you because I was thinking of sending our video guys to the Hill to just ask Republicans about it. Unfortunately, they're not on the Hill. They're on break today. What would you predict if they got a microphone in the camera put in their face? A congressional Republican would say if they were asked about this?
- [06:50]
B
It's for security, Sam. Secret Service as they needed. You notice Secret Service is right in there in that appropriation. This isn't just for Trump. This is before the next president.
- [06:58]
A
And you saw the White House correspondence dinner. You need security.
- [07:02]
B
Of course. I mean, the White House has been, thank God, very secure so far as one can tell, for the last decades. Right. That's not where incidents have happened.
- [07:09]
A
My point here is that's not what you said when you initially outlined this thing. Did you think you're going to construct it without security? Was that the Promise. Did you just not factor in security into your cost projections when you said 200 million and 300 million, then 400 million? I mean, it's just the ultimate bait and switch. And the idea that Republicans who would lose their effing mind if a Democratic president were to do something like this will then go along happily, and they are, because they put in the freaking reconciliation bill that they're going along with. This is ridiculous. I went and looked in the archives because I knew that there was had to have been something involving Obama. And Obama did some sort of basketball hoop rec. You know, they had a tennis court. They make it into basketball hoop. You know, they spent some money on it. Republicans made up a figure. It was like something like $370 million. It was. Snopes discounted it, but they weren't ballistic over the idea. This made up figure that was $370 million. This is a billion dollars and it's taxpayer money. And it's for a vanity project that no one needed and that Trump pledged would be done with private funds, which, by the way, we don't know where the private funds are coming from. We know a little bit about it, but we don't know exactly who gave what and how much is being raised. So this is the most secretive vanity project. And now everyone who is a taxpayer is on the hook for it. It's crazy.
- [08:32]
B
And, and they say it's to build in effect the bunker. You know, this real national security reasons.
- [08:37]
A
Except they set above ground too.
- [08:39]
B
Right. But also there already was a bunker. We know that Trump was taken to it, for example, in 2020 at the height of the George Floyd protest. And I, having worked in the White House, know a little bit that exists. And it was used in after 9 11. And I believe it was one of the things that was probably damaged or may just destroyed when they ripped up the East Wing, so they have to replace it. But it, there was no issue that I know of with that made people worried about the security of that bunker. So the whole. Yes, you say it's, it's, it's not, it's a fake security. And that presidential security and national security justification for something that's entirely a vanity project. And incidentally, you've pointed this out. We pointed this out, I think when we were together on one of these shows. It also sort of implies that everything Trump does is going to be moved to the White House, which I think he would like, incidentally, was that he would be the host and he would preside and maybe he can bludgeon all the groups that happen to speak at other places, the Chamber of Commerce and the White House Correspondents Association. No, we got to do it in the White House for security reasons. And then suddenly it's in the White House and the White House controls the guest list. And suddenly Trump's controlling maybe the, you know, the, the order, the order of events. And, and, and it is a, in that respect, it's very much part of Trump's imperial presidency mode.
- [09:49]
C
Right.
- [09:49]
B
Other nations that I visited and you have, right, have this kind of presidential complex. Democratic nations have this kind of presidential complex where everything takes place. Putin does not go to give speeches in hotels. In Moscow, people come to the Kremlin. I mean, and that's. The Kremlin is this massive place with all these different, you know, buildings basically. And that's kind of what it looks like if you live in a. That kind of country. America has had a relatively modest White House. Both the working spaces and the residential space is very nice, but still not as grand as some other countries. And the idea is the president, with appropriate security, which affects these events, of course, goes to other places to, goes to the citizenry. And that reverses that whole dynamic.
- [10:29]
A
I mean, the way the West Wing, if we're being honest about the West Wing, is it's like a little dumpy. It is. I mean, the offices are small. It's, you know, it's chaotic always in there. There's paper strewn all over the place. But that's its charm. Like, it, it's not supposed to be a high end office building with a bunch of, you know, you know, you know, gizmos and things and all, you know, new technology and modern. It is the West Wing. It's the people's place. I will say you did raise a. You kind of triggered something in me. You don't build this stuff. You don't have a system in place where you're hosting every event if you leave. Right. Like, I mean, that's just not, and we've talked about this a lot, but, like, you don't spruce up all of Washington D.C. in the way you want to see it if your plan is to then just depart to Palm Beach. I don't know if I necessarily am ready to commit to the idea that he's sticking around or trying to, but it does give off the impression if he's going to the mat this aggressively for these things. Like, why.
- [11:37]
B
I mean, I guess I very much agree with that. And I think, incidentally, Don Junior's relatively recent kind of, I'VE noticed, I've noticed your tweet emergence and reemerg. Re emergence as a sort of player staying at the White House and all this. But also people talk, him talking a little bit, hinting my political future, you know, is, is maybe if he can't, if he's not in good enough shape to do it in 2028, maybe you do the classic autocrat handover to the next generation thing, which is, of course, from Trump's point of view, desirable in all kinds of ways in terms of making money, not having anything he's done investigated and all that. So. Yeah, no, I, but I, I think it's the counter argument to him would be, well, you do this before you leave. Or if you see mortality approaching because you want the grand edifices everywhere in Washington as yours and you can't count. He's not, he knows that maybe the next presidents aren't going to want to build monuments to him. It's not going to be like Lincoln or Washington or fdr. So he has to build it for himself. That's. But that's also a dangerous condiment. Whichever it is, whether he's planning on saying or has intimations of mortality or probably some strange combination of both. Right. Which would make sense if you're 80 years old in the way, you know, that's dangerous also because it means that the normal constraints sort of start to go away and it's all about him. I, I just, you know, in thinking about his second term, a lot of it is just authoritarianism. Just a lot of it is authoritarianism and a lot of it is all kinds of other things, lessons he thinks he learned from the first term. Don't you have to have loyalists everywhere. But how much A lot of it is, is the narcissism and the megalomania, don't you think? And I think that's gotten noticeably worse just in the year, year and a quarter that he's been there. Yeah.
- [13:10]
A
Oh, 100%. I mean, we did a big riff on the golf course yesterday, but it is just him basically wanting to. Assuming that he can just remodel the entire city right in his image. I will say there's something, I mean, the ballroom is unique in, in one respect and that they just destroyed it first and they haven't quite. I mean, the reflecting pool, whatever you want. Like, look at that. It's just an eyesore now. So they destroyed it. And then it becomes a question, well, what do you do with it? Like, you can't just leave it like that.
- [13:39]
B
Right.
- [13:40]
A
So like, I don't know, what do you do with this now? Like, is there a proper way to actually build something in its place? I have no clue what the actual step forwards are here.
- [13:50]
B
I mean, you could rebuild a version of the East Wing and, or have a throw that.
- [13:54]
A
Yeah.
- [13:55]
B
If you want to have some kind of ballroom, have a, you know, a room that. Appropriate room that seats 200 people, but not this thing that's so large. The grandiosity of it all. It sounds trivial to complain about. Okay. It's a little bigger than, you know, 900 people. 1,000 people are supposed to 250. But if you put that together with the arch, the size is very trumpy and really bad. I mean that is again, very third world dictator, Kim Jong Un. The biggest one, whatever is that arch is unbelievably large. The New York Times. Excellent. An excellent sort of videographic of what it would look like as you come across Memorial Bridge. And, and you had that, you said that wonderful. You do have that wonderful view of the cemetery, which is very low, obviously does not. It's just, you know, flat graves almost. Right. And then it very beautiful with all the, the white head gravestones. And then suddenly this now right at that circle you, you hit when you come across Memorial Bridge, there's going to be this, this arch that's, I don't know, twice higher than everything in Washington, I think. Right. 250. I mean, it's really massive.
- [14:51]
A
Other than the Washington Monument, it will be higher than everything in Washington. But Washington has that ordinance that you can't build over 30.
- [14:56]
B
Right. And the Washington Monument is kind of thin, you know what I mean? So it's like a little. No, it's a little, you know, whatever spire into the sky. But this thing is just going to be so dominant at a place that's a moving. It's one of the main bridges. And you see from one side the Lincoln Memorial and the other side of Arlington, kind of a very iconic almost.
- [15:14]
A
Yeah, it's Robert E. Lee's old house. And then on the other side is Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln Memorial. There's like a real symbolism there. And then you're gonna have this big old freaking arch that's right in the middle of it, obstructing everything. Last thing on the ballroom. Democrats now have opportunities here. I'm gonna put up a tweet from Brian Schadz, center from Hawaii, who noted that by doing this, by putting this reconciliation bill together, there will be an up and down vote on the ballroom and I, I believe procedurally, and I'm citing Steve Dennis, longtime reporter in D.C. who knows this stuff in the back of his, like the back of his hand. They can make a motion to strip anything and it'll be a party line motion. So I, I suspect Democrats, I mean, let's assume they will do this because it's obviously, it's like a T ball here. They're going to say, all right, let's strip the 1 billion. And we're going to make you guys go on record saying, no, we want to spend this money at this time, $1 billion, when we couldn't do the Obamacare subsidies. We're going to spend that on a ballroom. And that, that, that, I don't know. I'm not a poly psych. I've never worked on a campaign, but that seems like an easy one for me.
- [16:25]
B
Yeah, the reconciliation bills have this, yeah, that's why they have that voterama thing. Right. You get individual, it allows individual motions to strip particular, you know, line items from it, budget items from it. This one will certainly be one. They'll also go after ice, Border Patrol and stuff, incidentally. But no, I think it's a very good vote for the, for the Democrats. I don't know, maybe some Republicans get a little queasy about voting for it. It's, it's, it's a billion dollars over three years.
- [16:52]
A
But you think they never break time, Bill.
- [16:57]
B
I know, I know, but it does. You know, one of the challenges Democrats have, minor concerns I say Democrats have had is Trump's numbers have been going down very fast and very badly. And, and that's the key determinant for a midterm election, the President's approval if he also party, also controls Congress. You want him check, voters want him checked. But there's been a little worry about the generic ballot isn't moving as fast now. It never was quite as fast because there will be Trump disapprovers who will still vote Republican, obviously, but it's begun to pick up a little steam. But having the Republican Party I vote for it makes it different from a Trump vanity project that is in the, in the past, you could have told yourself there weren't such a vote. I really, I really wish Trump wouldn't do all this stuff. But the Republicans in Congress, they're still for lower taxes. Well, some people can still say that. But now the Republicans are on the record, not just sort of silently acquiescing in, but voting for Trump's vanity project.
- [17:49]
A
And what, what is distinct about this is that sometimes you got to take tough votes as a party and you do it because you're going for an ideological project. And you know, it might not be popular at the time, but you have some sort of conviction in the back of your head that over time you'll be proven right. So, for instance, I think back to the Obama years. A bunch of House, House Democrats took a vote that they knew was going to fail in the Senate on cap and trade. They did it because they wanted to advance an ideological project. They knew it was going to cost them, but they felt it was important to go on the record and at least take the vote and at least try to move the project forward. Same thing with Obamacare. It was widely unpopular by the time it was getting ready to pass. And they knew they had to take the vote and they did it because they wanted to make progress on health care. In this case, there is no ideological project. The project is Trump. And so what he's asking these people to do is essentially risk political capital so that he can get his edifice, he can get his ballroom. And there's no upside to it. It's not like they can say, ah, we got a ballroom for the voters. I mean, that's not something you're going to sell. So he's shoving it down their throats and they're going to take it. And I think that's the remarkable thing for me is that they're doing this willingly without any actual tangible realistic gains that they can go back to say, hey, at least we advanced something that you guys cared about. Who, what voters care about this stuff.
- [19:11]
B
I mean, they'll say the Democrats don't care about protecting the President. See, they, first, they incite people to do these, to these assassinations with their irresponsible rhetoric and James Comey and all that stuff. And now they don't want to give him a suitable protection. See, this is money for the Secret Service. I don't think this is going to work. I'm just saying that's their.
- [19:26]
A
Sure.
- [19:27]
B
That's the way they've tried to set up their, their response.
- [19:30]
A
I would just note that we, and I'll go, we'll go to break after this. We did a focus group, we wrote about this. Will Summer wrote about this yesterday for false. We did a focus group of two time Trump voters. Now they were souring on Trump and that was part of the focus group, but they are two time Trump voters nonetheless. And even they were blown away by the ballroom stuff. And they felt like, I mean, there, there's so much conspiracy stuff around in our politics, but this kind of blew me away. They thought that the White House Correspondents Dinner assassination attempt was a psyop and a false flag because Trump wanted to have a predicate to push for the ballroom. So there is even among Trump voters a sense that this is not on the level. And with that, we need to take a quick break to hear from our advertisers. This ad is brought to you by Aura Frames. Aura Frames is a great upgrade from your typical Mother's Day flowers. Trust me, I know this. I got an aura frame from my mother in law last Mother Day. She loved it. That's because flowers, they're nice, but they only last a few days. The perfect gift is one that lasts a lifetime. And that gift is Aura Frames. Aura Frames are a great way to share all your favorite memories. From birthdays to vacations to kids sporting events and everything in between. There's free unlimited storage that allows you to add as many photos and videos as you want. My favorite part of Aura Frames is how easy it is to preload photos before it ships. You can keep adding photos and videos from anywhere, anytime. It's really awesome and it's perfect for Mother's Day. A gift box is included. Every frame comes packaged in a premium gift box with no price tag. Name number one by wirecutter. You can save on gifts for your mom or your mother in law by visiting or frames.com for a limited time. Listeners can get $25 off their bestselling Carver Mat frame with code Bulwark Takes. That's a U R A frames.com promo code bulwark Takes. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions do apply. So Bill, I just want you to know I got an OR frame and I'm only putting pictures of Bill Crystal in my OR frames. It's just like continuous loop.
- [21:39]
B
I, I expect no less. I mean it's kind of a requirement, isn't it?
- [21:43]
A
It's right here in my office.
- [21:46]
B
Sarah's now going to be upset. You know, I think the, I think the memo was Sarah gets 50 of the photos. You know, Tim, Tim and I and JBL and you get 10 and everyone else gets whatever, you know, the leftover scraps.
- [21:59]
A
My our frames just off the screen. You don't see it there, but it's just Bill going, all right. The other big thing that happened this morning is, or I should say over the last day and a half, two days more activity with Iran. We announced that we're going to have them some sort of military naval exercise to help ships get through the Strait of Hormuz. It's unclear what exactly that entails. We're not like, what is your understanding of actually what's happening right now?
- [22:34]
B
So it's a little murky. I was thinking of writing it for this morning for morning shots. I said, you know, I'm going to wait and see what happens and we'll know more by tonight. We want to huff and puff and get the strait open without, I think, actually using ground troops. And even without, it seems like at this point for Trump, massive bombing campaign. Worries about what Iran will do in retaliation in terms of other energy sources in the Gulf and its effects on the world economy. Iran wants to prove that they can close it and can still close it and will close it when they feel like it. And so they didn't kind of go along with Trump's, hey, this is just to help ships from neutral nations go through. And, and so both sides are sort of poking at each other. It could escalate or it could be just a kind of, you know, kerfuffle on the way towards, I don't know. On the way towards what? On the way towards a de facto, I guess, agreement where we basically, you know, the ceasefire continues or becomes semi permanent and the strait sort of reopens. But basically, Iran, I mean, I'm struck how much Iran wants. They know what they're doing. They want to really keep in people's mind the principle that they can close the strait when they want. They've sort of shown that. And you could. I kind of thought, well, maybe they'll just decide to let it open now. And they know that people can't unsee what they've seen over the last 30, 45 days, you know, and the effects on the world economy. But they, they're pretty insistent on either humiliating us, Trump a little more, or, or reminding everyone that it's kind of there straight now, or. Anyway, I'm struck by that. But I. I don't know what happens now, obviously.
- [24:04]
A
Yeah, well, you know, it's. It gets back to this idea who holds the cards, which Trump loves to say, and he's always saying, well, they have no cards, but it's very clear they have a card. They're playing the card like that, that otherwise we wouldn't have him to be doing this new project that we're up to. But you. Right, you mentioned a ceasefire and look, I don't think we have to play by their semantical games, but we have A blockade on them, that's an act of war. And then the other day they bombed a facility in the uae, which suggests there's regional fighting. And now we have this project that we're undertaking to try to help shepherd ships through the strait, which they're calling Project Freedom. So to any objective observer, it doesn't quite look like a ceasefire. But then Pete Hegseth was asked about whether the ceasefire is still in effect. And here's what he had to say. Last 24 hours or so, Iran's fired at us, we fired at Iran. I'm just going to ask you more directly, is the ceasefire over?
- [25:09]
D
No, the ceasefire is not over. Ultimately this is a separated decision, distinct project, and we expected there would be some churn at the beginning, which happened. And we said we would defend and defend aggressively, and we absolutely have. Iran knows that. And ultimately the President is going to make a decision whether anything were to escalate into a violation of a cease fire. But certainly we would urge Iran to be prudent in the actions that they take to keep that underneath this threshold. This is about the straits, this is about freedom of navigation, this is about international waterways. This is about free flow of commerce. All the things that happened before and only Iran is contesting. So, so right now the, the ceasefire certainly holds, but we're going to be watching very, very closely.
- [25:56]
A
So I'm struck by two things there. One is that he's basically admitting that they're trying to get back to the prior status quo.
- [26:02]
B
Right?
- [26:02]
A
All the things that happened before were trying to restore, which implies that you fucked it up. But two is it seems clear to me that they don't want to say that the ceasefire is out of place because they don't want the war powers debate to restart. And they had that 60 day threshold which they violated. Clearly they don't want to vote.
- [26:21]
C
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- [27:22]
B
And they don't want the war to restart. I mean, I was talking the exact same things you were with, I'll just say at one point. So the first one is very interesting, right, that he's just saying we want to get back to the status quoante where the street was open before we began this whole thing. That's kind of striking. But secondly, yeah, the, the, the on all that bellicose, God knows rhetoric that we've seen from Hexeth over these two months. And there was some of that today, but that was a very different tone. Right. We can keep it under this threshold that we don't want this thing to restart. You know, we want Iran to be prudent. That's very different from the. We are obliterating them. We are, we love beating up people who are weaker than us. There's nothing, no Iranian military left. There's nothing left there suddenly, as could you guys be little prudent here? And the way you're handling your, you know, stripping through the straight, I mean, that is pretty striking. I think it shows both of you they don't want the war powers vote. But also, Hex has gotten the message from Trump. We want this thing to kind of end with a whimper, not with a, not with, not, not with a, you know, re. Es. With an escalation. Bang.
- [28:23]
A
Again, let's get to that in a second. But the war powers thing, I just want to linger on for one minute because, you know, it was a point of contention when Hegseth went to the Hill last week. No one actually believes that you can say, oh well, we're in a ceasefire. The ergo, the 60 day clock is reset or paused or whatever it is. And he was pressed on this by Tim Kaine. So let's play that clip.
- [28:44]
D
However, we are in a ceasefire right now, which our understanding means the 60 day clock pauses or stops in a ceasefire. So they're not in. That's. It's our understanding, just so you know. Okay, well, I do not believe the statute would, would support that. I think the 60 days runs maybe
- [28:59]
B
tomorrow and it's going to pose a really important legal question. For the administration there.
- [29:06]
D
We have serious constitutional concerns and we
- [29:08]
B
don't want to layer those with additional statutory concerns.
- [29:13]
A
So what happens on Congress is this, I'm assuming this is just another case where Republicans kind of swallow their pride and don't do anything. But at some point it gets a little bit, you know, too much to, you know, just ignore.
- [29:27]
B
Yeah. I noticed a couple of Republicans are talking about, well, maybe we should just vote to authorize the use of force in Iran. I mean, people kind of misunderstand. The war powers thing doesn't end the use of force. It requires a vote on the use of force. Yeah, they want to vote to authorize the use of force. They can do it. They could have done it 60 days ago. They could do it now.
- [29:42]
A
Yeah.
- [29:42]
B
I wonder.
- [29:43]
A
Have some courage of your convictions.
- [29:44]
B
Yeah, I mean, I'm not even sure, incidentally, that it would be. I mean, given that the war is not popular. But they had done this, incidentally, a week in, I think they could have gotten. I'm not so sure. They wouldn't have passed it with, with maybe some Democratic votes, too. Remember how everyone at the beginning was, well, you know, we're taking a look. You know, Chuck Schumer didn't, you know, no one really wants to be pro Iran or should they be? Right. So.
- [30:02]
A
Right.
- [30:03]
B
They've sort of botched the politics of this, of that. In this respect, I was very struck. You know, we talked about the ballroom. I looked just before this year, I looked up this most recent poll that I've seen on that is almost exactly 2 to 1 against. I think it was 52, 26% against. And others didn't know. Most recent poll I've seen on Iran, I think it's the Washington Post ABC poll from the weekend was also. Exactly. Almost 2 to 1, maybe 66, 33, something like that. So, I mean, they are on the big. The ballroom, the war. I mean, they are running. This isn't just your normal, you know, we're down a few points. Right. You know, 54, 44 kind of thing. Right. We're at 2 to 1 against. And this is the position the Republican parties put themselves in.
- [30:42]
A
It's, it's bleak. And I guess now back to the thing that you were mentioning earlier, which is how do you end it with a whimper or with a bang? And everything suggests that Trump is either bored of this or spooked by it and wants out. And it's just a matter of sort of getting to a place where he can say, we're done. And maybe it's just attrition. Right? Maybe he's just like, well, we have the ceasefire and people are getting sort of, you know, used to the new status quo where gas is through the roof. And actually, let's put up the gas buddy tweet here. This is this morning. So here you have Oklahoma, last state with average Diesel prices below $5 a gallon has just hit the $5 level. Zero states have diesel averaging less than $5 while they now have above 6. So maybe Trump's like, well, that's just where people get comfortable with this new status quo. I can't imagine that's the case. But how does, how does he get out? Like, what, what are the options here?
- [31:40]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's, that is the question. I mean, and also, even if he wants to get out, you could have a lot of miscalculations that could lead to another escalation, obviously. No, I mean he really, he needs Iran to agree basically to reopen the strait. Because I've noticed a couple of shipping companies even said last night, hey, we're not, we're not going in there if Iran's taking potshots, even if it's a few small boats and even if the US military is vaguely committed to this Project Freedom or whatever, it's very nice that they're vaguely committed to it, but we're not sending actual, you know, multi zillion dollar oil tankers in there. So he needs, the global economy is at real risk. And I think the people. Tim talked to this fellow last night, but I think a lot of economists, Kathryn Rampel has been talking about this too now, think we're getting pretty close to a point where you hit a tipping point and you don't recover for months from this. I mean, there's just actual physical shortages. This isn't psychology. This isn't, you know, kind of feels bad. People think inflation's up. This is just, there's not enough petrochemicals for fertilizers, for gas, for other things. And at some point that has real, it is having real effects both on the inflation side and on the really, let's call it the, you know, the proportion productivity side. And they're getting, they get a lot worse pretty fast, it sounds like. So I think there's some pretty real pressure on Trump to, to, to give in, which is why Iran's being tough, incidentally. Iran feels like they, they, the Trump people. I was struck by talking to some Trump defense semi defender the other day and said, well, Iran's can't cap the wells, the oil, they can't store the oil anywhere. That was kind of the story they told themselves. It wasn't totally false. There are some problems with that. But everything I've looked at read suggests they've got weeks and months of ability to work around some of that stuff and store oils other places or cap some of the wells in ways, you know, they'll take some hits on this. Obviously they're getting less revenue from exporting oil, but I don't think the pressure on them is as great as it is on the global economy.
- [33:28]
A
Right. It's like it's a question of pain, pain threshold at this point. Can they tolerate it more than we can? And, you know, the global economy is getting killed. I think we're insulated a little bit because, you know, we have our own oil supply and we can, we can endure some of the pain. But at $5 plus for diesel, things start to pinch, really. So we'll see where it goes. One other thing I want to talk about wasn't on a rundown list, but Andrew did write about it in Morning Shots is the situation in Ukraine, which, you know, we are now 15 months into the Trump second term. He has done exceedingly little for Ukraine. If anything, he's been. He's harmed it by lifting some of the Russian sanctions and, you know, basically choking off any support for the Ukrainians. And yet here we are and Ukraine is still standing. There's talk of a ceasefire on that front as well. What is your take on how we've ended up at this place?
- [34:25]
B
Surprisingly, I mean, really an amazing performance by Ukraine and a fair amount of stepping up by European nations who people were skeptical four years ago, February, after the invasion would step up. And I've got to say I think they have not perfectly, but pretty impressively, a lot of, of arm, a lot of money, a lot of arms. But Ukraine ability not just to fight courageously, but then to, you know, to improve the drone technology and to be ahead of Russia and ahead of everyone. So far, Smartell is they're now going around, Zelensky's literally going to extremely wealthy countries in the Middle east and making deals where Ukraine is going to share their technology with them. And they seem to want Ukraine's technology as, as much as ours. So we've managed to not help Ukraine, which is very bad in my, from my point of view, in a moral sense and a geopolitical sense. And Ukraine's managed to do. Do amazingly well without us, which also sends a message to others around the world. So I think the degree to which Ukraine will now be at the center, if, assuming they can hold on here and even do better of a European consortium that will see, you know what, we can defend ourselves pretty well. And Trump wants to bust up NATO, and you can't really stop Trump from doing that. We can really stand up to Russia and we can be our own kind of power center. Maybe that's a good thing. It's certainly better than them not stepping up. I think NATO would be better still, and I still think it's problematic without the US and all that. But it's really been impressive what Ukraine's been able to pull off, though.
- [35:45]
A
No, it's remarkable. And, I mean, obviously you got to keep monitoring, but if you had predicted this situation 15 months ago, I don't think anyone would have taken that. All right, Bill, this has been a pleasure. I know I'm not Andrew Edgar, but I hope I was a reasonable substitute.
- [36:00]
B
You did. You're good. Pretty good. Pretty good. I mean, you're not. You're not, you know, you're not Andrew. But it was. But we made it through. We made it through. So thank you again. All right.
- [36:09]
A
All right, quick pro, quick programming note before we go. As always, we are getting very close to our live shows. May 20. May 21. May 20 is in San Diego. May 21 is in Los Angeles. It's gonna be me, Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller out there. Those are fun shows. Bill's part. Bill's been part of them. He can attest they're quite fun. If you don't have your tickets, go and get them quickly. It's at thebullwerk.com events. That's the bulwark.com events. We'll drop the link in the show notes, too. Come and say hi if you are in the area and we'll see you there soon. Bill, thanks again. I'll talk to you soon, buddy.
- [36:43]
B
Thanks, Sam.