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- [00:02]
Tim Miller
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- [00:30]
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- [01:43]
Ben Rhodes
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome, I think a first time guest. He's a speechwriter and deputy National Security Advisor under President Obama. He was deeply involved with the Iran nuclear deal. He's now a contributor to msnbc, co host of Pond Save the World and author of after the Fall. Being American in the World We've Made. It's Ben Rhodes. What's up man?
- [02:04]
Tim Miller
Hey, Tim. Yeah, first time. First time. A long time.
- [02:06]
Ben Rhodes
Okay, good. I'm pumped. Yeah, I am pumped. And hopefully you've listened to the Tommy Vitor episode. So you know what's going to come for you at the very end of the pod. I have a special segment for Worldos. There are four reasons I wanted to get you on the pod and the last one is hilarious. So I'm just going to go through them really quick. Number one, your book is Bill Crystal adjacent. And we're going to get to that. I don't know. I know that you don't like to. To accept that, but it's true. Number two, I am a worldo.
- [02:31]
Tim Miller
Oh, well, yeah.
- [02:32]
Ben Rhodes
And Pod, Save the World and Shield of the Republic are my napping podcasts. And so I appreciate that. So I have you in my ear as I'm kind of waking up from naps. And a genuine compliment. Unlike most of the people in the Blob during the Trump era, you've spoken like an actual human about how awful this stuff is rather than Diplo speak. I like that. And lastly, I pitched this about a month ago when it looked like Trump was going to do JPCOA2.
- [02:55]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [02:56]
Ben Rhodes
And I thought that was funny. And it's seeming a little. Maybe funny in a different way now. Less funny. So maybe we start there.
- [03:02]
Tim Miller
I know we agreed to do this when we thought there was going to be, like, a deal.
- [03:06]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, exactly. Very much not a deal. And so let's just start there with your assessment on the state of play.
- [03:12]
Tim Miller
Look, we're in this incredibly dangerous and volatile moment, Tim. I mean, we don't know whether the United States is going to enter the war today or tomorrow. It seems like we're poised on that precipice. I mean, in terms of the state of play, Look, I don't think Israel had to bomb Iran right now. There was no. Despite they've made, they haven't really tried to put out some kind of credible intelligence case that Iran was just about to acquire a nuclear weapon. Beyond what they always say, the reality is that they've been living with an Iran with a nuclear program for a very long time. It would take Iran, you know, estimates range from months into years, to both acquire enough nuclear fuel for a weapon, but also to weaponize that fuel, put it on a warhead. That was not about to happen. And Trump literally had an ongoing negotiation and had a meeting set up in Oman where it seemed like they were probably going to get some kind of deal. And so to me, what Israel did was not some, you know, 5 DD fight, 5D chess move by Trump where he was running a psyop on all of us with Steve Witkoff. I mean, Trump clearly wanted that deal. So they basically bombed Iran before it was necessary in a manner that put an end to diplomacy. And I've been in these, some of these simulations, Tim. This happens in all of them, right. They get to a point where they say, okay, we've bloodied their nose and now we need the US to come in and drop its big bomb on Fordo. And that's where we are.
- [04:43]
Ben Rhodes
So you're not buying the story from the Trump administration? I've been, I've been trigged that all my former friends, all the hawks who stayed in the Republican Party in good standing are very excited to share that story that like Donald Trump was doing a ploy on the media and the Iranians where he, he brought them into his little mousetrap, he put some cheese in there for the Ayatollah and, and was just being bad cop or a good cop rather. You don't think that's the accurate story?
- [05:09]
Tim Miller
Tim, what is more plausible to you? That Donald Trump and the people around him had the extraord discipline to go through a total decoy, months long diplomatic effort to arrive at a deal with Iran that their Saudi and Emirati friends supported while actually laying this trap and being disciplined enough not to leak it or tell anybody about it or that Bibi Netanyahu, over Trump's objections, bombed those facilities. Trump was watching, as has been reported, Fox News, the war looked pretty good on Fox News. He saw some people saying that this was a great thing. And then he started calling reporters on the phone and saying, hey, actually I've been running this psyop the whole time. I'm for this. And then all of his hawkish circle, which is only half the circle and we can get into that, starts banging on him to drop the big bomb on Fordo and he's in a bind now because he didn't want to be here, but that's where he is. I'm going to bet on the latter scenario being the one, not the psyop one.
- [06:16]
Ben Rhodes
I'm going to bet on the latter scenario too. When you put it like that, it seems more likely that Trump was watching Fox and thought he could get in on a winner. And this is where, I mean, maybe I'm as susceptible as Trump. And so I just, I want to hash out with you, my old neocon muscles flex from time to time, you know, and there's an element of this that I am sympathetic to from the Israel side. Not really, not the Bibi part. You know, I wish it was somebody else that was doing it. But, but from an execution standpoint, and they've been in a moment where they've been attacked by Iranian proxies for a long time now on all sides and Hezbollahs Weakened. And they. They began this effort within Iran pretty effectively, you have to admit, pretty impressively took out a lot of the Iranian leaders, and, I don't know, like, maybe this is an opportunity finally for them to disable something that's been a threat in the region. Is that crazy? What's crazy about that idea?
- [07:13]
Tim Miller
I want to meet you where you are and give what I believe to be the most generous, you know, reason for why Israel is doing this. Because it is not that, you know, they had some information that Iran was about to weaponize, you know, a nuclear weapon. I mean, Bibi's kind of had different versions of that that he said on television, but it's not clear even what their. Their argument is.
- [07:36]
Ben Rhodes
I'm not even in my generous acceptance of their plan. I'm not sold on that as the rationale.
- [07:41]
Tim Miller
The generous argument, I think, would be that Iran is particularly vulnerable right now, that they have essentially decimated for the time being at least, Hezbollah. The U.S. frankly, under Biden, took a lot of shots at those proxy groups and the militias in places like Iraq. Assad is gone in Syria.
- [08:01]
Ben Rhodes
Russia's busy.
- [08:02]
Tim Miller
Russia is busy. Absolutely. And the shots that Israel took at Iran, you know, a few months ago, were kind of designed to get rid of some of their defenses and kind of soften them up for this, you know. And so I think the generous view is. Is less about there's anything materially different the Iranian nuclear program than it is. Like, hey, this is the best chance that we've had, so let's take it. I still think it's a bad idea for several reasons. The first is purely from a nuclear program standpoint. You cannot bomb a nuclear program out of existence. And when we looked at these scenarios in the Obama years, you know, even blowing up these facilities, you kind of set it back a year, and then they could just dig deep underground and decide, hey, now that we know that we're going to get bombed without a nuclear weapon, we're just going to take this whole thing covert. We're not going to make a deal, and we're going to go underground. That's one scenario you worry about. They might not do that. They could come out and put their hands up. But even then, I don't know that I trust that, you know, because the lesson they've learned is like, let's go underground and get this bomb. That's the first one. The second one is wars of this scale. I mean, Iran is a country of 90 million people, and they're going after the Iranians.
- [09:14]
Ben Rhodes
We Famously learned that on the Tucker Carlson show last night. We're going to get to that.
- [09:17]
Tim Miller
Tucker, I think said 92. But yeah, I mean, he's got a point. This is a big ass country, right, and a really important country. And they're kind of going after the Iranian leadership like they're Hezbollah. Like, you know, we're just picking these guys off. This is a state. I hate the Iranian government, right? But decapitating a state is different than decapitating a terrorist organization. Who is going to run Iraq? This is the same question that people failed to ask about Iraq and Afghanistan and that I in the Obama, the.
- [09:43]
Ben Rhodes
George Washington of Iran is going to run Iran. Ben, come on.
- [09:46]
Tim Miller
Well, that's the thing. I failed asking about Libya. So I want to, I want to join myself as people that didn't get this right. Well, that's the thing, Tim. I saw like someone, I think was Newt Gingrich tweeting, what Iran needs now is a secular, moderate, inclusive, democratic government. I'm like, hey, yeah, sure, that's what we all need. We need that in the United States, by the way. But so I worry that they're going to do the regime change, that Bibi's not going to stop. He hates these guys. Trump was threatening to kill the Supreme Leader. And that's when I'm like, this is not going to end well. Because we've seen where regime change imposed from the outside goes. It goes into failed states or civil wars or chaos. You get drawn in. So it's less that Iran is going to defeat Israel with ballistic missiles and more like the catastrophic success that could happen if there's regime change could basically be in a country that is bigger than Iraq. That really is important. It has a lot of oil and gas. So Russia, other countries are going to have interests there. China, the Gulf states. That is unsettling. And then the last thing I just say, Tim, is that, and this is where I may be like a lefty, I just think war to solve problems when there are alternatives that still need to be tested is just, is wrong. You know, there are civilians being killed in both Iran and Israel. There's no international law that says you can just go bomb a country, decapitate its leadership. I still believe in a world in which, you know, and I guess I'm an old fashioned guy that way. It's better to not normalize that. Right? Because we're normalizing a lot of military force in the last couple of years. And Russia and China and others, we wouldn't like it if they did it. So, you know, I think that we're going to miss those norms when they're gone.
- [11:22]
Ben Rhodes
I love how you just casually slipped into that answer, like Trump threatening to assassinate the Ayatollah. Like, that's something that's happening.
- [11:28]
Tim Miller
That happened.
- [11:29]
Ben Rhodes
Trump just bleeding out. Like random assassination threats. The peace candidate. Okay, I want to push back on you one more time and then only into the Trump side of this because I'm, like, negatively polarized on basically all Middle east policy opinions. Right. So if you talk to me about Newt Greengrich, I'm like, that's obviously stupid. But then I hear the other side and I'm like, that seems stupid to, you know. And I think that while the regime change notion, which Bill Kristol did float on Monday to the consternation of some of our listeners, I hear you, like, obviously was an utter disaster. And that's basically accepted across the board, minus a couple of random descendants of Paul Wolfowitz at this point. The regime change effort in the Middle east was a failure. I hear that. But from just the perspective of the Israeli people, the appeasement with Iran strategy also didn't work. I mean, the deal, the jcpoa kind of led to them, the Iranians being a little bit more flexible financially and otherwise, to support these proxies. The ballistic missile deal expired two years ago, and they've been getting ballistic missiles coming at them. And so I think you could understand their view that, like, I don't know, dealing with the mullahs wasn't really any better. Like, that was a negative outcome for the Israeli people, at least over the last little bit. And prospectively.
- [12:48]
Tim Miller
I would make two points here rather than kind of debate everything about the jcpoa. Sure. The two points I'd make is, first of all, I don't think we really, we tested that proper position for two, three years. I mean, one of the problems we have in this country is an inability to sustain anything. Right. And so I think it was working, at least on the nuclear side while it was implemented. Trump was out of there by 2018. That's three years in. I think that was working to protect the Israeli people from the threat of the nuclear program. It wasn't addressing the ballistic missiles and the proxies. It wasn't intended to. You know, that was going to require other strategies and other work. But the first point is, I love these things that we started in Obama. I get this about Cuba, too. Like, well, it didn't work. We stayed for two years. You got to try these things. Out for longer. And actually the fact that we used to say back in the JCPA arguments that it's either a diplomatic settlement or a war, and we were called mean. How dare you say that the alternative is war. Now we're seeing that that's the alternative. But the second point I'd make about Israel, Tim, is that they've lived with a huge amount. I understand what you're saying about the enormous amount of risk that they live with from Hezbollah, from Iranian proxies, but they were also, I think, relative to like their, their history going through a pretty successful period. I mean, the economy was booming in Israel, security was, I mean, Netanyahu was prime minister and he was bragging about the security he'd brought to Israel. Yes, you had not eliminated all risk to the Israeli citizenry by any measure, but this proxy war between Iran and Israel has been going on for decades. October 7th is obviously a whole other conversation. But that was after, by the way, the jcpoa. So if we're just talking about the period of the jcpoa, I'm not sure that was a period of huge insecurity for the Israeli people relative to other periods.
- [14:37]
Ben Rhodes
I think the hawks would say, well, I mean, and I'd like to hear you give your take on the Gaza situation too, because it's related to all this. But like, Hamas is dismantled, Hezbollah dismantled Iran weekend. I don't, you know, you don't like to hand it to Bibi on anything. And this is, you know, maybe less about Bibi, but like, that's not nothing.
- [14:55]
Tim Miller
The two problems ever that are, one, we judge everything in these short term, you know, news cycles. I think five, ten years from now, the way that Bibi is doing this, people will see that it has been incredibly damaging to Israel, to its international standing, to its ability to have any kind of lasting peace based on trust with its neighbors. But secondly, I just think this scale of violence is wrong and I actually think it does something to a society. It's connected to what's happening here in some ways in the sense of it is not good for a country to do what Israel is currently doing in Gaza. Like, I actually believe that, you know, maybe it's because I've been living in California too long, but you absorb what you're doing, you know, and so you're.
- [15:36]
Ben Rhodes
Absorbing the, like psilocybin, for example, and starting to.
- [15:40]
Tim Miller
Well, let's, we're dancing around that. But the, the point is that they're rationalizing like mass killing on a scale in Gaza that, that I'VE never like I can't remember happening in the 21st century. Right. And that's not good for a country, you know, even if you can say you racked up a win against Hamas, doing it in that manner, I don't think is good for Israel, the health of that society, you know, and it's moving them further and further to the right, it's moving their politics to the far right. And so one of. I think the problem with hawkish foreign policy people is that they in the same way, by the way, that I think the war on terror did something a little weird to our politics and led to Trump in some ways, like when you kind of normalize permanent war and extraordinary authorities in the executives hands. I think the erosion of Israeli democracy is not unrelated to their foreign policy. And I think some of the hawkish foreign policy people try to separate it. Well, I don't like what BB does at home, but man, I love that pager operation. Maybe those things are connected, you know.
- [16:43]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I mentioned that yesterday. I mean I'm kind of like giving a Steelman argument to you because I'm like, I'm genuinely torn on all this and I just, I do think it's hard to like the middle distance, it's like hard to see like what the fit, you know. And I said this yesterday, I was like, have we created the next AI Bin Laden? You know, through all this? Like it's, it's exactly. It's hard to know. I do need to though, just to. Just to make sure everybody's clear about the perspective they're getting. There is a report that goes around periodically about how your nickname was Hamas Rhodes in the White House. Is that true? Is that accurate? Are you representing Hamas right now and making these arguments?
- [17:16]
Tim Miller
Here's the funny thing is that usually when people are dunking on me about that, they act like that was something that was discovered when it's a story that I wrote in my memoir, which is Rahm Emanuel nicknamed me Hamas. I don't want to overstate it. It was for a few week period when I was. There was some something going on and I was seen as pro Palestinian and it was funny and horrible at the same time. But it was Rahm Emanuel, right? This is how he is. And he would say things like Hamas over here is going to make it impossible for my kid to get a fucking bar mitzvah in Israel. I mean it was that kind of tone. It wasn't literally I supported Hamas or even that he thought I actually supported them.
- [17:56]
Ben Rhodes
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- [19:34]
Tim Miller
But I often toggle between Michael Scheer and Putin.
- [19:37]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, he said Scheer was asking about the criticism from Tucker and from Bannon at all. And Trump was basically like America first is whatever I say it is. And to me, I think, I hate to hand it to him, I think that's kind of right. I don't know. I think that there is an interesting intellectual thing, Twitter battle going on between the Tuckerists and whatever the Mitch McConnell crowd or however you want to put it. But in the end, doesn't Trump's control of the party more personality based or do you think that there's something very a deep potential fissure here? What do you think?
- [20:11]
Tim Miller
I think there's a deep fissure because essentially what is being revealed is that There are still people that have actual differing views within the MAGA coalition. And, you know, you know, Tim better than anybody. Bulwark like, these have long been fissures in the Republican Party dating back to Pre World War II. Right. There's always been a kind of isolationist strain of the Republican Party with some ugly elements and then some just kind of sincere isolationist elements. And there's always been a more, you know, whatever label we want to fix to it, but essentially expansionist or interventionist or you call it neoconservative wing of the party. Reagan actually pretty expertly was able to bind them together in his own personality.
- [20:59]
Ben Rhodes
And Reagan was probably actually less pro Israel than Biden, though you never would have known it listening to Tom Cotton and them talk during the Biden years.
- [21:07]
Tim Miller
Totally. Yeah, totally. I mean, Reagan, we can, you know, I mean, Reagan, Menachem Bacon didn't. Let's just say they didn't get along. And so Trump basically bound them together by force of personality, but he never really resolved the differences. He kind of always wanted it both ways. So he would talk a lot about ending permanent wars and being an anti war guy, but then he would also brag about dropping the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan or getting rid of, you know, Obama's civilian casualty, you know, standards for going after certain ISIS targets. He kind of wanted to be a tough guy and being BB's, you know, best buddy until he wasn't. But, like, he wanted to be the kind of tough guy that could appeal to a certain kind of hawkish vibe, even if he didn't sign on to the whole foreign policy while essentially still being this isolationist America first or Pat Buchanan Republican. And I think what we're seeing is whether it's Lindsey Graham or Tucker Carlson Like R.C. bannon, these people actually believe their views. You know, now the Trump voter is going to think that whatever Trump says is as MAGA is America first, but not the members of Congress and the kind of leading. I hesitate to call them thinkers, but talkers in the party.
- [22:16]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I guess we have to be thinkers. Well, while we're doing Tucker, just to show a little bit from this debate, by the time this podcast is out, I think the whole Tucker interview with Ted Cruz will be out. But we did get to see two little delicious clips. I picked my favorite, which I want to share with you for a second. And I'm noting that, boy, there are a lot of resistance people I'm following who are having strange new respect for Tucker.
- [22:39]
Tim Miller
Who do I root for here?
- [22:39]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, Including Tommy, but let's listen to it. How many people live in Iran, by the way?
- [22:45]
Richard Karn
I don't know the population.
- [22:46]
Tim Miller
At all? No, I don't know the population. You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple? How many people living around 92 million. Okay.
- [22:57]
Richard Karn
Yeah.
- [22:57]
Tim Miller
How could you not know that?
- [23:00]
Richard Karn
I. I don't sit around memorizing population tables.
- [23:02]
Ben Rhodes
Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government.
- [23:06]
Richard Karn
Why is it relevant? Whether it's 90 million or 80 million.
- [23:09]
Tim Miller
Or 100 million, why is it.
- [23:10]
Ben Rhodes
Because if you don't know anything about the country.
- [23:12]
Richard Karn
I didn't say I don't know anything about.
- [23:13]
Tim Miller
Okay.
- [23:13]
Ben Rhodes
What's the ethn of Iran? They are Persians, predominantly Shia.
- [23:19]
Tim Miller
Okay.
- [23:21]
Ben Rhodes
You don't know anything about Iran.
- [23:22]
Tim Miller
So. Okay.
- [23:23]
Richard Karn
I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on a ranch.
- [23:26]
Tim Miller
You're a senator who's calling. You're the one who knows anything about the country.
- [23:31]
Ben Rhodes
You're a senator that's calling for the overthrow of the government. You don't know anything about the country. I mean, not bad.
- [23:37]
Tim Miller
I mean, he's got a point. I mean, that's almost uncomfortable to listen to. Like, even though I don't have a. I don't have any empathy that I can find in my body for Ted Cruz, but it's such a roasting.
- [23:48]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, it's kind of ironic. It's like the metaphor I always use in these sort of situations. It's like the Iran Iraq War. You don't know who to root for. And here it's like the Iran Iraq War, but they're arguing about Iran.
- [23:58]
Tim Miller
Exactly. I will say, you know, people said this after the Iraq war, like, people didn't even know the difference between Sunnis and Shias. You know, to swerve for a second. My favorite novel is the names by Don DeLillo. And there's a guy makes a speech in there about how Americans learn about countries when we're in some, like, crisis with them and start clipping out recipes and memorizing the religion of the country. There's something to that. Right. And Ted Cruz is that guy, I think I'd say about Tucker. He's ideologically consistent and he's actually so dovish or whatever word you want to fix to it isolationist, that it encompasses things that I agree with. Like that and things I disagree with, like not wanting to support Ukraine. Right. And this is where you're going to get to my Bill Kristol adjacency. But, but essentially, I Give him credit for being ideologically consistent. He applies it totally across the board. You know, the same logic that would lead him to not want to go to war in Iran leads him to not want to even provide weapons to a country that's fighting for its survival against Russia. Right. But that's a real wing of the Republican Party, and it wasn't invented by Tucker or Donald Trump. Right. I mean, it goes way, way back. I mean, it's actually what the Republican Party used to be, and I think.
- [25:07]
Ben Rhodes
It'S where it's going. I mean, it's the most potent part of the Republican Party, of the base, for sure. And I just. I think that Trump is within the Republican base, too. Right. And so Trump actually navigates it quite well, I think. I think that the base of the party, like, instinctually doesn't want to do foreign wars, doesn't care about these people in other places. There's a little bit of a racism element in it. And financial, like, we shouldn't spend money. I don't care about the sand people. Right. Like, you hear all that when you talk to talk to Republican voters. But. And also, too, they want the US to be great and strong and tough and Hulk Hogan. Right. And so, like, Trump navigates that balance a little bit better than Tucker, I think. But, like, that's kind of where it's going.
- [25:48]
Tim Miller
It's a really important debate for the future of the Republican Party in a lot of ways, because this debate has, you know, you could argue, like, shaped major aspects of the last century. Right. You know, I mean, FDR had to kind of quash the isolationists to get Lend Lease passed, you know, and then we kind of veered from, like, who lost China? Republicans, which would, you know, like, find a home in the Weekly Standard later. Right. To the kind of McCarthyite paranoid. You know, we're anti communist, but we're focused within, you know, we're focused on inside this country to bury Goldwater hawkishness to, you know, business types who want to just, like, keep the lid on things abroad, but don't want to necessarily stir it up. I mean, we could keep this going, but the point is that where the Republican Party lands on this and Reagan, what he did is he could take the evangelicals and pull them into a coalition with, like, the hawks and obviously bring in the kind of business community interests. And there's your modern Republican Party. Right.
- [26:50]
Ben Rhodes
And only George H.W. bush found the Goldilocks. Temperature of the soup.
- [26:55]
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, that's the thing. I mean, it was those three. Three Planks, Right. That, like, that was so potent electorally, you know, but Trump managed to evict the hawks while expanding out enough from the other parts to have a winning coalition, Whether that's durable or not is. Is hugely consequential. And by the way, it's remade my party. Like, I'm probably less in the mainstream of my own party because I think my party's gotten more hawkish under Trump because we've kind of welcomed in, you know, these exiles.
- [27:23]
Ben Rhodes
It's interesting. I get my backup. People talk about this. I get my backup when it is said, you know, like, oh, we went too far trying to appeal to Liz Cheney. And, like, my response to that is always like, well, I don't know. Liz Cheney actually wanted, cared about winning and so volunteered her time. And so maybe if, like, the isolationist leftists, like, had spent more time wanting to attack Trump and less time wanting to attack Kamala, maybe they would have been more visible in the campaign. I don't know. You know, so I get a little annoyed by that. But, like, strategically, do you think that it has hurt the Democrats to, you know, kind of tack a little bit away from you towards this, whatever you want to call it, towards the more, you know, interventionist elements of the coalition?
- [28:05]
Tim Miller
I think so, and I expect we disagree about that. But essentially, I actually don't know.
- [28:09]
Ben Rhodes
I'm. I mean, I know what I wish that they would do policy wise, but, like, politically, I think. I don't. I don't know that. Actually, my instinct is that it didn't really matter at all. But I'm open to being wrong about that.
- [28:19]
Tim Miller
I don't claim to know, but. But. But here's what I think is likely, which is that I want us to have a big tent, right? So I want, you know, Liz Cheney in the tent. That's the only way you can defeat authoritarianism. Anyway. The question is, how much do you kind of lean into it? Right. So, you know, is she your, like, leading surrogate at the end? And I actually think that Democrats are often solving the wrong problem on national security. The argument I would make is that Democrats kind of got beaten really bad in 2002 and 2004 on this issue and have been in a kind of permanent defensive crouch ever since. And we still think that it's like a big coup that we can, like, trot out, like, a Cheney. Tim, like, do you remember at the Democratic Convention when everybody thought the special guests on the last night was gonna be, like, Beyonce. Yeah.
- [29:04]
Ben Rhodes
And it was Leon Panetta, and it.
- [29:05]
Tim Miller
Turned out it was like Leon Panetta. It was a hawkish Democratic Secretary of Defense. And I think that misreads the electorate. I think the electorate actually doesn't want to see national security validation associated with the war on terror era. I mean, I'll say this, every candidate except Joe Biden since 2004 has run as an anti war candidate. Like, Barack Obama's Entire campaign in 2008 was against Hillary Clinton having voted for the Iraq war. That's how he got elected president. Right.
- [29:34]
Ben Rhodes
I was just talking to somebody yesterday. I was like, had Hillary voted against the Iraq war? Probably Hillary wins the 08 primary. Whole the universe is different from, from there. Maybe Trump is a Democratic president. Like, yeah, anything.
- [29:47]
Tim Miller
I certainly don't have a podcast. Yeah, no, I'm kidding. But like, but as someone who's on the inside, there's no way Obama wins that without that Iraq war vote. Right? So you have Obama twice and he's running against wars and he's willing to take heat for not getting into certain wars. Then you have Trump Biden in this kind of bizarre election where I don't think he would have won without Covid. And he wasn't running as like a kind of war guy either, nor was he anti war. The point is that the Democrats are worried about the wrong politics on these issues. They seem to be stuck in this permanent 2002 midterm election, you know, and I, I wish they wouldn't do that. I wish that, like, now I don't understand why the Democrats aren't saying, hey, Donald Trump said he would end all three of these wars. You know, Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, they're all getting worse and we should not go to war in Iran. Bibi was wrong to bomb Iran. Like, it's right there. It's a 6018 issue based on the bugout poll I saw. And Democrats are still afraid to go there. And they think, you know, they don't want to cross Bibi or they don't want to look weak or, or maybe this will work out okay. And then they'll, they'll say we were wrong. You don't see any of that. You know, like, one thing I'll say about Republicans is that they're not afraid to take positions in the same way the Democrats are on this stuff.
- [31:03]
Ben Rhodes
Neocon listeners and Sarah Longwell, press The fast forward 15 seconds button really quick. Yeah, I think that's right. Political analysis, unfortunately for us, for my people, I think that my brand association with Zbiotics is seeming pretty strong these days. I feel like Every time I go out to the bar, somebody comes up to me and asks me if I took my Zebiotics Probiotic pre alcohol drink. And I gotta tell you, sometimes it's yes, I'm. I'm working on it. Sometimes, like last night I went to see Modest Mouse at the Orpheum here in New Orleans. Shout out to Margaret McMullen and other folks I saw out there. And I kind of wasn't familiar with Modest Mouse's game, it turns out. And I was planning on, you know, just kind of keeping it chill. Ended up having three white claws. Probably should have done. Zebiotics. Zebiotics Free Alcohol Probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's that byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow. So summer's here, which means more opportunities to celebrate the warm weather before that backyard barbecue, brew glass of rose watching the sunset at the beach, or cocktail by the campfire. Don't forget your Zebiotics pre alcohol drink one before drinking and wake up feeling great and ready to take on the next day and all that summer has to offer. Go to zebiotics.com thebullwork to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use the bulwark at checkout. Zebiotics is backed with 100 money back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com thebullwork and use the code thebullwerk at checkout for 15% off Tulsi. I just have to talk to you about Tulsi and then I'll get into some other Trump stuff. Not foreign policy related. There's a political article last night that's so delicious. There's this creepy video and I don't know if I put it on the podcast. I know me and Sam talked about it on YouTube people can check out. Tulsi did this creepy, like 3 minute long video about the specter of nuclear war. Yes, and I thought it was Russian propaganda, but it turns out maybe it was. She was trying to do Internal propaganda against the hawks within the administration. I just don't know. Trump got pissed about it, apparently, according to the political report, started yelling at her, and then he got pissed again because a reporter asked him about her assessment. His Director of National Intelligence assessment that Iran's not close to a nuclear weapon, actually.
- [33:33]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [33:34]
Ben Rhodes
During a gaggle. I wonder what you make about of all that.
- [33:37]
Tim Miller
Well, first of all, that video, when I'm in, like, you know, whatever gulag they're going to send us to, Tim, if I'm in a white padded room, I think they'll just be piping that video in and I'll be, like, huddled in the corner, like, trying to hide from the sound of it because it's that weird and creepy.
- [33:50]
Ben Rhodes
I just watched the Mauritanian, so I'm up to speed on.
- [33:53]
Tim Miller
Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, exactly. So I shouldn't even laugh about it. I think she. She's simultaneously of the, you know, isolationist or dovish wing, but she's also just a very weird person. Like. Like that video, I think, was more eccentric because of it's. It's just strangeness. And also, like, it seemed like she just learned that Hiroshima happened or something, because she's describing Hiroshima as if, like a kindergartner.
- [34:20]
Ben Rhodes
It felt like it was like a PSA for a kindergartener.
- [34:23]
Tim Miller
Exactly. And what we don't know behind the scenes it can't see is just, how weird is it to have Tulsi in your tent versus how much is this? Now, what I will say that is relevant to the broader discussion is Tulsi is also, like Tucker, a true believer in this stuff. So if Trump thought that Tulsi at DNI would just give him the information he wanted, well, that might be what's not happening. And I actually, as someone who's warned about Tulsi a lot, I was more concerned about her, the weirdness of her views and her giving Trump what he wanted on Russia.
- [34:55]
Ben Rhodes
Right.
- [34:56]
Tim Miller
You know, like.
- [34:56]
Ben Rhodes
Like the bad side that she. That she would spin up fake stuff on behalf of Russia rather than not give him what he wanted on Iran.
- [35:02]
Tim Miller
Exactly. So it didn't kind of occur to me to be like, well, actually, Tulsi, you know, really does believe this stuff. I've talked to Tulsi the way back when, and. And she's just not going to give him what he wants in Iran. By the way, this is not a new thing. I mean, the George W. Bush administration famously, and the neocon listeners will are already arguing with the podcast, but they've.
- [35:22]
Ben Rhodes
Turned it off by now.
- [35:23]
Tim Miller
Yeah. In 2007, remember, the Bush administration came out with this national intelligence estimate that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program. In 2003, the. The effort to weaponize their nuclear program. And the neocons went nuts then saying that was the wrong assessment. But as far as I know, the U.S. intelligence community has not changed its assessment since that NIE in 2007. That, that like they're. Yes, they're people should be get the difference here. It's one thing to have a nuclear program when you get fuel. It's another thing to kind of do the work to weaponize that fuel and put it on a warhead. And so Tulsi is not. She's just representing what has been the view of the US intelligence community since 2007. But I think what we're learning is unlike, you know, I have no doubt that Dan Bongino and Cash Patel are gonna give Trump exactly the answers he wants to every question. I don't think Tulsi is. And that might be part of what's bothering him.
- [36:14]
Ben Rhodes
I wanna talk about some domestic stuff and our creeping authoritarianism here at home. The arrest in New York, where you grew up, you don't live there anymore, you're a West coast man.
- [36:23]
Tim Miller
Where I am though, I'm in New York right now.
- [36:25]
Ben Rhodes
This video of ICE arresting Brad Lander is running from is a comptroller running for mayor of New York. And it's like there's a man in like an evil spider man mask. Like you can't see any part of his face, like grabbing him and he's being pulled and manhandled and handcuffed and he's just. All he's asking for is a warrant to demonstrate that they can arrest this constituent, I guess who had shown up to ICE court was not ducking the immigration police, our new federal immigration police. Obviously this comes on the heels what we saw with Padilla, et cetera. What's your threat level right now? What'd you make of that?
- [37:03]
Tim Miller
It's really high. And I gotta say, if I had to vote here, I'm kind of a Brad Lander. You know, I love a lost cause progressive. You know, like he might be your number one. I think he'd be my number one.
- [37:13]
Ben Rhodes
And I'm gonna do the lost cause Neo lib people asked me. I didn't say on the zoron pod who I would put number one. It's Zellner Myri. So we're both will both to do our lost cause Canada. Yes, we can do A trade right now, after he got arrested. I like him. We can cross indoors.
- [37:27]
Tim Miller
My threat level is very high. I mean, look, I always think it's a useful exercise to step back and be like, if someone told you a few years ago that the Marines would be in the streets of Los Angeles and that plainclothes goons would be like tackling Democratic politicians and handcuffing them, we'd be like, what the fuck is. You know, that's crazy. The degree of normalization worries me because honestly, like, as you know, someone who's looked at authoritarianism in other countries, like, like, we often hold up Hungary as a scary place where we have an illiberal leader because he's kind of run the playbook of consolidating kind of corrupt power over huge chunks of society. They don't have plainclothes dudes wrestling opposition politicians on the ground, handcuffing them while deploying the Hungarian military in the streets of cities. We're past them on the spectrum here. We're past Hungary, headed to Turkey. And I think we kind of can't get our minds around that as Americans. And we still see these as eccentric things that are happening when they're clearly not eccentric. Like, this is a systematic effort to remake the use of violence in this country.
- [38:34]
Ben Rhodes
So this is the point I made about Padilla. I was like, you know, in a different world, you could have made the case that this was just a couple of agents who got a little hot, didn't recognize them, acted inappropriately, you know, and they'll be reprimanded or whatever. And even Corey Lewandowski at the moment was like, guys, let's dial it back a little bit. Like, that's the more positive spin of that situation. It's impossible to believe that spin in the context of everything else that's happening with the military, dhs, ICE and, you know, these other arrests.
- [39:04]
Tim Miller
Yes. And again, I also think that there's a sense that in some places, I mean, you know, in the non alarmist community that this is temporary, that, well, Trump said he's going to deport a bunch of people. And so it kind of looks bad, but it's. Someday the National Guard will go home and these ICE guys will have hit their quotas. For Stephen Miller, I don't see anything temporary about this. You know, once you kind of cross the Rubicon into like normalizing troops being deployed in the street for the political purposes of the president, once you have the authority to just arrest whoever you want and maybe deport them, maybe just harass them, intimidate them. At least with this administration, I don't see them like relinquishing that authority. You know, if anything, I see it creeping in further and further spaces. And again, that's. We have to stop seeing these things as temporary and start being like, huh? Like, what if the National Guard doesn't go home? Like, what if the ICE raids never stop? Like, what if this is just a tool of Donald Trump's power that he's. When has Donald Trump ever given up something that makes him more powerful?
- [40:11]
Ben Rhodes
I want to ask you what the political implications of all this and like, how Democrats can fight it, but you saying that. I think maybe there's a bigger conversation that should happen first. We're on cable news the other day together. You made a point that was kind of at the end of a comment that was sort of an aside, and I was like, I have a follow up on what Ben just said. Like that, you know, me or someone for my fucking bullshit or whatever. And you ended up by saying that you think there should be a real conversation about concerns that they use the Insurrection act or whatever to impact or cancel maybe. I don't remember the exact word you used. Elections coming up in the midterms. What's your level of worry about that? Because it was a rare moment where somebody said something where I was like, huh. I'm on the less alarmist side of that one. And I'm curious why then went there.
- [40:57]
Tim Miller
I don't think it's likely at all. I think elections are the most complicated piece in some ways to mess with because they're administered by states and it's this kind of labyrinth of, you know, bureaucracy in a good way in this case. But the two things I'd say are, one, if they were to do something to mess with either the midterms or, you know, the next election, it would be through the doorway of national security type authorities, whether under the Insurrection act or under some other declaration of a national emergency, which they've gotten very comfortable declaring. Right? I mean, they've declared a national emergency at the border and that's justified all this other stuff that they're currently doing. Because the scenario I'd give you, Tim, is that what if they allow the midterm elections to go forward, but then afterwards, after they lose, they say, well, there's mass fraud. And so we don't think that this new Congress should be seated. Dan Bongino and Cash Patel go out and say, yes, there's fraud and we're going to launch all these investigations of it. Mike Johnson doesn't have to necessarily seat the new Congress. And then the military is kind of in the streets quashing the protests. And then the protest of the election are the basis for declaring some national emergency. Right.
- [42:11]
Ben Rhodes
Some bulwark darkness here that feels possible.
- [42:16]
Tim Miller
If not plausible to me. You know, like. And again, yeah.
- [42:20]
Ben Rhodes
Not zero percent. I'm not saying maybe it doesn't feel 51% that's going to happen, but it doesn't. It's not zero.
- [42:25]
Tim Miller
It's an uncomfortably high percent. And the reason these protests have been so important is the more the use of the military against protest is normalized, the more possible the scenario I just said becomes. Because they've deployed the military in la, where I lived, because of protests that we're not violent. And if that becomes normal, then all of a sudden, by the time they do that in a couple years, if they do it, the frog will be dead in the water, to use an off abused metaphor.
- [43:00]
Ben Rhodes
Okay. That's going to keep some people up at night with some night sweats. Let's assume that outcome doesn't come to pass. We have relatively normal elections then within that construct. Talk about the Democratic response to this. Yeah, yeah, that picture. I'm just. I'm stuck. Of that picture of Lander getting manhandled with the dude that you cannot even see his eyeballs. Like, you know, his. He's so masked. Right. It's not like he's wearing a Covid mask and he's got the full like, I'm robbing a bank mask on, you know, And I think that this could be something that the Democrats could get traction on and should. And there's another class of folks out there in the strategy class are like, focus on the Medicaid cuts or whatever. This is a loser for Democrats. I mean, not. Not don't talk about it, but de. Emphasize it. Where do you fall on that question?
- [43:49]
Tim Miller
I fall on the, like, take this on and emphasize it. I hate this idea. When you see Democrats online being like, you know, Trump is distracting you. He's going to war to distract you from his tax bill or something. No, no. Trump is just doing a bunch of different things.
- [44:04]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, right.
- [44:05]
Tim Miller
That he cares about. We can do the same. Like, I don't believe that if everybody's only talking about, you know, tax giveaways to billionaires, that somehow we can't deliver that message. In fact, actually, I would argue that if all we do is robotically talk about the big, beautiful bill, we'll look political, we'll look like we're a bunch of political consultants who don't believe anything. I think there's genuine reasons to do what Brad Lander did. I think I said this on the same segment you were referring to earlier. I know in my familiarity with the Republican coalition there is a genuine anti government black helicopter kind of crowd.
- [44:42]
Ben Rhodes
Go after the Don't Tread on Me crowd.
- [44:44]
Tim Miller
Yes, go after those guys. You want to find a new way to have conversations with people the Democratic Party haven't had conversations with in a while. This is big government on steroids. This is the black helicopters actually landing in your community. Right. And so I think you can make a stand on principle.
- [44:57]
Ben Rhodes
I'm going to reach the Joe Rogan, Theo Vaughn listener. Like, there's a percentage of them, I think that are, there's a percentage of them that probably like the masked man going after the libs they hate. But I think that I, I am pretty confident that there's also a percentage of them that are like, whoa, yeah, this is, this is weird. I don't like this. I don't want agents coming to my door.
- [45:18]
Tim Miller
I think that's right. I think that's right. You know, and, and I think that there's also people, you know, and it's, this is anecdotal so far. So I don't want to make too much of one anecdote or two anecdotes, but there are definitely people that did not think that deportations were going to be like the waitress in the local diner who's been there for 20 years or the kid on my kid's soccer team. You know, they genuinely believed Trump that the deportations were going to be these violent criminals.
- [45:45]
Ben Rhodes
I talked to Van Lathan about this last night. There's that boxer is from SoCal, your adopted area, Ryan Garcia, who's a big Trumper, who's his Mexican heritage, who is, who like, has been speaking out.
- [45:56]
Tim Miller
And I think that, look, the border stuff, you can still be for like a totally secured border. Like, this is so evidently going beyond that. This has nothing to do with the border, you know.
- [46:08]
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- [48:10]
Ben Rhodes
Get your $0.02 on the assassinations in Minnesota or the assassination the assassination attempt. Kind of the response from the Right about that. I mean there are just so many ways to go about it. Like I'm curious your thoughts on the domestic terror side, but also this disinformation and these folks living in this alternate reality where they convince themselves that it's leftists and that might justify more violence. I just, I'd like to hear you Cook on that for a couple minutes.
- [48:38]
Tim Miller
Yeah, man. This is the scariest stuff that's happening, right? I mean, this is when, you know, when you have political violence becoming normal again, whether it's like, the troops in the streets or whether it's the vigilante guy in Minnesota. You just don't know how you. You put that Pandora, you know, back in the box. And I'll be honest, like, I don't know what to do about this because, okay, the national security guy in me is like, well, we'd be treating this like a radicalization problem if a Muslim did this. You know, we'd be, you know, we. We'd essentially have a task force to study online radicalization and set up some goons at the DHS to hunt over laptops and figure out what's happening. You cannot, you know, like, that's obviously not going to happen with the Trump administration. And these people are so stuck in the cycle of their information that the United States center probably believes the crazy shit that Mike Lee put out there. I guess what I'd say is the answer to me, is not to kind of make fun of it online, which is what people sometimes do. It's to take it deadly seriously and to just relentlessly try to communicate the truth of things. And the other thing I've learned about this, Tim, from dealing with Russian disinformation is the Russians were very well aware that first movers win the information war. And so my, My favorite anecdote of this was, when that plane was shot down, MH17 over Ukraine during the Obama administration, the Russians immediately put out all these conspiracy theories. You know, the Ukrainians shot it down, the Americans shot it down like it's a crash, when clearly their guys had shot this plane down. By the time the Dutch investigation was done, like, two years later, that determined that, like, anybody who searched online found just a flood of Russian information. We are too slow to go out and be like, hey, this guy was a Trump supporter.
- [50:30]
Ben Rhodes
You know, this is an unpopular but important point in the democracy space. There's a lot of people that's like, it's important for us to be extremely accurate and to get things right and to push back, you know, And I'm not pushing for inaccuracy, but I kind of made a similar provocative point at one of these dumb panels that you do recently where I was like, I don't know, maybe our side needs people that are pushing out shit that is a little bit reckless immediately to combat it, and maybe that's wrong. I don't know, but that's why I.
- [50:57]
Tim Miller
Say I don't know. But I want to at least let's surface this point. Because while they're putting out this guy was a socialist, why can't Tim Waltz or somebody like that be like, hey, this guy, you know, whatever, the best. He posted all this Trump stuff or he, he voted for Trump or he.
- [51:12]
Ben Rhodes
Gave this anti gay speech in Africa.
- [51:14]
Tim Miller
Yeah, he gave this anti gay, anti trans speech. I mean, first of all, this guy is like weirdly made in a laboratory for 2025America. Right? Like private security contractor slash evangelist hates trans people. He's posted West Bank, Gaza, everything was in this guy's online footprint. But why not just be like, beat Mike Lee to the punch here and be like, hey, we're still going to gather the facts, we're still going to put out the full information. And I know all the compromises is prosecution. Okay. There's complexity here. I acknowledge that. I do know that one of the reasons why we constantly lose, you know, based on my experience with Russia information wars, is it's speed wins, not truth or even volume or efficacy.
- [51:55]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. The context I was doing this and now I remember was that plane crash. It was the Reagan plane crash when they immediately were out there saying like, DEI was a black woman and that was the reason why. And I was like, why? You know, couldn't people on our side immediately go like, Sean Duffy's fault. Look at it. He's only in there for three days and there's already plane crashing. We're running out of time. So I don't want to belabor the point of the book too long. And we did a full hour on it at one of these conferences, which is on YouTube. I'll put it in the show notes. So if people are intrigued by this little taster, they can go watch the whole thing. I really loved it, the book after the Fall, because it was a lot about you grappling with broadly our American mistakes, which is encompassing of the mistakes of the Obama era. And at the same time looking at the threats around the world that are increasing from China, Russia, all these little mini Trumps everywhere, and saying, God, for all of our flaws that we should address, what comes after us seems bad in every potential alternative. And that was kind of the Bill Kristal ish part of it on this. And then you also kind of talk to these people fighting resistance. So yes, anyway, give people just a quick summary of that and what the lessons are.
- [53:05]
Tim Miller
I looked at how we got here with authoritarianism in, you know, Hungary Russia, China, the US through the eyes of people who are opponents to authoritarianism. Hungarian opposition. Actually, Alexei Navalny was kind of my character in Russia, you know, the Hong Kong protest movement. And, and again, this is, I think, where the bulwark audience, even the Bill Crystal bulwark audience. I believe in liberal democracy. And when I say liberal, I mean, you know, the small L. Liberal democracy. I believe in open societies. I believe that a world order in Russia's image or China's image would be worse than the deeply flawed world order of the United states the last 80 years.
- [53:44]
Ben Rhodes
Right. It's an important point, actually, because there are people that don't agree with that on the left, actually.
- [53:49]
Tim Miller
I actually feel like it's been unraveling, obviously, and it's getting worse out there as it unravels. Right. And actually some of my criticism of what's happened in Gaza, I don't think Gaza could happen like 10 years ago. You know, part of that is actually the unraveling of the rules based order, you know, and I can even make a left wing argument for some of these things. I think the lessons that I take from that book are ultimately, and this is actually where I made. I have some overlap and some difference, I think, with the crystal wing of the podcast listenership. The overlap is I truly believe that what we do at home is the most important thing to reverberates around the world, you know, and actually this is why in the civil rights movement, you know, some of the biggest allies of the civil rights movement were people who are like, hey, if we want to win the Cold War, we got to stop being fucking hypocrites here in the United States, you know, so that was actually like a powerful argument that people brought to bear for legislative change and legal changes in this country. If you talk to Alexei Navalny, if you talk to Hungarian opposition, you talk to these Hong Kong protesters, sure, they may have wanted certain things from US Foreign policy, but I remember Navalny just telling me, like, I don't want your sanctions, I want your example. Because I've been making an argument my whole life that a democratic society produces leaders who aren't corrupt and put the interest of the people first. And fucking Trump gives a taxi driver in Moscow the immediate rebuttal. And which is basically what Putin's been saying. Putin doesn't say his system is perfect. He just says, well, everybody's system is the same, so you might as well have a strong man who hates kind of the same people that you do. Right? And so the first lesson is that who we are is in how we organize our own society. And democracy is the most important influence we can have in winning competitions abroad, winning the Cold War, or winning the next cold war or whatever we want to call it. And the other thing I take away that's hopeful because there's a lot of dark stuff I can take away about technology and how it's transformed the landscape.
- [55:52]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, there's plenty of darkness. Obviously. I wouldn't have liked the book if there was no darkness.
- [55:55]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it's super dark. So I'm just trying to give positive lessons. There's a lot of solidarity out there. I believe there are more of us being people who want that kind of world than them being the kind of strong men and the creeps. But we're not. Not wired in with each other enough. Like, you know, Steve Bannon and these guys have built, like, an actual community of solidarity across far right movements and some other people have built a solidarity across autocratic leaders, you know, and we tend to argue with each other, you know, instead of just, like, charging up the hill, you know, And I appeal to the people that piss, maybe on this podcast, like, if you spend time being mad about that, we have no shot, you know, And I apply that to myself, too. Like, I have to accept allies, because without them, you're going to get crushed. Because that's what they're counting on, is dividing their opposition.
- [56:42]
Ben Rhodes
The other thing I took from it that was positive, so we can leave it there was. And that informs my thinking on what we need to do now is all of the heroes that you were talking to who are fighting Orban and Putin and Xi, at least maybe in your book, there was very little conversation about, like, is our advocacy going to poll well with the median person in Hong Kong.
- [57:06]
Tim Miller
Yes, that's right.
- [57:08]
Ben Rhodes
That was not it.
- [57:09]
Tim Miller
No.
- [57:09]
Ben Rhodes
It's like in the face of an authoritarian threat, like resistance and opposition for the sake of. It is good because that is needed to stop it.
- [57:17]
Tim Miller
Yes.
- [57:17]
Ben Rhodes
And what you just said, like, bringing in allies from across the spectrum is good.
- [57:21]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [57:22]
Ben Rhodes
And, you know, it's not worth nitpicking over, and then we can figure out the rest when we have a stable democracy. About what? You know, the best TV ad is to run in the Columbus market, you know, and I like that mindset. I think that's an important mindset that people lose here.
- [57:38]
Tim Miller
Yeah. It is both righteous and right to say that what happened to Brad Lander is wrong and not worry about whether it's distracting us from the big, beautiful bill messaging.
- [57:47]
Ben Rhodes
All right. Final thing. You gotta go. As I said, the final segment. I did this with Tommy. Famously, George W. Bush was quizzed by a local TV reporter about world leaders, and he did not answer the questions correctly. And you and your elk mocked him about it for years. And so you will receive a world leader quiz. Now to end the podcast. Are you ready, Ben Rose?
- [58:05]
Tim Miller
Oh, shit. I didn't know this was coming. Yes, I'm ready.
- [58:06]
Ben Rhodes
Here we go. The leader of Pakistan.
- [58:09]
Tim Miller
Well, Imran Khan is in jail. The. The. The actual leadership of Pakistan is the Chief of staff of the army. And I don't know his name, actually, I don't. But that's the actual power in Pakistan.
- [58:23]
Ben Rhodes
Okay. Zardari.
- [58:25]
Tim Miller
Well, yeah, Zardari's the Prime minister. You know, he's the duly elected leader. I guess the point I'm making is that I don't think that. And Zardari is a deeply strange guy who's been around forever, but the actual leadership of the country, to me is the military and the chief of staff of the army because it's essentially a military dictatorship with a civilian front and I don't know the name of the Chief of staff of the army.
- [58:49]
Ben Rhodes
A nuanced answer. We're going to let you off the hook. This one is going to be tougher. It gets easier from here. The leader of the Chechen Republic, that was another one W did not know.
- [58:58]
Tim Miller
Razbon Kadyrov, right?
- [59:00]
Ben Rhodes
Oh, boom.
- [59:00]
Tim Miller
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Kadyrov is like a Putin's, like, biggest flunky, has a creepy beard, was fighting with mercenaries in Ukraine, is lavishly corrupt, and may have carried out the assassination of Boris Nemtsov because it was five Chechens. And so sometimes Putin does his dirty work through Khadira.
- [59:19]
Ben Rhodes
One and a half for two. You're beating Tommy right now. I'm going to. I have a European trip this summer. Two of the countries I'm going to, the leaders are easy. The third is maybe not maybe easy for you. We'll see. The Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Great name.
- [59:32]
Tim Miller
Oh, shit. Because Mark Rutte is no longer the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. That's tough.
- [59:40]
Ben Rhodes
Let's see. He was elected July 2024. He has a name that is also a name similar to a male body part.
- [59:49]
Tim Miller
I guess where I'll go for my half is that he was dependent on Gert Wilder as the far right lunatic to sustain his coalition. And Geert Wilder just pulled out. But I don't remember this person's name. I don't.
- [60:01]
Ben Rhodes
And he pulled out. In favor of Dick Schoof.
- [60:04]
Tim Miller
Is that his name?
- [60:05]
Ben Rhodes
That works. Dick Schoof.
- [60:06]
Tim Miller
I should know that because that's such a good name.
- [60:07]
Ben Rhodes
Okay, now you know, that's great. Final question. The demographic makeup of Iran. Ted Cruz was. Ted Cruz was unable to answer.
- [60:16]
Tim Miller
I don't know it on a percentile basis, it is certainly majority Persian. There's a significant Kurdish minority. There's a Baluki minority as well.
- [60:26]
Ben Rhodes
Okay, Baluki 2%, Kurdish 9%. There's actually the second minority is Azerbaijani. How about that?
- [60:34]
Tim Miller
Okay. The reason that I'd keep an eye on the Kurdish and Buluki points is that they have separatist movements for good reason because they've been treated like shit. And so in a regime change scenario, I would watch that space Baluchi separatists and Kurdish separatists. The Aziris don't, I think, have the same beef with the government. But yeah.
- [60:54]
Ben Rhodes
Running circles around Vitor on the quiz effort.
- [60:57]
Tim Miller
I didn't even. Yeah, I didn't know this segment was coming.
- [60:58]
Ben Rhodes
Okay, well, good. Well, I wasn't going to warn you.
- [61:00]
Tim Miller
I'm embarrassed.
- [61:00]
Ben Rhodes
It's important to get you. George W. Bush didn't know what's coming either. Ben Rhodes. I wanted to do China stuff. There's so much stuff to talk about. So you're going to have to come back.
- [61:07]
Tim Miller
I love it. I love to come back.
- [61:09]
Ben Rhodes
All right, brother, we'll see you soon. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. See you all then. Peace.
- [61:19]
Tim Miller
My mouth runs on tune Shouts from.
- [61:23]
Ben Rhodes
Both sides we got the lamb but.
- [61:25]
Tim Miller
That got the view well, now here's the clue. Like it rinse on to now I hope it put plenty on you well, I hope mine did too.
- [61:53]
Ben Rhodes
As life gets longer Awful feels softer.
- [61:57]
Tim Miller
Weather feels pretty soft and if it takes shit to make this then I.
- [62:05]
Ben Rhodes
Feel releasefully.
- [62:21]
Tim Miller
My mouth runs on you Shots from both sides well, now here's the clue we are fixed right where we stand. If it takes shit to make this well, I feel.
- [63:17]
Ben Rhodes
The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
- [63:27]
Richard Karn
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- [63:31]
Tim Miller
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Richard Karn
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Tim Miller
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Richard Karn
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Tim Miller
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Richard Karn
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Tim Miller
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- [63:49]
Richard Karn
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