← The Bulwark Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:00]
B
Hey everybody. Boy do we got a next level sized long jumbo pod for you today. Lot is happening in the news and we've got some great guests lined up this week so we are ready for 2026. It is Monday so we have our new segment we've been doing now on Mondays which is our mailbag. This is for Bulwark plus members only so stick around at the end of show Bullord members to get into the mailbag. People asked if I'm a secret origami head. You will hear the answer to that. Some thoughts on Hasan Piker and others. So stick around for the mailbag. If you haven't joined Bollor plus yet 2026 the time to do it. Go to thebullork.com to sign up. We'd appreciate having you. You'll get these mailbags on Mondays plus Syringet pod on Fridays and just bunch of other great stuff. So we're doing our best to put in the work to make that valuable for all of you. Would love to have you as part of the community. Up next, it is Monday so you're going to get Bill Crystal talking about Rudyard Kipling. Stick around. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday and so I've got Editor at Large Bill Christopher Still. Bill, no rest for the weary here. We got plenty to talk about today. I'm going to get to Tim Walls not running free elections, Governor of Minnesota and A bunch of other politics stuff at the end. But since we were last together, we have orchestrated a coup in Venezuela, apparently with not a whole lot of plan for what's after that. I will say the most important subtext of the story is that we taped our New Year's predictions last year. And, and my prediction was that Trump was going to actually do the Monroe Doctrine and go into Venezuela and, or Greenland. And so it took three days for me to be right. My other predictions, in case you're wondering, was that Trump would have a health event and that the Democrats wouldn't win the Senate. So a mixed bag for people.
- [03:05]
C
I want to get you bet on that first prediction on the, what's, what's that called? Polymarket. You could have been one of those guys who gets written up as having bet, you know, X amount and made $10 trillion.
- [03:15]
B
Yeah, I'm not doing any insider trading, which is a loss for me. So I have a lot to get from you. Bill, I want to use your historical perspective. You quoted Rudyard Kipling this morning. I want to hear about Panama. I was a young child when we cooed Noriega. It's really quick for me now. Dust has settled a little bit. The news came out Saturday morning when I was in New York. And there is this tendency for people to want to throat clear and, and say, well, Maduro was very bad. And then there's a counter tendency for people to criticize the throat clearing and be like, you don't need to do that. And I guess my opinion on this is that, like, it's kind of important actually to throw clear on Maduro being bad, because Maduro is awful and has caused unbelievable human suffering in Venezuela. There's this massive diaspora out of Venezuela for people fleeing him, including people that then we kidnapped and sent to foreign prisons. But Venezuela was a country that had real economic potential and vibrancy not that long ago, like in my lifetime. And what Maduro and Chavez reform has done to the country is horrible. And I'm not one of those people that does not think that matters to the US like, it does matter for countries in our hemisphere to, to not have like, massive refugee crisis and be run by totalitarian dictators. Like, we, we should have at some level, some view on that in some role. And I think that, like, saying that clearly is important to get to the next point, which is we're not doing anything to fix that. Like, this is insane. Like, what we're doing is insane. It doesn't do anything to help the Venezuelan people or our interests in any clear way. This is all a big ego, megalomaniacal plot for Donald Trump to feel like he achieved some expansion, his goals, or we'll get into it. He's upset that he didn't get the Peace Prize or for all these narcissistic reasons we're doing this. And because of Marco's random compunctions, there's no plan for making life better for the Venezuelan people. There's no clear interest for the United States to do this imminently. There's obviously no clear interest for the United States to do this imminently and illegally. None of their stated reasons even make sense, which we'll get into. And so for me, it's like saying that Maduro is bad is not to say, oh, I would have supported this if it wasn't for Trump. It's to say that, no, the US should care about, you know, the, the policy in the lives of people that, that are certainly, that are in our neighborhood. And this is not an effort to deal with that at all. And I think anybody that is celebrating because they hate Maduro, I understand, but I, I think they're misguided and, and it doesn't seem like that what's going to come from this is going to make them much happier. So that's my short take. I'm curious for you. I kind of wrote Bill, crystal cooks next and then we'll kind of go into the details.
- [06:00]
C
No, no, I'm very much in accord with you, Shortika, just to just emphasize your point about the. You call the throat clearing, but let's just say the being legitimately happy that Maduro is gone. His election was regarded as illegitimate. We and many others didn't recognize his government. Doesn't mean you automatically go in and depose him, obviously. But it was more than just us looking around and saying, well, this guy's bad, or there's an actual international effort to help the opposition, to recognize the opposition and so forth. And of course, culminating, I suppose, in Ms. Machado's getting the Nobel Peace Prize. So as foreign interventions go, I would say in, in that respect, it was reasonably justified, whether it fully is in accord with domestic law or international law, Congressional notification authorization, many, many issues. But I'd say I'm on the side of being not willing to stipulate that any attempt to get rid of him would have been a mistake by any American government. And that's A and B, incidentally. The other thing one should stipulate in the kind of throat clearing way is what I was thinking at around 10:30 Saturday morning after hearing about it when I woke up and reading up very impressive military and intelligence operation by the U.S. i'm not just saying that to be nice, but reassuring in the sense that those of us who have worried a lot that I think, not without reason, that Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gappard could really ruin or damage badly our capabilities. We still have reason to worry about that three more years, obviously, but at least as of now, it seems like that's good for the country and for the world.
- [07:22]
B
So, yeah, we're worried about people leaving or bailing competent people is somewhat reassuring.
- [07:27]
C
So I think those two.
- [07:28]
B
I do notice that Tulsi Gabbard, her last post as her doing yoga on the beach on January 1st. It doesn't seem like she's playing a big role here, but that's good if.
- [07:37]
C
They'Ve figured out a workaround there too. So. Yeah, no, I agree anyway, those are my two throat clearing points. But the fundamental point, and I'd say Incidentally, at 10:30 on Saturday morning, I was gonna watch our colleagues get on the air before Trump. And they did get on the air, actually, Mark Hurtling and Sarah and, and Sam and I thought, you know, look, if Trump gets up there and says, we've done this, we snatched him successfully. We've minimized, tried to minimize casualties. Thank God we didn't have casualties. We're going to work with, of course, the dual, the truly legitimate government, the duly elected government of democratic election to try to work out a way for them to assume power and have elections. We're going to work out a way to have a peaceful transition there. We're working with allies in the region and elsewhere, blah, blah. We're so pleased to be on the side of the winner of the Nobel Peace prize. A different US president could have made a speech at 11am Saturday morning that would have led someone like me, I don't want to speak for anyone else, to be okay, at least hopeful and sort of somewhat optimistic that this would work out okay, even with all the stipulations of how difficult these things are in many cases, and the second day is always harder than the first day, et cetera. What Trump said at 11am Was really appalling. And then for a minute afterwards, I thought to myself, well, don't overreact, Bill, because that's just Trump talking. He's Trump, he's a jackass. But still, the facts are the facts. But I now think I was right to be appalled in the sense and I think this is your main. Making this point too, that I mean, he said, the way he's explaining it, what it's forecasting for, what we're going to do and not going to do is turn something that could be at least a hopefully okay thing and maybe even a little better than that, into something that very hard to see how this doesn't end badly. It's not going to help the people of Venezuela. The first thing we do is throw overboard the democratically elected leaders whom the international community was in considerable agreement should be helped to take a path to power. Doesn't mean we have to put her in power tomorrow or put the designated. The person who ran as her kind of when she was barred from the election and won by 2 to 1. Doesn't mean we have to put her in power tomorrow. We can work out a transition that's all legit, but the idea that we literally abandoned her, start cutting deals with Maduro's vice president and the rest of his inner circle, including someone who's literally indicted in the same indictment that Maduro and his wife were indicted in. But that person, I think it's the interior minister, maybe, is there cheerfully going about oppressing people and whatever corruption they're doing. And then obviously everything else he said about where this goes next and then the oil. So he turned something that could have been, I think, okay and maybe even good into something it's just an example for the world of us, greed, us kind of willfulness, Trump's own vanity, forecasting things that we shouldn't do and I don't think we'll do. But if we don't do them, we'll also pay a price for having said we're going to do them and not do them, and really could be very bad outcomes, incidentally, on the ground there. Well, then he says we're in charge. That's other things. We're running Venezuela. We're not. I mean, that's just false. So saying something that's false less than 24 hours after a big operation like this is generally a mistake, and we're not running it. And who knows what will happen on the ground. It could be stable and bad. It could be totally unstable. There could be coup attempts within the Maduro regime. There could be street violence. Oil companies are not going to go back in, in my opinion, in two months, if we're looking at the situation we're looking at now. The whole oil thing is so wildly overstated. I don't even know how Trump got himself convinced of this. It's a tiny part of the oil market. Right. And even if they all go back in and do great, they're going to boost international oil production by 1 or 2%, which is trivial. The whole thing's utterly trivial politically, economically, not that long ride would be nice. They have a lot of reserves and stuff. To have them as a friendly country and to be better governed, be very good for their economy, very good for the refugees to go back in. I think the odds are now greater that there'll be refugee outflows in Venezuela in the next six or 12 months, sadly, than refugees being able to go back to that country. Just to take one instance of why this is really going to be bad for Venezuela, bad for the region, and bad for our foreign policy in general, I think.
- [11:30]
B
And just really quick to your point, on the oil thing, neither of us have to be experts on this, on how oil drilling works and the percentage of the market and all that to live as a human in a society. We have huge growth in the US Drilling markets right now. Trump was the one who said, we're going to get all the liquid gold off the ground out of the Biden administration. We drilled more than ever in history in the United States. You're going to go to Venezuela when there is an uncertain political situation, when there are rebel groups in the hills outside Karakas, and you're going to go take this old equipment that has, you know, been decaying for the last. Why would you do that when you can just go to Midland? Like, who's doing this? It's. It's totally crazy. A lot of cat updates happening right now for you, the Smalls, which we appreciate, our sponsor at Smalls. It's been feeding the neighborhood cat, Aretha, for a while. The neighborhood cat has made a friend. That cat, currently titled Gray, has also been eating the food now. So we're turning into cat ladies. We had a promise to my child that there'll be an actual cat, a house cat, coming in 2026. And, man, I don't really know how I feel about it, to be honest, but I'm happy about one thing. I'm happy the cats are going to be eating well with Small. I have two things. Maybe the cats are going to be eating well with Smalls, and I'm happy that my child is happy. And that's really all you can do in this world. This podcast is sponsored by Smalls. As I mentioned, for a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com thebullwork Smalls Cat food is protein packed recipes with preservative free ingredients you'd find in the fridge and it's delivered right to your door. That's why cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. Starting with Smalls is easy to share info about your cat's diet, health and food preferences and Smalls puts together a personalized sampler for your cat. No more picking between random brands at the store. Smalls has the right food to satisfy any cat's cravings. After switching to smalls, 88% of cat owners reported overall health improvements. That's a big deal. Smalls is so confident you'll love their product, you can try it risk free. Make 2026 your cat's healthiest year yet. Take advantage of the New Year's special and get 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com the bulwark one last time. That's 60% off your first order plus Free shipping when you head to smalls dot com thebullwork go do it. I want to go a little bit deeper on the what's next stuff with you, but first I just want to do the politics and a little bit on the history. So there's been some kind of consternation about how the Democrats react to this. As always, Democrats always clutching their pearls. And there were some Democrats on background in Axios over the weekend saying that some are are upset that the party's largely positioning itself in opposition to this operation. One said everything Trump touches must be bad according to the base. This is anonymous. Also another anonymously said it looks weak. I think it's interesting to call other people weak while speaking anonymously to a newsletter reporter. I think maybe a mirror look is important for that Democratic congressman. But to contrast that, I want to play this audio from Seth Moulton who is not a pacifist lefty Democrat. As a veteran who believes that the US Has a role to play in the world. This was him on CNN over the weekend and I think the Democrats could learn from this messaging a little bit. Is anyone going to just stop for a second and be honest?
- [15:03]
C
This is insane.
- [15:05]
B
What the hell are we doing? I mean we've got a lot of problems in America today and invading, occupying, running Venezuela does not solve any of them. That's simple, that's very straightforward and it's right. You can say that and also say I hate Maduro and I hate communism. Like that. Those three sentences are just the three sentences. Everybody should say this is insane. Basically, everybody thinks it's insane. I think, you know, unless you're part of the Venezuela diaspora or you're just a Trump humper and you're going to be excited about anything that makes Mr. Trump look strong. But like across the rest of the country, I think that especially if this gets us into a bigger entanglement, I just think that is going to be the widespread view and saying it bluntly is valuable.
- [15:55]
C
I totally agree, Alexis. Seth Moulton, I hadn't actually seen it reported. I hadn't heard the clip. I'm glad he said that. He said it pretty early. Right. He wasn't like, waiting around for people to. Yeah. There's Democrats on background, both staffers and members who speak to Axios. Do they speak to other people, too? I guess. Politico, maybe.
- [16:12]
B
Politico, probably, yeah.
- [16:13]
C
You know what I hear Democrats on background say? That's when I clutch my pearls. I mean, they're always wrong. I mean, they're really, honestly, they think they're being clever by being on background, and they say even stupider things than if they were actually on the record. It's like, if it works, great, which I do not think it will, Trump will get credit. It does not matter what Democrats say. Right. If Venezuela is thriving in six months, he does manage transition to democracy. Oil companies are back in. Two million refugees have gone back. It's going to be a success. It doesn't really matter what Democrats say. The odds are against that.
- [16:45]
B
The golden days in Venezuela are here again. Yeah.
- [16:48]
C
Either you support it and say, I'm with the commander in chief, I think he's made a reasonable decision. I wouldn't do everything quite the way he did, but I'm hoping this works. Or you say this was a mistake. That's, as they say, as we used to say in the old days, a binary choice, I think. Right. And it doesn't mean you're keeping Maduro in power. And you could have been done differently, as I was saying earlier, and you were. A different president would have done it differently. George H.W. bush would have done it differently. But Trump didn't do it differently. And certainly once he has the press conference and once he keeps going off in this direction by calling up every reporter in town, apparently, on Sunday, and then giving gaggles on Air Force One, I think you should be pretty confident as a Democrat that you should just oppose this. And it really is bad. It's. Even if miraculously it works out well, it's still a bad decision.
- [17:31]
B
What's the point? It's doing nothing for the US Interests. If you want to be a Democrat, that is, that is pro central South American coups because you have a lot of the diaspora in your district or whatever, because that's just what you have a hankering for, then just say it. Say it. You're not helping anybody by attacking the party on background as being weak. It doesn't serve any purpose. It just makes you feel better. Why are you talking to the Axios reporter? Who Cares? This is 2026. Now you have plenty of platforms where you can just speak your mind. You're a fucking elected official. Speak your mind. I think probably the right thing to do is have Seth Moulton's mindset on this and speak your mind like that. But if you disagree with them, speak your mind. Let the chips fall where they may. You think you're going to get primaried and lose over Venezuela? Probably not. Maybe. But at least you would have said your piece. You're an elected official. It drives me crazy. Drives me crazy that they do this.
- [18:29]
C
And look, if you believe, incidentally, as I'm more inclined to, that there are occasions when intervention is. Is both right and maybe necessary, then you want to say that and say, but then you need to be serious about it and you need to have troops and you need to have a plan and you need to have allies and you need to have relationship with the opposition or you need to, you need to have a theory of the case and, and more than a theory, as Mark Hertling has been stressing in the and the stuff he's written for the Bulwark, a plan. Now, the plan is going to be flawed and things won't go perfectly, but to do it the way Trump is doing it is just irresponsible. And yeah, glad Seth Moulton said what he said.
- [19:02]
B
I'm hopeful that these guys have just botched the messaging on this so it's so obviously like pointless and stupid their plan that I'm hopeful that that will give the Democrats the backbone they need this week. And I kind of expect that that is what will happen. All right, everybody in my house, we have had just an adventure trying to find the right mattress. We get a little imbalance between me and the husband on the level of firmness. And I want like a concrete floor to sleep on. Not as much for him. He kind of just wants a regular comfy bed. And throughout this whole time, listening to other podcasts, we've been thinking we could go for a Helix sponsorship. We're hearing good things about Helix out there. In the podcast space. And now I can affirm for you that what you're hearing is true. We've tried the new mattress at Helix and it is awesome. There's a Helix sleep quiz that matches you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences and sleep needs. You get free shipping and seamless delivery. Came right to our doorstep, which is nice. They give you 120 night sleep trial, which is good. We're on night two, so we'll report back on night 120. But the early returns are excellent. Helix helps you sleep better. A study found that 82% of those involved saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle while sleeping on a Helix mattress. And on our end, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not a watch person. Who's the longevity guy that measures the blood flow down there during his sleep? I don't do that. I don't have any of those devices that are measuring what's happening in my body while I rest. But let me tell you, the back is feeling better in the morning. The old man back that I've got is feeling better. And I think signs are all good for Helix. It's also cozy and nice. Recommend it Highly. Go to helixsleep.com bulwark for 27% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com bulwark For 27% off site wide. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helixsleep.com bulwark when I first saw this on Saturday, the thing that came to my mind is I was like, I do want Bill to tell me what happened in Panama as a young man. We got rid of Noriega. We had troop deaths then. And obviously that still happen here. It hasn't. Hasn't yet. Who the hell knows what it means while we're running the country? And, and, and, you know, if we've got troops securing the oil fields or whatever, that could lead to casualties. But I just am curious, like, looking back on that, I mean, obviously the context is so different. Just about like being in the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, fallen Soviet, Soviet Union had like.
- [21:44]
C
So, I mean, this is one of the biggest contextual differences which I went back my own mind. I was in the White House then. I was already Quail's chief of staff. I had been. I took over that job about five months in. So I was. And watching it with great interest. Obviously, I wasn't involved in any serious decision making, but the vice president actually did a fair amount of Work after the invasion, they gave him the job, very vice presidential job, of calling a lot of the presidents in the area of small countries to reassure them that, look, we know what we're doing. This isn't a precedent to invade anyone else. Panama's special. I mean, just normal, routine diplomacy. And Jim Baker was handling the Soviet Union and Dick Cheney was doing whatever he was doing over at the Defense Department. And President Bush was busy. And so we got that job and Vice President Quayle did a good job of it. And we got our talking points from the State Department and did all these calls. And I kind of remember that being a thing we did. I guess it would have been right around Christmas or just into the early new year, which again, is just the routine diplomacy that what has no sense the Trump people are doing. So look, so the Panama thing had been building for a while. Noriega was not head of state, but he was head of the military there. He was under indictment for very direct involvement in drug trafficking. There'd been a lot of talk about getting rid of him for a couple of years, actually. An American soldier who's in the Panama Canal Base was killed in some encounter. I can't with Panamanians soldiers. I think about mid December and 3 or 4. That was the kind of the. The trigger for Bush making the announcement. We had troops right there. We sent in 27,000 troops. We had casualties, a couple of dozen deaths. It wasn't painless. It got kind of messed up. Noriega went to the Vatican Embassy. We had to kind of get him out of there. It took about a month. They got him out. They had elections. They had a democratic system in Panama, which I think is going still to this day. It's not.
- [23:25]
B
I'm sure it's. This is a potential difference now already which into next about like who. What's next. But the US Installed the winner of the annulled election. Like they installed the person that had won, you know, the fraudulent election.
- [23:37]
C
And then they had elections. Right. And they have had since. And again, I'm sure the place is corrupted. It's not perfect democracy. It's. But it's pro American and it's pretty democratic and pretty constructive. And we haven't had any big crises there, to my knowledge. We had a special relationship there at the canal and we'd only given that up 10, 13 years before, right, under Carter. So it was. It was more understandable to people why we were going into a country of 4 million where we had a huge military base and it had the Panama Canal, which was kind of important, as opposed to Venezuela, which is just badly governed, God knows, and Maduro deserves to be deposed. But I mean, it's comparable. And we all thought about and about the analogies. I think there are a couple of things to be learned from it, but the main thing to be learned is that that was at the time we all thought sort of incidentally that the justification was a little weak. There were some issues about the. Was it really in a court? We didn't give quite congressional, you know, we didn't get authorization. Exactly. But again, it was. It was. Panama was kind of special and there was enough semi. Authorization, you might say, just because it'd been discussed so much.
- [24:38]
B
Yeah.
- [24:39]
C
Anyway, I mean, it's a very different situation and it worked out okay. And it's not a good precedent for going into a country of 30 million that's much further away and is a big country with other neighbors who aren't happy that we're going in and so forth.
- [24:53]
B
Speaking of the neighbors, I am dying for one of the administration stooges to be asked what countries border Venezuela.
- [25:01]
C
Yeah.
- [25:02]
B
You can't tell me that anybody except Marco knows that Guyana borders Venezuela. These people have no idea what they're doing.
- [25:10]
C
Yeah. Brazil, I think Colombia. I mean, Central America had been a very big issue in the 80s. I mean, a big focus of obviously, foreign policy debates. Nicaragua, Honduras. So we were involved in Central America. We had troops there. We had fights about whether we should have those advisors there. Salvador and Honduras and all that. Nicaragua. So it wasn't like out of the blue the way this is like, let's decide that we have a drug problem, which we do. Venezuela is not a major part of it. It isn't really. But let's. We're going to go and depose Maduro. The other thing is funny, the reason I don't actually remember that much is it was December 1989. I mean, the Berlin Wall had fallen in November. Regimes were falling in Central and Eastern Europe. Ceausescu was hung up there with his wife on Christmas Day of 1989. So four days after he went into Panama. So, I mean, there was a huge amount going on. And in that context, this was a sort of small intervention that people trusted President Bush, George H.W. bush, to handle well. And they did handle well and worked out okay. Totally different from making it the centerpiece of a foreign policy that's focused on the Western Hemisphere. Idiotically, in my opinion, this then becomes the centerpiece of. The centerpiece is to go in and snatch Someone out but not replace the regime. So it's nice that he's going to be in court here. I hope that goes okay. And pretend we're going to have happy situation and oil company and then make it about our greed. Not even about democracy there, not even about our national security. One foreign policy friend of mine who remembers who was also involved in the Reagan and Bush administrations called me on Saturday afternoon, just said what struck him about it was just how idiotic this is. There's so many places we could be doing things in the world if we wanted to be more, exerting ourselves more and defending, you know, important assets. To snatch Maduro and leave the vice president in place. What's the rationale for that, as my friend put it? I mean, sort of like maybe he could have had a heart, he could have had a heart attack. Right. That he could have no longer be in power. The vice president would be in power. What is, what is this accomplishing at this point?
- [27:05]
B
And Trump would say, I guess that the vice president now like, feels like they've got to behave.
- [27:10]
C
Right.
- [27:10]
B
Trump thinks about everything is like, you know, like that he's the teacher and the vice president and he's, he's got the ruler out. He can spank the vice president if.
- [27:17]
C
They, I think Democrats being a little too quick to dismiss. I mean, look, bullies do have a certain effect. And if you bully one person very well, the others think twice before doing something that will literally. So there will be a very short term bully benefit, I suppose, for Trump and his relations maybe with other countries in the region and maybe even, I don't really think elsewhere in the world because it's so western hemisphere specific. Maybe some of it. Bullies also have reactions against it.
- [27:43]
B
Exactly. Mexican and Colombian left wing presidents are being strengthened massively by this. Now they have the American enemy. Right.
- [27:49]
C
And this reaction against bullying. And again, I hate to leave aside morality and all that for a minute.
- [27:54]
B
Yeah, sure.
- [27:54]
C
If you're running a serious criminal gang, you can intimidate people for quite a while. Unfortunately, as we've seen from Putin and others, if you're an ineffectual, willful, vain, it's a narcissistic bully who has an attention span of 10 minutes that doesn't even work. Right. I mean, it's not even effective bullying. And you know, Mexico you mentioned, I believe we started the NAFTA negotiations with Mexico pretty soon after the Panama thing, certainly sometime in the Bush administration and Clinton and continued them. And one reason for that was not the main reason but it was part of an attempt to say, look, we want to have healthy relations with important countries in that region. We have to do an occasional thing like Panama, but that's not kind of the norm. So even the bullying is stupid and short term and ultimately I think quite ineffective. And as you were saying to talk more about that, because that's interesting, I haven't read up that much on the reactions of Mexico and Colombia.
- [28:44]
B
Look, to your point on the bullying, just go into the idiocy of the Don Row doctrine element of all this is what they're calling it going around. And he's on the gaggle last night at the plane. Not gonna play folks, the audio but basically says, let's go through this here. Colombia is very sick too. Run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the US he's not gonna be doing that very long. And he's questioned. So will there be an operation in the US And Colombia? Trump says, yeah, sounds good to me. He reiterated we do need Greenland. Absolutely. He reiterated that Mexico, they're gonna have to look at Mexico and the drugs coming from me. Go. So I think if you wake up this morning as the head of Cuba, you don't have a lot of economic power. Who is it now? Diaz? Canel? You don't have a lot of economic power or really anything to push back. You got to be a little nervous to your point about bullies working against the weakest soldiers. Sheinbaum's popular in Mexico. The Colombian president, Pedro is like the lefty new president has a big support there. In Colombia. We're not much more tomorrow with somebody who's covered the region and we can go deeper into all of this. But you can imagine them having a Carney esque kind of attitude towards this. You saw how it boosted Mark Carney basically in Canada where Poliev with the right wing party was going to win until Trump started pushing them around. And then Carney gets his boost from this. You have to imagine that as the reaction in Mexico and Colombia getting saber rattled now. You know, there's, there is a pride, a rally around the flag effort in all of this and who the hell knows what the downstream consequences are of all this. And I like the, he posted on, on social media like a picture of Trump like stepping on South America and stepping on Greenland and it's like Don Row doctrine under it, the potential unintended consequences, downstream effects. Sending Colombia in Mexico's situation is a little different, but sending Colombia more into the arms of China. Are you even Achieving the stated goals of trying to create more control over the region. To me it seems like no. And a backlash is more likely.
- [30:57]
C
Totally. I mean, Colombia, I have no expert on these countries at all. Colombia was an important ally of ours for the last 25 years though. Really did a lot to eliminate the worst drug cartels or to reduce their power. The country did well. It unfortunately elected this guy in 2022, I think probably isn't a very good president. I think there's an election this year and I think it's a pretty good, good chance that it sort of will be my Canada type scene where he could lose unless there's a rally or his party. I'm not sure he's even running the rally to the flag effect, which would be unfortunate. So we should care how Colombia turns out. It's kind of important place, regionally important geographically and not a small country. Mexico, obviously is huge and important to us.
- [31:33]
B
Yeah.
- [31:33]
C
And we have a big interest in not making every Mexican feel that they're being bludgeoned by their big neighbor to the north, which has bludgeoned them over the decades and centuries. And it's sort of important to, to remove that if it's absolutely necessary. If it's something absolutely crucial to our natural well being, that's one thing. And they've instantly tried to work with us. I think Shamba has been pretty on the border and stuff, has been pretty cooperative and that's helped Trump since he did close the border. So now it's all in that respect. So counterproductive. Also sort of neglects the fact that others do get a vote, as they say, Right. In war. And it's not like the Russians and Chinese and a lot of others aren't sitting around thinking how do we mess this up for Trump just to make sure that other countries don't get the idea that they should capitulate to that bully more than they capitulate to our bullying. You know, it's like the Chinese and Russians have thought a lot about how to be effective bullies.
- [32:20]
B
You're right, Petro. This is not running again. There's Colombian election this year. So much more on the Central and South American politics of all this tomorrow. Just one more on kind of closing the loop on what is the plan actually for Venezuela and the stupidity of all this. You mentioned one of your old foreign policy buddies that was around in 89's comment about how ineffective this Elliot Abrams who has been out there speaking about this over the weekend. He was Trump's Venezuelan envoy or whatever in the first term. This is Abrams on cnn. The US Cannot run Venezuela. The worst thing we could do, and we may be doing it actually, is to make some kind of deal with the regime's remnants and leave the regime in place, except for maybe a change on oil policy. He expanded different outlets saying, were there Venezuelan plutocrats coming to Mar a Lago and whispering about how easy life would be if we just made a deal with the regime once Maduro gone, were they the source of Trump's lies about Machado stature? Machado being the winner of the Peace Prize was the opposition party. You know, there's some reports, Venezuelans at celebration parties in Miami that thought Trump had misspoken when he said his plan appears to be for Venezuela to remain under day to day rule of a senior Chavista with its democratically elected leaders excluded and its wealth controlled by American corporations. Some reporting, the Washington Post over the weekend says that Trump basically cut this deal because Machado, he wanted Machado to reject the Peace Prize. The fact that she accepted the Peace Prize and even in her speech thanks to Donald Trump, she praised him, that still wasn't enough. Trump was mad about this. The situation is pretty ludicrous. And then he ends up with Delsey Rodriguez. The vice president, who has deep Russian ties and was in her speech on Saturday, said that the invasion has Zionist undertones. Unclear how what the Zionist undertones would be there. But anyway, that's who we're cutting this deal with. It is under any possible measurement of what could be optimistic for Venezuela. There's nobody out there. Even Trump's own very hawkish Venezuela envoys who don't currently work for him now, who are saying that there's a clear positive plan for the next steps.
- [34:38]
C
Now, just to emphasize for one second the insanity of turning on Machado. I mean, if you're an American president, you do something that's a little dicey, it's problematic. Some of your allies aren't going to like it, including in the region. But also Europeans aren't really big on this kind of going in and snatching leaders as much as we are sometimes.
- [34:54]
B
Well, anymore.
- [34:55]
C
Anymore. Yeah, well, good point.
- [34:56]
B
They were big on it for a while. Centuries, actually. They're pretty big on it.
- [34:59]
C
Yeah. So this is like a dream to have. You're defending the legitimately definitely elected person who was the number two person and then had to replace Machado when she was booted off the ballot. And she's the Nobel Prize winner. I mean, and every American European government and most of the Latin American governments Like her, she wanted to be the candidate, they booted her off the ballot. Now she's gone into exile, as has the person who won the election. But it's like a gift if you're an American president, to have this set of circumstances in a way, which is why, as I say, I originally thought, I don't know, maybe this could work out okay. And it makes it even more infuriating really, that he's just thrown that all away and now has us on a path that I think really is bad for the region, but really bad for us as a country. It is very bad to have Donald Trump as our president. I want you to think about that, Tim, because I know you've been a little.
- [35:46]
B
Let me sit on that.
- [35:47]
C
You've been a little wavering on that.
- [35:49]
B
It does seem pretty bad. There was some real lefty type on social media who's had some not nice words to say about me, who posted over the weekend that's like, I think we'd even be better off with Bush right now. And then he replied as like a total Tim victory. And I was like, thank you. Okay, I'm not giving high flying marks for the Bush presidency either. But yeah, we're in for, we're in for a rocky ride. Just one more thing, I guess, just on. Without getting into like the internal politics of all these countries of Colombia and Mexico and Greenland, like on the next level, last year for New Year's we did kind of like what your fears are and what your hopes are. And one of my fears that I laid out was that it's just hard to know what is going to be happening in the addled brain of an 82 year old man who like jail's probably not anymore in the cards for him on the other side, but other bad stuff could be, or for his family or somebody could get something in his brain or he could buy some crazy conspiracy theory and that he could do crazy shit. Trying to hang on to power this first week of the year makes me wonder if that fear was a little bit. I need to up the timeline a little bit on that fear and that this year he might start to think, well, shit, I'm running out of time and midterms don't look good and fuck it basically and start doing. And this is crazy, but going into a NATO ally like Greenland or Colombia with a democratically elected president like that is, that's a different category of crazy. That doesn't seem to be like 0%. I don't think that's like Trump derangement syndrome. People at this point to be like, this is a zero percent chance. It's like the stuff that he said he might do, he's done pretty much. So I would be pretty seriously concerned if I was the Danes.
- [37:30]
C
No, totally. And I guess I wrote about that a little today. I didn't meant intended to. I was going to write more just what we've been talking about, about the actual operation and, you know, the actual effects. But I actually, I'm also very now freaked out by that. He went out of his way to talk about Columbia and Greenland in the last 48 hours. This isn't like six months ago he mentioned Greenland and now it's on some say back burners meeting Glass. He's got talked about it a lot in the last two, three, four weeks. Will Salatin had a good piece for us cataloging some of this and now he goes out of his way to speak about it, which is really insane. I mean Greenland, Greenland is not in Latin America. Greenland is part of a NATO ally. And Michael Wood, I think I put this in the newsletter, texted me when he mentioned Greenland, texted me and said, you know, this is my kind of off the wall prediction for 26. We'll be in a shooting war with some dangerous soldiers somewhere in Greenland, you know, and this kind of thing that seems insane. But why is it insane, given what he's doing with Greenland and what he's saying about Greenland. I agree. You have to take it seriously. The chances are way above zero percent that he's going to do one of these things. And it's just on the point about the elections. He cited his own stealing of the 2020 election in the context of why Maduro had to go is Maduro had similarly stolen the election there that was actually on Saturday, I think, at Mar a Lago at the press conference. That's a little ominous, isn't it, that he thinks we should go into overturned stolen elections. 2020 was stolen 2028. The same people will try to steal it. So he has to do things right either ahead of time or after the vote. I mean, I really think I've been alarmed about that for a while, but I think you're absolutely right to be much more alarmed even than we were three or four weeks ago.
- [39:07]
B
Update on how things are going in Venezuela versus Breaking from Reuters. Venezuela is ordering police to find and arrest anyone involved in supporting the US attack decree. So it doesn't seem like they're right. They're playing along initially. We'll see how it all goes. All Right. I don't know about you guys, I'm back, but I got the brain fog happening a little bit. Hopefully it's not showing off too much in the podcast. But yeah, you're hitting that afternoon post lunch food in your belly brain moving slower. But you don't really want the caffeine so you're not wired all night. One thing to turn to that I've been using is mud water. MudWTR's been offering a new low calf coffee that is excellent and I'm a snob. It's got that rich, full bodied taste that coffee lovers crave with only 45 milligrams of caffeine. Enough to feel awake and dialed in without the jitters of the crash. If you want something even gentler, their original Mud Water blend is still there for you. It's a coffee alternative made with cacao chai, turmeric and functional mushrooms. Warm grounding and perfect for days where you want energy without the buzz. But for the real coffee lovers out there who just can't handle the caffeine intensity anymore, this new blend hits the sweet spot. Real coffee tastes calmer energy. If you're ready to make the switch to cleaner energy, head to mudwtr.com and grab your starter kit today. Right now, our listeners get an exclusive deal up to 43% off your entire order plus free shipping and a free rechargeable frother when you use code theBullwork. That's right up to 43% off with code theBullwork atmudwtr.com after your purchase they'll ask you how you found. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. You mentioned the election fraud stuff. I do want to play this flashback because this is my burden as somebody that just, just marinates in the crazy all the time. I was thinking on Saturday, so I was in New York, I was like, I wonder if part of this is that Trump really still kind of in his, his weird brain with his mania, blames Venezuela still for the election, the stolen election in 2020. I went back and found this. This is Sidney Powell, who was his lawyer, folks might remember in 2020 was one of the few people that was kind of ride or die with him in his inner circle. He's keeping the craziest people around at the very end. There another thing to be concerned about looking forward. And she was on Fox trying to explain her theory of how the election was stolen. And I want to play this audio of Sidney PO in 2020.
- [41:47]
A
Can hardly wait to put Forth all.
- [41:49]
B
The evidence we have collected on Dominion, starting with the fact it was created to produce altered voting results in Venezuela for Hugo Chavez and then shipped internationally to manipulate votes for purchase in other countries, including this one.
- [42:09]
A
It was funded by money from Venice.
- [42:11]
B
Venezuela and Cuba and China has a role in it. Also, he remembers that, like, Donald Trump doesn't know anything. He doesn't read any books, but little flies flying around up there in his brain. There are sort of grooves somewhere in his cranium that are like. He remembers all the details of all the weird accusations that people made about 2020 as they're trying to justify his attempt to stay in power. I don't think it's crazy to think that, like, that contributed to this. I mean, like, there are all these other elements. Rubio has to gas him up on it. You know, he's mad that Machado didn't give him the Peace Prize. There's a report that, that Maduro dancing was bothering him. But, like, you know, which is all this, like, deep megalomania stuff. But I do think that, that this action does relate directly to his conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
- [43:01]
C
No, that's interesting. I hadn't really focused on the. I've forgotten that Venezuela was part of the whole attack on Dominion, which did cost Fox $750 million or something.
- [43:09]
B
We should say clearly that was false. Everything that was good.
- [43:11]
C
Yes.
- [43:11]
B
Please don't demonetize us from Sussman Godfrey.
- [43:14]
C
Who won that $750 million, are watching, which I think some of them do watch our stuff. So, yes, it was false and it's good that they won that lawsuit. But one more point. We're setting a lot of time in this, but it is important, I guess. I mean, not. I guess it is important. The Democrats, one reason they should be very firm in their opposition, Seth Bolton, like, is to the degree they show any weakness in opposing Trump on this, it just emboldens Trump to do the other stuff he's talking about. Right. What if he gets a tiny little bump? I don't even think he's going to do. But what if he feels like this is working out okay politically, that's very bad. That means he does do stuff with Mexico. It means he could do stuff with Colombia. It means the Greenland thing goes from being very low odds to something we really need to explore. So I think, again, if you care about the next three years, which everyone does, for somebody, this is no moment to look wavering in opposing this kind of insanity.
- [44:03]
B
One more thing to move on to some of the political news. I just have a little section here in my notes called Dystopia Update. You're Twittering, so I don't know what you're for. What does your for you page look like on Twitter? Do you ever go over there and see what Elon's feeding you?
- [44:16]
C
I think I try to stay on the following one because the for you think could be kind of wacky.
- [44:19]
B
Yeah, it can be.
- [44:20]
C
I do by accident sometimes show up there.
- [44:22]
B
I don't have to believe the AI response to this. That's maybe the first time that all going into 2024, there are these concerns about deep fake videos that ended up being kind of overcooked everywhere. It was everywhere on social media. There were pictures of Venezuelan grandmas crying with joy. You know, kind of right wing accounts. There were some. There's the inverse or left wing accounts that were showing people like rallying in the streets supporting Maduro. There's just a ton of fake stuff out there with huge, massive numbers of views and retweets. There's a lot of more traditional kind of disinformation out there. Like people showing like rallies from soccer matches and saying, this is Caracas right now. That combination with what you mentioned at the top with Polymarket, there was somebody who did insider trading on this. They put in 30 grand 24 hours before we went into Venezuela, and they won 400,000 betting on Maduro being deposed by the end of January. There's just tons of insider criming happening right now whether that was coordinated in the administration. Is that Barron Trump, Is that somebody else? Is that a friend of somebody? We don't know. But obviously they have corrupt deals that they're planning for Venezuela itself. I don't know, just the kind of tech dystopia element of this, I just think is an important subplot that we shouldn't just ignore.
- [45:46]
C
Interesting. Depressing.
- [45:48]
B
Depressing, yes. Yeah. Well, I'll keep on that beat for you, Bill. Let's do some politics. Tim Walls, I guess, is the biggest news of these items. He decided not to run for reelection to governor. I have some thoughts. I'm wondering what yours are.
- [46:05]
C
I don't know if he was at a good governor, a decent governor, or poor governor. So I don't follow internal Minnesota stuff much. I thought he was a poor pick for vice president. I think said so at the time. I just thought it was a political matter and not even a personal judgment. On Wallace, though also a little bit of a judgment. Once I saw him a few times and did a Miserable job of the debate with J.D. vance, which ultimately probably didn't matter, but I don't know. I feel like it kind of helped Trump regain some footing there. And whenever that was in late September, it was, I can't remember now, and made Vance less horrifying than he should have been because Walsh was being so nice to him. So I'm not a big fan of Waltz as a national political figure.
- [46:44]
B
No, me either. Actually, we do have a statement now out from Waltz. I'm just going to read it. He said he can't give political campaign my all after what he described as extraordinarily difficult year for our state. Trump and his allies want to make our state a colder, meaner place. They want to poison our people against each other by attacking our neighbors. And ultimately, they want to take away much our of. Of what makes Minnesota the best place in America to raise a family. Some discussion of Amy Klobuchar leaving the Senate to jump into the governor's race, which on some level is. Is. And I think Amy Klobuchar has been a good politician. But my thought on Welch is, look, there was obviously some really grotesque targeting of him, and I understand why he would not want to stick around for a third term. It makes sense. Going after his family, going after his kids, like, these people are disgusting. The most Hortman assassination. And like the blaming him for it falsely again, all these lies and conspiracies targeting him, horrible. And so I don't begrudge him wanting to step aside. The political point I want to make just because going forward is more productive than going back to your point about Walls is. And I'm not really that hopeful that this will come to pass, but all I can do is put it out into the ether. I think that Democratic media members, leaders, social media influencers, all of you all listening, who have strong feelings about where the party should go. National politics is different than state politics. And it's smart to let people get out there and kick the tires for a while on them and see how things shake out. Part of it was Joe Biden's fault that Kamala had such a short time to decide on a vp. But there's this sprint to choose a vp, and Tim Walls kind of emerges out of nowhere because he has a couple of good media hits where he's calling Trump weird and he's fixing the carburetor, and people got really caught up in it, and we're like, oh, hey, what about this guy? And then he meets the vice president. They had a good rapport, which is important, but they didn't know each other, just reported they didn't know each other before that at all. And so then he gets picked. In our social media era especially, there's this tendency to glom on to something that's on your team or on your side and be like, this is great. Now I'm going to defend it to the death and now I'm going to chain myself to it and I'm going to wear this anchor on my ankle and defend no matter what additional information arises. And I just think it became pretty obvious afterwards that Walz just wasn't that good at the national political stuff, regardless of what you think about as the ideological element of did not do well in advance debate. And I do worry about this as you get into 28 that people are going to be so desperate for counter to Trump that there's kind of a bandwagon effect. And I think the right thing to do do now is kick the, you know, people emerge, kick the tires, see who's got it. You know, don't tie yourself down. You don't need to tattoo yourself to somebody already. And I think the Democrats and I think this sort of media vortex on the left did that with Walls a little too quickly. So anyway, that's my thought on Tim Walls.
- [49:46]
A
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- [50:48]
B
Of the VP candidates that was in there was Mark Kelly, who is wearing. Well, I think over time in the public eye there's an announcement this morning from our Secretary of War. People get mad when I say that, but I think it's funnier to just make fun of him. He's a fake tough guy. He's got. General Kane is doing the actual work while Pete Hagseth does push ups. Anyway, anyway, he put out a statement this morning saying that Mark Kelly's seditious statements have led the department to take administrative action against him. They've reduced his grade and his retirement pay. They've censured him. They're going to say he's not a captain anymore after this. These guys really care a lot about this sort of stuff. Titles and the nomenclature, that's like the woke, right? We got to use patriotic correctness. Anyway, it kind of goes on and on with more eye rolly stuff. I'm looking at it right now and Adam Kinzinger replies, you are such a dork. Which is kind of my reply to that as well to Hegseth. But Kelly has really been vindicated in taking on this fight against the Secretary of Defense. And so I think that's worth noting. I don't know if you have any other thoughts on this.
- [51:58]
C
Well, just how disgusting it is what they're doing. I mean, there are times, I guess I don't know much about how the military justice system works for the people who are no longer in active duty, but. And there are occasions where people get bumped down in rank for really gross misconduct. Either that's discovered later about what they might have done while being on active duty or I guess even after. But Mark Kelly is a United States senator serving with distinction and he happened to make a correct argument that you don't have to obey unlawful orders and you should be maybe wary of some of the orders coming from this administration. I don't want you to know what legal are we going to know? I just heard this from you. Now it'd be interesting to see what. What were their actual legal procedures? Was there like a midi court martial where he gets to defend himself? It doesn't sound that way. They just decide administratively. I do think, you know, we. It's dorky and it's stupid and Mark Kelly doesn't care. There are a lot of retired military and you know, some of them are going to think, you know, not all of them are famous like Mark Kelly and some of them are living off their retirement and whatever, you know, don't want to be publicly humiliated and knocked down rank. And incidentally, if you're mid level guy and you maybe have a consulting contract or you're working on for some corporation that has. Does work with the military. Maybe they don't want to hire someone who gets bumped down. I worry always about the intimidation effects of these things, even when they're done in the dorkiest, bullying way. But it is. They're all such bullies, right? And they're really such pathetic human beings, I gotta say. Teg, Seth, Trump.
- [53:22]
B
They're pathetic. It's embarrassing. It's just also worth noting like the. How pathetic and embarrassing it is. Like you're doing this today. You're writing this very long statement on X after you just, just cooed a leader of Venezuela and allegedly were running Venezuela and there's, you know, internal dissent. I don't know. Is this really what was at the top of the secretary's desk this morning? I think it's another thing that's worth noting.
- [53:47]
C
Well, incidentally, I mean you. I hadn't heard either until you read at the statement about the report that maybe they're. They're now going to go after the people who helped us in Venezuela. I kind of assumed the regime would do that. Maybe we should be doing a little more to make sure that people who did help us are being extracted. This is again why these things are never one one and done right. Are we going to go in and help them or are we just going to let our friends be arrested and maybe killed? I assume all the Americans are out now, but they're people who did help us. We owe them something. The idea that he's focused on Mark Kelly, not on that is ridiculous.
- [54:17]
B
Yeah, I don't know about all the Americans. I'd forgotten. I don't want to. This pod's gonna go long, folks. I'm sorry, you just gotta ride with us today. It's a good show. Long show. So I wanted to move on to a couple other things, but we just mentioned the Veep stakes and mentioning that Wall street with J.D. i realized I'd forgotten that I do want to make fun of JD Vance a little bit as part of this as well. The Vice President was cut out of this deliberation over Venezuela. Clearly it was not part of the press conference. There's not a lot of reports about what his role was. There was pushback to that once that accusation came out over the weekend and there was a report was leaked to somebody that he was on Zoom. I guess he wasn't in any of the pictures from the war room. He's like he was somewhere else on Zoom and I just, I thought it was funny. Because, like, there literally is a scene from Veep where that happens where there's like an Uzbek hostage crisis. And, you know, they bring in Selena Meyer on the, on the television screen while all the, all the real men are around the desk making the decisions dealing with the hostage crisis. Like, that was apparently J.D. vance. And then, and then he posts the longest, most defensive post of all time, like about why he supports this action in Venezuela. He off saying that Fentanyl isn't the only drug in the world and there's still Fentanyl coming from Venezuela. I don't think that second part is true, but it's weird. Then he goes, the cocaine is the real problem. If you cut out the money from the cocaine, you weaken the cartels. It's like Venezuela is like 10% of the cocaine market at most. If you look at experts, like, it's going to. It's a blip on doing anything as far as cartel financing is concerned. Then he says, yes, Fentanyl is coming out of Mexico. So he also kind of adapts his toe into the, the, maybe we'll need to do something in Mexico. And then he tries to do tough guy stuff about the oil and about how we can't let commies steal our stuff. It's in the ground in Venezuela. That's what it's saying. The oil, I don't know how that's our stuff, really. It's a very defensive poster kind of behavior from somebody who I think made a big bet on the nationalist side, the America first side of this, but also now has made a bigger bet on Trump. Trump. And he's got to come up with some Ivy League post hoc rationalizations for every dumbass thing Donald Trump does now. And it's sad for the country, but it's kind of funny for me to watch. So I just wanted to mention that I don't know if you have any additional JD Thoughts.
- [56:47]
C
No, just that he. Don't you think he resents the fact that Rubio is basically the guy Trump's turn to. Rubio is getting featured and he's not. And assuming they are rivals for 2028, I guess they are. Are not the only ones. But yeah, he's. He's doing his best. He's so. He's also. So you just shut up. Right? I mean, no one would care if everyone's gonna. No one's Gonna remember what J.D. vance was doing last. Last two weeks, three months from now, let alone two years from now. So none of them has the discipline to just let life Go on. And not weigh in on everything on social media.
- [57:18]
B
Shut up, J.D. vance, I also saw you posting as well, and you're just like, J.D. you. You posted sometimes. Sometimes they're moving forward on the Triumphal Arch. I'm sorry to downgrade this to something so stupid, but we have a stupid country and a stupid president, and so we're doing stupid stuff, so we have to talk about it. We're building a Triumphal Arch in D.C. and I was impressed with your take on that. You pointed out that the Arc de Triomphe in France was designed in 1806, and then France was defeated less than a decade later and then again 60 years later and then again 130 years later. And you also mentioned the Arch of Titus and the Roman form, and that that's not. That's not looking so great. So, anyway, I don't know if you want to expand your remarks on the Triumphal arch at all.
- [58:06]
C
I mean, I think it's just such a p. Such a. It's of a piece with the Van Trump's vanity and, you know, grandiloquence or whatever the right word is for that. And that often does correlate with, you know, hubris. And then it turns out Napoleon won a nice battle in 1806, and let's have a. Let's have the Arthur Trioff. And then nine years later, Waterloo happens, you know, and so, I mean, it's so distasteful, the whole thing, but so far as I can tell, the biggest imitation, the most notable invitation of the Arc de Triomphe outside France in the last, I guess, maybe ever, but certainly in the last 50 years, was in North Korea. They built one in 1982, which is a very good model. It's up there. It's up there. And they have little. I assume, they parade through it, you know, so that's really great that we in North Korea are adopting this sort of stupidest, most, I don't know, grandiose sort of imperial symbolism to put in our nation's capital.
- [59:00]
B
I don't like giving Trump grandiloquent. And so while you were. While you were giving us that history lesson, I just Googled Grandiloquence Thesaurus to see if there's something better. Magniloquence means the same thing, but it doesn't seem as good. But I like turgidity because it kind of sounds like turd. So I think Trump's turgidity is. We'll go with. Instead of grandiloquence.
- [59:21]
C
Okay, I accept that I have to.
- [59:22]
B
Talk about Zoran before I let you go. I was in New York. It was great to be there under the new regime.
- [59:28]
C
No one there. Everyone's leaving town. The billionaires are lined up on their way to Teterboro for their private planes.
- [59:35]
B
Things seem great economically in New York, I will say. Lines were long. It was hard to get into the shows. There was a new spirit, the common man all joining together, joining the plurb. There are two things this one weighing on. He signed his first two executive orders and I want to give him a toot for that because they're both yimby. One was to create a land inventory fast track task force, and one is to create a speed task force to identify bureaucratic and permitting barriers that slow the construction of housing. If the lefties want to take on Yemby, that's great. I'm going to hold hands with them on that and I think that's awesome and important and I hope that he's successful doing that. So the executive order to is going good. Some of the rhetoric of his inauguration speech. Well, I just want to play one clip. We will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.
- [60:33]
C
If our campaign demonstrated that the people.
- [60:36]
B
Of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it. Still pretty frigid in New York this week in lsa. So it hasn't happened yet. Yet the warmth of collectivism did not reach there. I say this about AOC a lot and it's just like AOC kind of has a bartender side and a. I forget what liberal arts college she went to, but a liberal arts college side. And like Zoran also has like, what would his be? Like a halal truck side and like a Bowdoin class president side. And it's like the halal truck guy that is like worried about working people and wanting to make sure the taxi drivers, you know, are getting. Getting paid enough. That's good. Sewer socialism stuff is fine. I can. I can stomach it. It's like the liberal artsy. The warmth of collectivism. Like, whoever put that he needs like a. Just a. Just a. He needs to get a taxi driver actually maybe to review the speeches that the other people are writing for him and just be like, let's, let's. I'm just going to strike a couple of these lines. I don't know what you're talking about, bro. So I don't know. Did you. Do you want to give us any defense on the warmth of collectivism Returning to New York, the only defense I.
- [61:45]
C
Would give is the right wing went totally nuts and collectivism is Stalinism, as if the word's never been used in any other context. I mean, it's ludicrous to microanalyze this rhetorical things of speechwriter that they wrote one sentence. But collective action, collective bargaining. There are many ways in which this is a perfectly normal, progressive, mostly labor type thing. And yeah, for me, it's funny, you put much better than I had articulated to myself. Why I found the term kind of annoying and off putting. And it's the warmth side of it more than the collectivism side. If he just said no, if he said we have to have collective action, in many cases, individuals can't just do these things by themselves. Yeah, sure, government has a role. He would have been like fdr. Fdr, I think, used the term collective action.
- [62:26]
B
Yeah, Bill Clinton had some good lines to that effect.
- [62:28]
C
This was more the Hillary Clinton. It actually reminded me of this. The. What was her thing? Well, it takes a village. We all ridiculed that back in 1993. And again, it's a little unfair. It does take a village. You know, it's a legitimate point. But the whole way it was done was sort of swarmy and as you say, kind of a little. Yeah. So the warmth of collectivism, the frigidity of rugged individualism.
- [62:47]
B
Frigidity.
- [62:48]
C
I grew up in New York. I'd say the spirit of New York is a little more hostile frigidity than frigidity of. Much as I loved many people in.
- [62:58]
B
New York trying to get into FAO Schwartz with my daughter. Let me tell you, frigidity of rugged individualism. It was frigid. She kept going through. Going to get through the line mind like, excuse me, excuse me. And that like old, like grown ups were bumping her and butting her and like we got inside and she looked at me and she's like, it is. People aren't quite as. As nice and people are a little more rude in New York than New Orleans or something.
- [63:22]
C
Yeah. Really?
- [63:24]
B
Yeah, yeah. No. Okay. I just. One more thing, just so I can get it off my chest is like, I also don't even think the left just really want the warmth of collectivism. If like the response to the. Well, like what you see online about Erica Kirk and all this, I'm like, even lefties, like, aren't. Do they really want to be warm and collective with the people in the evangelical megachurches and the people in the red hats I don't actually think so. Most of them, Zoran might actually. Zoran's pretty authentic on this, but a lot of the online folks, not as much. Okay, well, there we go. All right, Bill, well, thank you so much for your frigid collectivism. Frigid and rugged collectivism.
- [64:03]
C
I found this a warm Village like show for. I just. Yeah, I feel kind of warm and fuzzy all over it now that we've done this excellent podcast. Every Monday. Every Monday is my warmest.
- [64:12]
B
Thank you so much. We'll see you next Monday. Who the hell knows what? We might have a shooting with Denmark by then. For our regular pod listeners, we'll see you tomorrow. But if you're a Bulwark plus member, stick around for our mailbag segment. It's 2026. That's a great time to join the Bulwark Plus. You get the secret podcast. You now get this Monday Mailbag. So you can join us@theboltwork.com or on YouTube. YouTube. We have YouTube plus members as well. So for you guys, we appreciate you. Stick around for the mailbag and for everybody else, we'll see you back here tomorrow. It is going to be a good one. Peace. The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.