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- [00:09]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Holy. The holidays are over and we've got a lot of news. Pete Hegseth, upbraided by his own mother. More whistleblower reports from his co workers. With foreign conflicts intensifying in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, the president pardoned his own son. We're gonna get to all that eventually with our next guest, Bill Kristol. Your usual, Bill Kristol. Monday, he'll be in segment two. But first, we've got to cover the chilling choice for FBI director from the president elect, Donald Trump. And to do so, I've got fave of the pod, Elena Plot Calabro, staff writer at the Atlantic and author of the man who Will Do Anything for Trump oppression profile of that very nominee, Cash Patel. What's up, Elena? Welcome back to the podcast.
- [00:54]
Elena Plot Calabro
Hey, Tim, thank you for having me.
- [00:55]
Tim Miller
I want to do all Cash with you. And I should mention that this isn't the type of thing that you nominate somebody for because Chris Wray, the sitting FBI director's term doesn't end until 2027. But we'll get into all of that with Bill, with you. I want to focus mostly on Cash's background. But first, I just, I can't help myself because the last time you were on, we were talking about your Kamala Harris profile and you know, there's just been all of this kind of autopsy stuff like that obsesses over tactical things like should she have gone on Rogan, etc. You, some of that stuff gets a little tiresome. And I'm curious though, from your vantage point, like having spent time with her and covered her about whether you had any impressions now with the distance of the post election on the way that Biden might have not set her up for success or the personal kind of background that you wrote about and how she was kind of navigating, making herself more vulnerable and more public. I don't know, kind of just open ended. I just wanted to pick your brain on the comma of it before we got to Cash.
- [01:57]
Elena Plot Calabro
I mean, it's crazy. I feel like when we talked or even when I published my profile of her in October, I didn't expect this, but it was almost received as sort of heterodox to make the point that Biden was possibly setting her, her up for failure. I got a lot of heat about that, not just from Biden's people, but I think a lot of Kamala supporters, too, which sort of surprised me. But I guess I thought that seemed Maybe more obvious through my reporting than perhaps it was to other people. But look, I always felt strongly that his commitment to being a bridge to the next generation was clearly never a priority of his from the outset of the administration. That was just not a promise that the American people should take seriously by virtue of the assignments that he was giving Kamala Harris. I think the fact that he gave her the so called root causes issue of border policy at, I mean, really at the very beginning, I think said all you needed to say about how seriously he took her future in the party and how seriously he took the idea that his legacy might depend on her fulfilling it, if that makes sense. So my opinions haven't changed with respect to that at all. But I also think we talked about this too. I just think there was never a point in a campaign where she was really able to kind of make sense for voters. The difference between Kamala Harris in 2019 and Kamala Harris now. I understand people who say, well, she didn't run a woke campaign or anything like that. And that's true. She did not put her identity first, really to the extent that even Hillary Clinton did when she ran in 2016. But I think the Trump campaign was really effectively able to exploit sort of positions she'd taken in 2019. And she just didn't have the answer to that. That I think. And to provide the clarity that I think maybe a lot of Americans were looking for.
- [03:53]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it's tough. Well, I could do more on this, but coconut time is sadly in our past and unfortunately, Cash might be in our future. I guess we will see, right? I guess my first question for you on this is, you know, there are people like us, like me, that have followed this closely. You know, you can't. You see this on, on your social media of choice. People have gone very freaked out about Cash. Like regular people might not understand why. And so I'm curious at the biggest picture, why you think that is that people in the know are so concerned about this nomination.
- [04:29]
Elena Plot Calabro
Well, I would say first the dissonance has to do with the fact that he was really not, in terms of his public profile, a high profile figure during his time throughout the administration. I mean, that was one of the dynamics I found fascinating in covering him that, you know, you ask the average American, who's Cash Patel, and they would be probably have absolutely no idea. Meanwhile, he's, I don't know, at his peak was chief of staff to the acting Secretary of Defense, you know, getting the President dangerously close, Acting chief of.
- [05:00]
Tim Miller
Staff to the acting Secretary.
- [05:01]
Elena Plot Calabro
Correct. Correct. You know, getting dangerously close to convincing Trump to investigate the Italy gate conspiracy theory, you know, after, you know, he maintained that he had not, in fact, lost the 2020 election.
- [05:17]
Tim Miller
For people that don't recall, the Italy gate was that there was some Italian satellites or something that was intervening at the election.
- [05:23]
Elena Plot Calabro
Yeah. And it was like two people in a Romanian prison perhaps, who were kind of coordinating all this or knew a bunch about it. That cache Patel was really insistent that we get people on the ground to interview them. And Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was like, that sounds like a great idea. And it only took somebody else in DOD to be like, hey, no, I'm not doing this for that to be shut down. But I think that dissonance is important because while you have a public who couldn't pick this guy out of a lineup, he is becoming perilously close not only to carrying out things like this, but also becoming deputy director of the CIA, deputy director of the FBI. I mean, for those who are new to Cash Patel, there were so many times throughout the administration when he came close to holding a position like the one he's been nominated for now. And I think the idea was always that because he was kind of thwarted from those roles in the end by someone like Attorney General Bill Barr or Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Mark Milley or CIA Director Gina Haspel, that in a second Trump term, there would not be people like that around to thwart him from getting positions like that.
- [06:36]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I want to read a couple of those quotes that you're referencing. This is Charles Kupperman, who's Trump's deputy National Security Adviser for the last year two of the administration on Cash Patel, his nomination for FBI. He's absolutely unqualified for this job. He's untrustworthy. It's an absolute disgrace to American citizens to even consider an individual of this nature. That was Trump's deputy National Security Advisor, Bill Barr. This was early in his book about Patel getting the deputy FBI director job. He had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world's preeminent law enforcement agency. The idea that he would have this job is, quote, a shocking detachment, attachment from reality. And Barr said he would get it over his dead body. Gina has Bell, Trump's CIA director, threatened to resign over Cash becoming her deputy. So those are all Trump's own people talking about both his personal traits, but also his resume. And you wrote a lot about his resume. So for people who don't know, talk about just how, like, what his background is and how unqualified he would be for this position.
- [07:44]
Elena Plot Calabro
So from the sheer vantage of his background, even before his anything professional, he's the most difficult person I've ever profiled. Just in the sense that if I were to profile you, Tim and I went to look at a statement you'd made once about where you were born, I'd probably take it on good faith that you were not lying about that.
- [08:06]
Tim Miller
Every once in a while. I will fudge my age when at the gay bar every once in a while. But besides that, I think you could.
- [08:15]
Elena Plot Calabro
Very so Kashmir tell this was not the case with him. I soon found that even the most kind of basic take it on good faith information like that, like I would really have to dig in and check because I would find that in these recent clips, you know, he talks ad nauseam about how the reason he and Trump get along so well is that they're both from Queens, just a couple of guys from Queens. Cash Patel is in fact from Garden City, which those who know is a pretty tony suburb on Long island, lying.
- [08:46]
Tim Miller
About being from Queens. That's an interesting start.
- [08:50]
Elena Plot Calabro
So that sort of is a primer for us as we go forward. But Cash Patel, he goes to Pace Law School in New York. He has these visions of being a criminal defense attorney at a high powered firm, but he gets no offers from the firms he applies to. So on a whim, he kind of decides to do an interview with the Miami Dade Public Defender's Office and gets the job, which is really one of the most prestigious public defenders offices in the country. So for the next decade or so, he's going from there and then the Federal Defender's office in Miami. And I spoke to a lot of colleagues of his there during those times and said that, you know, they really never expected to see him become the person that he is today, that he was, you know, a basically competent attorney. He did not appear especially political. There are other things that we can go into later that maybe you know, seem prescient when thinking about today. But the important part is, is that eventually he ends up at the Department of Justice in Washington D and spends a couple of years there before ultimately landing with Devin Nunez on the House Intel Committee. And that's sort of where the story of Cash Patel as we understand it today and sort of the right wing consciousness begins.
- [10:05]
Tim Miller
Yeah, and so he's in the public defender's office and again, that's a legit job. Right. And then, you know, the Nunez job is because he's like his Attorney slash fixer on the committee, looking into Russiagate, and then goes into the Trump administration. So just like, straight on the bio, like, when you're looking at the at the bar quotes and the coverman quotes like, this is not a person that either really has experience, like leading an operation or an organization of any kind or really any like, related FBI experience. I guess the only thing that you could say is part of his remit at the administration was counterterrorism stuff. But he does a lot of lying and exaggerating about his remit within the administration.
- [10:50]
Elena Plot Calabro
You know, he talks a lot about when he pushes back against those who question his experience. He will talk about being in the counterterrorism section of DOJ when he was a prosecutor there. But again, that's another place where it took me a long time to try to establish the facts of what it was he actually did there. I mean, in his book, he talks about how he led the prosecuting team. He led the trial team for Main justice in Benghazi. Not true at all. I spoke to people who did actually run that trial team and were involved in it, and one person just said, good God, when I read back to her what Cash had written in his book. So, again, even the things he could, I think, credibly pull from in bolstering this sense of, you know, I've been in this world, I'm quite familiar with it, fluent with it, you know, the there is not really there. And I should also say that with people like Kupperman, I also spoke to people who oversaw him in the National Security Council alongside Kupperman. And I think that the way Cash Patel enjoys framing things, he's either the ultimate victim or the unjustly persecuted in every story he tells about himself, when the fact is that even though he kind of likes to make out that everyone in the administration, other than maybe Trump, was out to get him from the outset, he says it's because they were always jealous of his relationship with Donald Trump. When I spoke to people who served with him on the National Security Council, they said that actually everybody was pretty open to getting to know him and because they just didn't know much about him. I mean, there was no reason really to have a strong dislike or affection for him at that time. But what they found was, you know, instead of sitting down with them to try to go through, okay, this is what we assigned you last week. Can we go through, you know, your performance? Basically, he was really fixated more than anything else on getting FaceTime with Trump. And, like, Always strategizing, sort of how to be in the same room with him. And it got to a point where he had this script that his colleagues could essentially repeat verbatim, which was, Mr. Trump, I saved your presidency through my work on the Russia investigation. I'm here, and I won't let them get you.
- [12:59]
Tim Miller
Again, that's concerning. And that is to something else that you wrote about in the profile that I've heard you talk about is he's not Stephen Miller. He does not have a deep ideological bearing that is related to maga. Really. Right. Like, and that his Magnus is mostly just in this total willingness to be completely subservient to Trump and blind loyalty to Trump. And, you know, it's evident in that anecdote that you told. And it's also evident and kind of what. Or maybe not evident, but it is the thing that concerns people the most about what he plans for, you know, a potential directorship of the FBI. So. And is there anything else just on his kind of blind loyalty, other examples of that that you came across in your reporting?
- [13:42]
Elena Plot Calabro
I mean, so many. There were allegations from a lot of, including before Congress and testimony from senior staff of the National Security Council that Cash Patel, despite not having Ukraine anywhere in his portfolio, was essentially running a sort of back channel with Donald Trump through which he would send him information on Ukraine. And we don't know what that information was. I think Fiona Hill testified that that was the concerning part. She didn't know that, you know, this would ultimately tie into Donald Trump's first impeachment hearing. Of course. But, you know, what was Cache Patel discussing with respect to Ukraine with Donald Trump that Fiona Hill, who oversaw Ukraine in that division, just didn't know about whatsoever. Which I think gets to a larger point, I think the fear that I learned about from people around Kash Patel in the administration, again, people who by any other metric would be considered very maga. These are not just sort of like the deep state cronies who happen to hide and be held over from the Obama administration or something. These were people who came to a point where they said they didn't know what Cash Patel was capable of, in part because, like you said, Tim, there was no really ideological framework guiding his approach to anything other than what is it that Donald Trump wants me to do today? So when I was trying to make sense of, okay, well, what were the specific reasons that for someone like Gina Haspel, the idea of him being her deputy was just so utterly terrifying? The same thing with Bill Barr and the like. And it really was just we would have no idea what to expect day to day. It's not so much what he would do, but what wouldn't he do if given the opportunity.
- [15:27]
Tim Miller
Yeah. So it's that fierce loyalty. And there's kind of. This is sort of the lying by omission, like the going around people acting nefariously element of it that you hear from sources. But there's also just the straight lying. I mean, you mentioned this about his background with regards to being from Queens. You know, there's another in your story. There's a longtime Trump adviser who said he'd been in Patel's presence more than once when he claimed he was the person who gave the order for US forces to kill Al Baghdadi in 2019, an operation for which Patel, by his own admission, wasn't even in the Situation Room. Like, just these, like, preposterous lies that he tells to people internally. And the other great example of this that you give in your story, which. Which had real world potential consequences, was in Africa. So maybe share that the story about what happened in the Situation Niger or any other absurd Cash Patel lies that you'd like to vamp about.
- [16:19]
Elena Plot Calabro
So there was an American taken hostage in Niger at the border with Nigeria. And Department of Defense was doing kind of a coordination with multiple agencies to try to figure out kind of our extraction strategy for this American. This was shortly before the election in 2020. They'd essentially gotten everything ready. But there was the final outstanding task, was they needed to get airspace clearance from Nigeria to kind of actually, you know, be able to fly through and not get shot down. That's why we asked for permission to do things like that. And a Senior official at DoD ends up calling Cash Patel, who at the time is leading the counterterrorism section of the National Security Council. And he says, hey, you know, what do you know about Secretary of State Pompeo's status on getting this airspace clear? And Cash Patel says, oh, he got it. I just talked with his team. He got it. We're good to go. And the person is like, you know, are you sure about that? Because that's our. We can go. Then he's like, nope, you've got the green light. Let's do it. And so Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, you know, this gets back to him. He gets everything off the ground, and our seals are in helicopters within miles of the international border when Mark Esper learns that, in fact, we don't have that airspace clearance. We don't have it. And so there is kind of this immediate scramble to communicate that to the seals, who then stall for the next hour, they're essentially just flying in circles as our officials try to figure out here in D.C. you know, what on earth happened. It got to the point where Esper was calling Chief of Staff Mark Meadows because they just. They couldn't get anyone from Nigeria to pick up the phone, basically saying, this is going to have to be the President's call. Either we just go in and risk getting shot down, or we call this operation off and potentially risk, like, never actually getting this hostage. But just as they're kind of coming to that moment of truth, Pompeo's deputy calls in and is like, we've got the clearance. We can go. And so we ultimately do rescue that hostage. It is, by those metrics, a very successful operation. And as they are kind of crowding around the situation Room, I had two sources tell me that Tony Tagon, to whom Cash had given the story about Pompeo having gotten the airspace rights, is, you know, what the hell happened? Like, what are you doing? What the expletive were you thinking? And Cash Patel is, I'm told by these two sources who witnessed it was just incredibly blase and said, if nobody dies, who the f cares? And I think in my reporting on him, and I did. I reported for months. I was even texting you about it. I remember during the process, that was probably the most chilling anecdote I came across in large part, I think, because, I mean, myself included, but also the people I was talking to about this incident to this day have never been able to make sense of his motives. So I should note that Mark Esper, by the way, in his own book.
- [19:27]
Tim Miller
And just pathological lying in his own book.
- [19:29]
Elena Plot Calabro
I mean, he comes to the conclusion that Cache Patel just made the story up. I mean, he can't think of any other way that this would have come about. Pompeo. He speaks with Pompeo, who says, I never spoke with Cache Patel about this. I spent many nights trying to think there has to be some logical explanation behind this. And the reason that I put it at the end of that piece, as I did, is because I do think that, you know, it symbolizes, you know, what Americans could possibly be in for. I mean, again, this was not just a game of sims and, you know, Cash Patel wanting to stick it to the man or whatever. I mean, these were actual. The lives of our soldiers on the line. Just a very scary moment overall.
- [20:12]
Tim Miller
I mean, it seems like the explanation is compulsive lying based on some of the other work that you did in the story, because it's hard to. Hard to come up with other conclusion that makes sense.
- [20:23]
Elena Plot Calabro
I should note, too, Tim, quickly, that as I note in the piece that he does deny that this exchange took place and in a statement said that he would never willingly put American lives at risk. So there is that.
- [20:36]
Tim Miller
So there you go. I'm sure that we can just take that to the bank when it comes to statements for our potential next FBI director. I want to play another clip from him while we're listening to Cash Patel in his own words. He's been a frequent guest on Steve Bannon's War Room. Where's the MAGA hat? When he's on there sometimes I don't think it is in this clip. I want to listen to him talking about at this time, I guess Bannon was floating in for the head of CIA, but I want to listen to what he said his plans would have been had he been the head of CIA. Do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in pretty short.
- [21:07]
Bill Kristol
In a pretty short order, the first couple of months, so we can get rolling on prosecutions? Yes. We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media. Yes. We're gonna come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're gonna come after you, whether it's criminally or civilly. We'll figure that out. But, yeah, we're putting you all on notice. And, Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we're tyrannical. This is why we're dictators.
- [21:33]
Tim Miller
So we've got somebody with blind loyalty to Trump who is seemingly maybe a compulsive liar, kind of bragging about why people call him a wannabe dictator while discussing his potential authoritarian plans. And he wrote a whole book about this that you read, Govern Government Gangsters. And so I'm curious, like, your sense for, like, how serious they are about all of this. And in government gangsters, he talks about. I don't know if he talks about actually prosecuting the media, but he does talk about prosecuting the prosecutors and the people that went after Trump pretty explicitly.
- [22:05]
Elena Plot Calabro
Well, his hatred of the media is certainly clear throughout the entirety of his book. I would say that hatred of the media and resentment towards reporters has been a theme of his career, from even his days as a federal defender. I think it's pretty instrumental in shaping the person that he is now. But if you look at the back of the book in appendix, I don't know if it's A or B. There is an actual list of what he considers members of the deep State. So if you're curious, if you're anyone listening is on that list and if you might be facing retaliation from Cash Patel as FBI director, I'm pretty confident.
- [22:39]
Tim Miller
We have a couple listeners that are.
- [22:40]
Elena Plot Calabro
On the list, just to double check. But no, I think he's completely serious. And I think it goes back to there's nothing animating this person other than devotion to Trump. And I think grievance, personal grievance. This is not just about wanting to avenge Trump. I think it is important to clarify. It's about avenging himself. He is someone who feels that he was terribly wronged by the system. From his days as a federal defender, as he got more exposure to the upper echelons of federal government, he feels he was treated incredibly unfairly by the media, by his colleagues. And so I think the essential danger of Cap Patel is it's not actually just about loyalty to Donald Trump. You know, for him, the directorship of the FBI would just be a personal platform to exact revenge on his enemies. What I, as a reporter, I'm going to want to, you know, pay attention to is to what degree Americans decide that that is actually helping them in their daily lives. I mean, this is always the thing I've wondered about Cash Patel. And if I'd gotten to interview him, I would have asked him, how do you sell Americans on the idea that by targeting these various DOJ attorneys and whatnot that you don't like is actually manifesting in a way that makes their life better day to day. I mean, how is that getting the price of eggs down? And so I don't know how Americans will react to his stewardship of that office, if indeed he does take it in large part because I don't totally know what he's going to do or the means by which he's going to carry it out?
- [24:18]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I guess that is another question I have from your conversation. And obviously Haspel and others didn't want him in these roles because they didn't know what he was going to do. But there's always this sort of question when you're thinking about Trump, people versus malice and incompetence and the balance. And you look at somebody like Russ Vogt, and I think he's somebody that there's a lot of concern, is deeply competent and has deeply thought through what he might do at omb. And we're going to Talk about him more later this week. The cash situation is more like, who the hell knows? Has he demonstrated in anything since the public defender's office, in his life, has he demonstrated any ability to actually execute on plans? I mean, even the Nunez thing, like, at his time with working for Nunez, there weren't a lot of, a lot of pelts or a lot of things to point to of actual success. Right.
- [25:06]
Elena Plot Calabro
I would say that in his memo, he did credibly identify gaps in the FBI's process of obtaining the warrant on Carter Page. So I think there were moments in that Russia memo that I think were actually sometimes unfairly overshadowed by the media in terms of their gravity. But his response to that was to sort of say the media is coming after me because they hate me and they hate Donald Trump. And my response is I have to get back at them no matter what. So I do think there are moments where he's shown that he can be maybe a capable person. But at this point, I think he's so blinded by, you know, very personal grievances that to the extent that he maintains some competence, I highly suspect it will not be used for, you know, any laudatory reason. Derek, his tenure.
- [26:03]
Tim Miller
Laudatory is a nice, is a nice way to put it. Hey, everybody, there's a lot of discussion out there these days about the mainstream media and how to handle Trump. I think one thing that we can't lose sight of is that it is important to support investigative journalism that is reporting on what is actually happening in the Trump White House and in the Trump transition. And for me, one of the outlets that I turn to when it comes to this is our next sponsor, the Washington Post. This podcast is sponsored by the Washington Post. When you go to washingtonpost.com thebullwork Listeners can get an exclusive deal to subscribe to the Washington post for just $0.50 per week for your first year. If you listen to us, you know the great work the Washington Post does on a bunch of topics we have Katherine Rampel on. She's always fighting the good fight over on CNN as well. She keeps us posted on the economy. I've turned to Post reporters for investigations into the first Trump administration and for their expertise and insight particularly. And what we were talking about on this podcast, ways that they are looking at corrupting the Justice Department and the FBI and our intelligence agency. Plus, if you're in a rush and need to catch up quickly on the day's most important and interesting stories, the Post the seven newsletter is a quick commute. Read sent each weekday morning, and it's also available as a podcast. The Post offers a cool feature for audio lovers like you. You can actually listen to articles in addition to reading them. So you can tackle your to do list and catch up on the news at the same time. Now more than ever, it's important to stay up to date on the world. So go to washingtonpost.com thebullwork to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year. That's 80% off their typical offer. So this is truly a steal. Once again, that's washingtonpost.com thebullwark to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year. We have not mentioned either the fact that he had a children's book or nor the fact that he was one of the producers, I guess, of the January 6th choir. Him and Ed Henry are somehow involved in that.
- [28:04]
Elena Plot Calabro
Yeah. So the choir thing, I. I get a little confused on whether he was an actual producer or played some other. He has some role in that. But at this point, it's been so many months that it's a bit fuzzy to me. But the children's book. Yes. It's called the Plot against the King. Donald Trump being the king and Cash Patel being the wizard who Duke Devin calls on to basically help him save the king from the shifty knight who is Adam Shift and Hilary Queenton.
- [28:40]
Tim Miller
Subtle there. That's a nice pun.
- [28:42]
Elena Plot Calabro
Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of a children's book version of the Russia investigation, and my understanding is that it has actually sold pretty well.
- [28:52]
Tim Miller
The children's book has.
- [28:54]
Elena Plot Calabro
Yes.
- [28:54]
Tim Miller
Well, that's exciting. That's really. That's really something to think about. All right. Well, I'm just wondering, you know, always on these profiles, you know, Jeff Goldberg cuts something that you wish was in there or, you know, you finish it, and all of a sudden calls start coming in. One of the frustrations of profile writing. So is there anything from the cutting room floor, anything since? Any other developments on Cash you think are worth marinating on?
- [29:21]
Elena Plot Calabro
I mean, actually, this goes back already to something we discussed at the beginning. We really just didn't have room to get into kind of the Italy gate conspiracy theory, because I thought that was such a fascinating example of just by that point in the administration, and this was the very end, Cash Patel really had started to understand how to use the levers of power to his desired ends. I mean, the fact that the White House chief of staff is seriously considering the value of using American taxpayer dollars to send investigators overseas to talk to two People about one of, I would say probably the most inane conspiracy theory related to the so called election fraud that Trump claimed took place in 2020.
- [30:09]
Tim Miller
It's a competitive category. It's a competitive category, this Hugo Chavez.
- [30:14]
Elena Plot Calabro
But I think for the reason that it takes a lot of explaining to really, I think capture the insanity of it. We just didn't have the space for it in the end. But yeah, I'll always have Italy gate is what I say.
- [30:27]
Tim Miller
I guess the thing that is just about his shameless to me, the Italy gate story and all this, his behavior. Just around January 6, he was doing the two step where he is literally inside the government as a key player in this plot, trying to give Donald Trump fake information proving that the election was stolen, nominating himself for various roles where he can help protect Trump and help keep him in power, while at the same time going out in MAGA media world and being like people call this, it's an insurrection, it's fake, it was a Fed surrection. It was really Nancy Pelosi's fault. Right. So he's like engaging in it on the one hand and then on the other hand just doing like bald faced lying publicly. I think that that is a telling nugget about the type of person that we're going to have.
- [31:17]
Elena Plot Calabro
Well, I should say one element of loyalty that you had asked about this earlier and this was an example that didn't come to me until just now. I noted in the piece, but, and I wish I could have spent more time on it, but when Donald Trump was storing classified documents at Mar A Lago and suddenly the investigation was opened into that, Cash Patel is the one who inserts himself into that situation and says Trump verbally declassified them. He told me that he was declassifying them as he was leaving the White House. Talked to several people who said that that never happened. That absolutely never happened. And I talked to one source, a Trump world source of mine going on eight years now, said he had actually stopped talking to Cash Patel because he was convinced that anytime a call came through it was clearly wiretapped by the FBI with what he was saying about the verbal declassification, that this was something he just felt he needed to cut off his relationship with this person over that he was just too radioactive.
- [32:21]
Tim Miller
It's probably a mistake for that person in retrospect, given where Cash is going. Elena, so helpful, thank you so much for reading us out on this and for all of your reporting and I'm sure you've got some other delicious profiles you're working on right now of other upstanding individuals like Kash Patel. And we'll have you back here to discuss them as well.
- [32:42]
Elena Plot Calabro
Thank you so much, Tim. It's so fun to see you as ever.
- [32:44]
Tim Miller
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- [35:01]
Bill Kristol
Perfect.
- [35:01]
Tim Miller
It's finally time to get out of those uncomfortable jeans. By going to ThePerfectGene NYC, our listeners get 15% off your first order, plus free shipping, free returns, and free exchanges. When you use code Bulwark15 at checkout, that's 15% off for new customers at ThePerfectGene NYC with promo code Bulwark15. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Get rid of those khakis and get the perfect gen. All right. We are back with Bill Kristol, who was listening in on that pretty chilling conversation with Elena Plot. I want to talk with you, Bill, about some of the other, some of the implications of what we just heard and of this decision. One thing she mentioned this list of people that is in government gangsters. And I just pulled it up and I'm going to put it up here. We'll post a link where you guys can look at the names. You don't have to buy government gangsters. Look at the target names here on the list. But among them, you know, are mostly the people that were investigating Trump. You know, you're John Brennan's Comey is on the list. Sarah Isgar, Flores over at the Dispatch, on the list, Stephanie Grisham, Gina Hasbell, Robert Herr. Poor Robert Herr. Getting it from both sides. Charles Kupperman is on the list. Maybe explains the quote from him that I read earlier. Andy McCabe, et cetera, et cetera. Pretty alarming to think that there's a hit list from somebody that is potentially the nominee for FBI director. So, Bill, I guess top level wondering what your reactions are to cash and what you just heard.
- [36:37]
Bill Kristol
I mean, it's an appalling nomination. The notion that this is all haphazard and Trump's a goofball and he picks these people out of a hat. Some of which is all true, obviously, but they've been, if you think, just step back. The unimportant agencies, they went to the more respectable people. Right. Doug Burkham. What is Burkham going to be?
- [36:54]
Tim Miller
Who cares?
- [36:56]
Bill Kristol
Interior or something? I don't know.
- [36:57]
Tim Miller
Interior. He got a bonus, too. Interior. And he's like in charge of energy or something. Yeah, he got a special envoy job as well.
- [37:03]
Bill Kristol
And it is. And some of the people who want to pretend everything will be kind of okay in the Trump second term are like, yeah, he's not so bad. And the deputy national security advisor is a guy I know you probably know Alex Wong from Romney days, and then he worked on the Hill, and he's not terrible. And then you look at the agencies where they can really go after civil liberties, where they can really destroy the rule of law, where they can really centralized and personalized power, where if they add these kinds of appointees to the power they'll get from putting in place Schedule F, which replaces civil servants with political appointees. And if you add in the pardon power and if you had in doctrines of executive power that they believe in, it's very bad. I mean, it's as scary as we thought it would be a few months ago, I think.
- [37:45]
Tim Miller
Yeah. I mean, the cash. Patel was always the example that was like, this is the ridiculous example. Right? Like, during the campaign, it was like, what are some ridiculous names for people that. That, you know, that I would just name off the cuff when I was doing interviews to try to talk about what a Trump administration could look like? Like, his was the name that would come up and he just. To what we read from Kupferman and Bar and all of them, like, it is absurd. Like, imagine being a lifelong, you know, FBI agent. You know, you've worked your way up, you're in your 50s, your 60s, you know, a regional head, and, like, you've got to report to this clown. You have to report to this person that was selling a cryptocurrency and going on MAGA podcasts two minutes ago. Like, this person, he's never been an agent, he's never been an administrator of any kind.
- [38:32]
Bill Kristol
I mean, what really brings it home, and I think strengthens even the point that you're making about Patel being slightly in a class by himself. These other people are terrible in many ways. Gabbard's really awful in terms of what you would do to intelligence. That's totally unqualified, to say the least. But Patel was involved in January 6th. I think it's. Is he the. Am I right to say he's the only really key point?
- [38:53]
Tim Miller
I think that we'd have to throw Pam Bondi in there because she was in Pennsylvania.
- [38:57]
Bill Kristol
Now we're now making fine distinctions. Yes. And I hold that against Bondi, and I'm very annoyed that everyone's decided, well, hey, Bondi, that's a respectable picture. Just spent two months going around Pennsylvania and elsewhere being an election denier. She was still an election denier, sort of on the outside, you might say, not in the government. Patel was in the middle of the plot to have a coup. He was literally at the Defense Department. He was what terrified all the former secretaries of defense to send that and made them send that letter January 2nd, I think it was, or third, saying we cannot have the military used in this way. He's what had General Milley with his hair on fire quite appropriately when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He and some of his colleagues. But he above all actually because his boss, the Secretary of Defense was this Chris Miller guy who was not, I think a serious person. And it was Patel who was pulling all the strings, who had, as Elena said, sort of the connections by then elsewhere in the administration in intelligence and at the White House to helped try to pull these strings. It didn't work, obviously. But I think in that respect Patel is even worse than the others because it's the November 3rd to January 6th coup effort now becoming the second term administration, if I can put it that way.
- [40:06]
Tim Miller
Correct. Yeah. And the people I just think about that Africa story, right? And what's happening and the key players there. And you have Pompeo and you have Esper and you have Patel, right? And it's like Esper's waiting for the go from Pompeo. Patel is the one that is in the middle of it, that fucks it all up with his just lies. Just totally irresponsible lying. The type of thing that would get anybody dismissed if they were not a loyalist of the President. Like I just at that level of seriousness and national security implications to just tell a bald faced lie that was you were obviously gonna get caught for. You know, like to me it's like thinking about me lying. When I was in like third grade or something, I lied to my parents about what my report card was gonna say. Like to buy myself three days before the report card came. Like, you know that you don't you're going to get caught. That he's such a compulsive liar that he lies about Nigeria giving their space. You just kind of think about that situation. And I'm no fan of Pompeo. And Esper has acted pretty admirably. But like now you get into administration 2.0 and the person that survived is not either of the secretaries that were acting responsibly. And one of them was a pretty big Trump loyalist. Frankly. It is the guy that almost like that put our soldiers at risk to advance absurd lies. That is the one that is around solely because he's willing to do whatever Donald Trump wants. And that is a very telling anecdote.
- [41:34]
Bill Kristol
That's really a good point. And he's being put in the. I Don't know. Maybe the most sensitive of all the sensitive positions. Very close to the most sensitive head of the FBI. No other political appointees there. But the FBI director gets a lot of power over the. Well, we don't know. Phil, incidentally, remain the case that there are no other political appointees there, but they want to put him in as. Yeah. As head of the law enforcement agency of the federal government, if you want to think of it that way, the one that has the most ability to make life miserable for the people that Patel wants to make life miserable for. Right. So it's really terrible. I would also say, and I make this point in morning shots that I don't think he'll be confirmed, though. I don't know. I've lost all confidence in these kinds of statements. But even if he's not, they have worked out. And Jack Goldsmith explains this in some detail on Twitter and Blue sky, whichever one you're on, Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith, you just look it up.
- [42:24]
Tim Miller
I will put a link to it in the show Notes for people he's over our friends with lawfare.
- [42:27]
Bill Kristol
It's really good. I mean, if he's not confirmed, there'll be a vacancy. And the Trump lawyers are not idiots, some of them, and they've looked closely at the Vacancies act, which is loose, I would say, gives the president a lot of discretion. Could put in someone who's at GS15 level in that agency or any Senate confirmed person from anywhere else the government. And so suddenly Trump puts in a Cash Patel type loyalist. Not even clear. He couldn't put in Cash Patel himself, incidentally, if he just give him a job in the FBI for 90 days and then bump him up and suddenly you have an acting director who's in effect a mini Cash Patel or slightly less flamboyant Cash Patel. And that I think is going to be a pattern throughout the government at the director and secretary level, Director of the FBI or secretary of defense, as it was incidentally, after November. Think of I guess about November 3rd to January 6th, who are the people who are there? Right. I mean, Patel is there working for an acting secretary of defense and there's an acting attorney general after Barr leaves and so forth. So they're going to do this throughout the government and they'll do it at the subordinate levels, too, because they'll be acting assistant secretaries and so forth. The degree to which the. Unfortunately, Trump himself isn't really up to or interested in thinking, looking at these details, but the degree to which the sort of authoritarian infrastructure of Trumpism Heritage foundation and the lawyers and the people reporting to Russ Vought and Stephen Miller, the degree to which they have worked out, think they've worked out a way to make the government do what Trump wants or what they want and do things that really should not be permitted. I think in a way, Patel, whether he makes it or not, brings that home to us.
- [44:01]
Tim Miller
And there's just been all this focus on the potential recess appointments before the gates withdrawal. You know, there are some issues that just does require some level of cooperation with the Hill, et cetera, in which the vacancies loophole, if you will, does not. Right. And Goldsmith goes through it in great detail and as shed. But the short of it is in some ways a lengthy Patel nomination. It might be distracting in other ways to have to go through the confirmation hearings. Maybe they'll want to do it, but provides the opportunity to put in acting officials into some of these jobs, including at the FBI for very long periods of time. And you are limited in who you can put in there. But that is where this ties directly into the Project 2025 efforts of the Heritage foundation, that if you've identified somebody who's a next generation cash Patel, a quasi loyalist within any of these agencies, they could conceivably be promoted to this job as well as somebody that had been promoted to another Senate confirmed position, which I think brings in the importance of they're putting some clowns into these lesser Senate confirmed positions that there aren't going to be fights over because there's not any appetite among Senate Republicans for fights about, you know, who is on the board of, you know, various other commissions. And, and those people could then get moved in. The best example this in the first term was Matt Whitaker, you know, getting put in as acting AG after Sessions left.
- [45:29]
Bill Kristol
Right. Which they could do legally because he was there at the justice forum. He was many layers down, but several layers down.
- [45:37]
Tim Miller
He's not the deputy, right?
- [45:38]
Bill Kristol
Not at all. I guess he went not Senate confirmed. I believe just a senior appointee. And look, I mean think of this. Patel's held up Trump keeps the nomination out there, but says meanwhile, I want Patel to work in the White House as my special advisor. Then they put someone in or find someone in the FBI. There's gotta be one very Trump acquiescent type somewhere in the FBI. Maybe they've found him already or they put someone into the FBI on January 21st. I think it's. Then you have to be there 90 days, but okay. And then Patel just pulls the strings from The White House through some Matt Whitaker equivalent. Right. I mean the degree to which they can do things. And look, Congress can then do other things in response, obviously can threaten to change the Vacancies act, can threaten to cut off funding for positions. The old days Congress had ways to prevent administrations or deter administrations from doing this kind of thing because it was a normal world where people didn't want to offend appropriators and powerful committee chairs. With a Republican Senate and a Republican House, how much deterrence will they even try to have? Not much. So I think people should be very alarmed.
- [46:39]
Tim Miller
I want to talk also about the Christopher Wray element of this. The FBI directors are appointed for 10 year terms. It's supposed to be a non political appointment. There are a lot of reforms post Watergate, post Hoover FBI to try to ensure the independence of the bureau. And Trump broke that the first time by firing Comey. Just huge uproar over that. But he puts Ray in there who was. I think it calmed the uproar somewhat, right, because it was a respectable choice. Was not a cash Patel. He was a perfectly reasonable person to put in that job. Any president really could have put him in that job. It was not MAGA in any meaningful way. He had the experience for the job. He had the resume, unlike Pateli, the respect of people within the bureau. So for now, for him to fire Ray, the person that he had put there two years before the term expires and it is just a massive undermining of the independence of the FBI in a way that the first one was not. It was kind of like a trial run for. David Frum in the Atlantic writes about this and says what Trump is trying will, if successful, be a constitutional scandal far greater than Watergate. And the nature of Patel kind of just overshadows that. It's just a dismissal of Ray itself on the mayor merits is a scandal. So I wonder A what you think about that and B, whether you think that Christopher Wray should force Trump to fire him or quit before the term starts.
- [48:01]
Bill Kristol
So I very much agree with David's argument in the constitutional crisis, which is a little more the firing of Wray than the nomination of Patel, though in fact both are the flip sides, you might say, of one bigger Crisis, incidentally, in 2017. I'm a little fuzzy on this, but I believe when Trump fired Comey, he knew given the 10 year term it would be challenged or at least would look really inappropriate if he just fired him with no cause. So remember, they ginned up some fake report. I think Rose from the Justice Department that he had messed up the Clinton. From the deputy jury general's office or something, that he had messed up the Clinton investigation. And that was kind of their grounds for which Trump did it. This time they're not even pretending. Right.
- [48:39]
Tim Miller
That's a good point. They did Trump up like some pun intended, some fake rationale.
- [48:44]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. This time it's just I'm coming in, I'm firing Chris Wray because he didn't, I don't even know what he didn't do that they wanted. Well, we do know what he. I guess we know what he didn't do.
- [48:52]
Tim Miller
I don't know what didn't he do actually stop investigations. I mean like the Mar a Lago raid.
- [48:56]
Bill Kristol
I guess that's right. I guess that's the key. I was thinking because of course he also, they also went ahead the Biden Justice Department with the investigation of Hunter Biden. So I guess the Trump people can't complain too much about that, though.
- [49:05]
Tim Miller
I'm sure they can and they will.
- [49:07]
Bill Kristol
Yes, they will. Anyway.
- [49:09]
Tim Miller
Yes.
- [49:09]
Bill Kristol
So Ray goes. Goes, as you said, that is really part of the crisis and part of the, again, just very revealing as to what Trump's intentions are. They could have worked around Ray in some ways. Right. It's not like Ray proved himself to be a bitter internal bureaucratic fighter or he was way out there against Trump. He was kind of a low profile head of the FBI. Anyway, they could have worked around Wray and that's not enough for what Trump wants to accomplish.
- [49:35]
Tim Miller
Well, there'll be much more on this. They'll give us plenty to talk about. But it is extremely concern moved to the top of my list just for people to have a sense of these things. I thought that Gabbard was the most alarming choice and I think for me it's clearly Patel. No.
- [49:51]
Bill Kristol
At this point and in a context where he wanted Gates at Justice, he's now got Bondi who is, as you say, those was a real election denier and obviously he's going to go along with anything. So I agree with you that this should be at the top of the list. Bondi and Patel is as bad, worse really than Gates by himself?
- [50:09]
Tim Miller
Oh, for sure. Certainly for me, I want to move on to Hunter. Just as a general point for people, we've been doing kind of breaking news reaction stuff on YouTube. So I did some of this already last night with Sam Stein. And so folks, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube feed if you're looking for that. If you can't wait till your late afternoon fix for anybody that watched that YouTube feed. You know, I'm just appalled by this. I will give my rationale for that at greater length here in a minute. But Bill, I'm curious, just for your open thought, thoughts on the president's decision to pardon his son.
- [50:40]
Bill Kristol
No, a big mistake, I think, on the merits. A big mistake in timing, honestly. I mean, I'm against it anyway. But this is a trivial point. But people haven't seen this point made. He could have done it on Christmas Eve. He could have done it on January 19th. That's often when these things happen. Maybe, you know, he does it literally the day after the Patel announcement when it's perfectly obvious that people who really believe in the rule of law are going to be trying as we are to take on the Patel thing. And now he's totally muddied. Not totally. He's somewhat muddied the water. So I'm against it anyway. But annoyed at the way he did it. Annoyed at the statement, rationalizing it, which is pretty disingenuous. Ignores the fact. And the fact is he said he wouldn't do it. Right. Pretty recently, even in 2024. And it was, I think he said it during the trial. It was clear that he might, Hunter Biden might get convicted. So it's bad in that way. People say, well, Roger Clinton and Kushner's father, Charles Kushner, they had been, whatever you think of those pardons, which are not great, incidentally, they were pardoned kind of to clear the record, I guess, 10 or 15 years after they had served time in prison. This is the first time a president has pardoned a family member who's like in the midst of a criminal investigation. In fact, the huge majority of pardons are after, you know, afterwards to kind of make it, you know, help someone who maybe was unfairly has a black mark on his, you know, on his record and is a felon and so forth. So this is bad, I think, and it's wrong on the merits and it's bad politically, and it doesn't speak well honestly for President Biden himself. I don't think.
- [52:11]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I think the defense of pardon, we have Kim Whaley in the Bull today that makes that defense. And there's an element of it that I agree with. So I want to start with that, which is that in this particular case, if this person was Hunter Miller, they're not being charged with this. I think that's pretty clear at this point. There aren't really other examples of people being prosecuted and having to serve jail time for this particular crime of lying on a gun form about doing drugs. I think I saw somebody online say that the estimate is that it's something like 20,000 people in the country that have lied on a gun form that are actively using drugs. If you just look at the percentages of the country that does drugs, I agree with that. And if I was on the jury, I would have acquitted Dungeon Biden. I don't think that Hunter Biden should go to jail for this crime. I got some negative feedback from people a while back when I said I fired off a tweet that I was like, I don't think that either Steve Bannon or Hunter Biden should have gone to jail for their crimes. I think that both of them potentially have committed other crimes that were jailable. And in Hunter's case, some of them were videotaped. In Steve's case, at least one of them he's still under and, you know, potentially going to trial for which the scam that he ran. So I agree with that defense of the pardon. If you're defending it on the merits, the problem is that the president spent months, years talking about how nobody is above the law and how he wasn't going to do this and vowing not to do this. Like he said that he was not going to do it. So if you wanted to defend it on the merits, then defend it on the merits. The whole time, he lied about it. And now we do this at this time when Donald Trump is about to engage in corrupt acts around pardons, you know, including he just put Charlie Kushner, Jared's dad, who he pardoned in the first term, now as our ambassador to France. So there's just gonna be astonishing corruption in the Trump administration, like, beyond anybody's imagination. And this is just a gift. And it's not to say that he wouldn't have done it otherwise, but it is a gift to them to then be able to say, well, Joe Biden pardoned his kid. It's just an easy one sentence retort that now everybody has. And like, how can you, in good faith, Keith, go to somebody in your life who is Trump curious and complain about Cash Patel or Charlie Kushner and then have a credible response to them when it comes to Hunter. Jonathan Chait wrote it like this. Principles become much harder to defend when their most famous defenders have compromised them flagrantly with the pardon decision. Like his stubborn insistence on earning for a second term, he couldn't win. Biden chose to prioritize his own feelings over the defense of the country. It's hard to argue with that. I think so. I don't know. Bill, do you have any thoughts on either the merits of the actual pardon or kind of this broader principle?
- [54:56]
Bill Kristol
No, I agree with that. I mean, maybe I don't know enough about the offenses to know how serious they were. The overall behavior is not very seemly. That doesn't mean you should go to jail. We don't know that he would have gone to jail. I mean, there would have been, if I'm not mistaken, A, their appeals and B, we don't know what the judge would have sentenced. But I guess I was thinking back to, you know, that New York trial with Bragg that Trump got convicted on for 34 counts. A lot of us weren't sure that was a kind of the right case to bring. But he brought it. It was upheld on appeal that he could bring it. They went to a jury. They seemed to have a conscientious judge. And I remember one of the Trump people all went crazy when he was found guilty. We all said, I think in good faith, look, who knows, we're not experts, who knows if this case was slightly on one side of the line or the other. But it was a jury trial with a judge. They found that, they looked at the evidence. They were there. We weren't looking at it closely. We have to respect the jury system and the judicial system. Otherwise, where are we? Right. And this again was brought by, again, it was by a special counsel. So it's a little complicated. But anyway, it was brought in a regular federal court. It wasn't some kind of star chamber with presumably regular citizens on the jury. I didn't follow it very closely, honestly. But, and you know, Biden had the best lawyers, I think on, you know, availability, you know, to defend him. He would have, he was going to appeal. I very much don't approve of it on all those grounds. The sophisticated retort to what I've just said is, well, once Trump takes over the Justice Department, they'll just go after him even more and, you know, there'll be no chance. But again, he doesn't change the judge.
- [56:23]
Tim Miller
Or there will still be juries and a judge in the Trump administration. Right. Like this defense is still like, oh, that Trump is immediately moving to gulags. Like, no, we can continue to monitor this. Yes, he's going to target people. Yes, I'm worried about Cash Patel, but Hunter Biden would still have to go in front of a jury's, at least for now. I don't know how things are going to look in 2029. What are you talking about? This goes to the defense that gets me so frustrated. I want to talk about two of the defenses of UNTUR that I've seen and Biden's actions. One is just that this Stop you never Trumpers with your norms. It's over. Donald Trump is one. He's a rapist. He broke all the norms. Nobody cares. Why should we act within norms? There's something to that emotionally. Like, I get the nihilist view of all this. I guess my response is kind of, well, if we're going to start breaking norms, can we break some norms that help people other than Joe Biden and his family? That'd be my first reply. But just also it's like, well, then what are we doing here? Like, what is the point? Like, our whole existence as anti never Trumpers was we're leaving the Republican Party, we're leaving Trump because we found this behavior appalling. And now you're, you're saying to us, well, now we've got it. Well, we can just go ahead and act like that now because there are no rules anymore and you should no longer be appalled and you should just go along to get along. That's not that compelling of a case for me. So I don't know what say you to the people that are like, the norms are over because Trump has won again and none of this matters anymore.
- [57:47]
Bill Kristol
Well, and the Trump Justice Department will be just totally out of control, which I believe it could well be out of control. But you say there still are presumably criminal cases. I don't know if they can fix civil cases. Maybe they can get Elon Musk to pay for civil cases. They can do a lot of damage to anyone they want to go after. No question they're going to do a.
- [58:04]
Tim Miller
Lot of damage, and I would like to be able to object to it.
- [58:06]
Bill Kristol
And they're going to do a lot of damage. On the other hand, we do need, I think, to make our case to have some faith in parts of the system remaining. Otherwise, what are we defending? And I'm struck how many people I know, and I saw this on a couple of text chains, but also online last night, early this morning, are now saying, and incidentally, Biden should pardon many, many people. The list that's in cash, Patel's book and Jack Smith and stuff, who explicitly Trump and others have said they're going to go after. I'm not for that. I think it's a mistake. I think It's a kind of preemptive capitulation, and we should raise money so no one gets bankrupted by these draws. And people have good defense lawyers. But I think I prefer for everyone to fight. But maybe that's a little too easy for me to say. That was Biden's attitude. The Trump Justice Department is going to be a nightmare, and the whole judicial system could be in a nightmare. I've got to pardon as many people as I can who are in the sights of Patel and Bannon and everyone else. Well, then do that all at once. But don't pardon Hunter Biden on Thanksgiving weekend and not Andy McAbe. And I don't even know that he's considering. I don't think he's going to pardon all those other people. I think it would be pretty weird and pretty odd. They haven't done anything wrong. So what is he pardoning for preemptively against Trump doing stuff that he's threatened to do? I guess you could do that, but then do it all at once. Right. And I think, honestly, if Hunter Biden were one of 82 names on a list that has been put together of people that senior Trump nominees and Trump himself have particularly personally targeted, you could make a colorable case that this is the right thing to do as you leave office. But that's a January 19th pardon of 80 people, one of whom is Biden. That's not an individual pardon of his own son because he thinks it was not a very strong case.
- [59:48]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I might be on the list of people that would defend the thing that you just made, because that's at least protecting and guarding against Trump instead of this just myopic focus on his family. And this is where I just had to come to the last thing. And I just want to tell people, give people a trigger warning on this. We're going to Pete Higseth next. So if you want to fast forward through this, you can. But the Biden family defense enrages me for two reasons. Number one, because the Biden family has obligations to us. It's public service. You want to be the President of the United States. Okay, he was the President of the United States. Okay. And so part of public service is sacrifice. And I'm sorry, like having to be told over and over again for a year or two that we need to care about the feelings of Joe Biden's family and his personal feelings when he was deciding whether or not to run. We got to care about Hunter Biden and his legal troubles. And then we've Got to put that as the prime concern over the public interest, over protecting ourselves from Trump, over protecting the democracy. I reject that. Like, I completely reject it. While I'm sympathetic to Joe Biden as a person, and he's gone through unimaginable tragedies. Unimaginable. And I understand that and I empathize with it. But again, he made the choice to run for president again. And when you did that debt, and when you win, you take an oath to the country, not to protecting Hunter Biden. And the last thing I'll say about the family is Hunter Biden has made horrific judgments over and over again. And I'm not talking about his addiction. During the so called five and a half year period where he's been sober, he took his baby mama to court to not pay child support for his kid. So you're talking about how the Joe Biden needs to put his family first. Is that grandkid of his not part of the family? Because that when we had to put the Biden family first, that didn't ever seem to be part of the conversation. And then after that, during this whole period when, after Joe Biden's debate, when it was extremely obvious that he needed to step aside to protect the country, Hunter is hanging out in the Oval Office and nudging Biden to stay in the race. This is sober Hunter. Okay? So I'm not saying he needs to go to jail for those things, but I'm just saying, like, this is a person that's shown horrific judgment and at a time of great peril for the country, Joe Biden put him and his bad choices above everybody else. And I'm sorry, that's just not acceptable. It just isn't. And if he was so concerned about Hunter and that was the top thing, then he needed not to have run for president again. And that's just my final thought about Biden and Hunter.
- [62:31]
Bill Kristol
Now, just one little footnote, I very much agree with that. And I think that's a subtle point, but an important one. The wish to run again for president is really at the heart of a lot of this mistake as well. Because would he have had all those reassurances how he wasn't going to pardon Hunter if he wasn't thinking that that would harm him politically in 2024 if he didn't tell people he was? And in fact, I mean, honestly, if he had said at the end of 2022, I'm not running again for a second term, he probably could have pardoned Hunter at the beginning of 2023, before the jury trial, before the whole thing, or just dismissed that special counsel and said, look, I'm sorry, this thing is out of control. I'm not running again. I'm not watching Hunter go through this. It's over. And then there's a primary and Biden's a lame duck. And no one really, you know, and.
- [63:12]
Tim Miller
Some people could have distanced from it and said that was a bad decision. And everybody probably would have, frankly. Everybody would have distanced from it, I think, in that context. And that would have been fine.
- [63:20]
Bill Kristol
Yeah.
- [63:21]
Tim Miller
To other people whose personal lives are a complete disaster, who want to have positions of public trust, unlike Hunter, who is just a guy. The nominee for the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, we discussed with great laughter, me and Sam stein, over on YouTube, the email from his mother where he said that he is an abuser of women. She essentially calls him a bad person in this email. She's backed off of that now, but she sent that email a few months after the incident in California where the woman accused him of sexual assault and where he just said it was a consensual affair that was happening in between his second and third wives while his love child was a newborn. Then we have a New New Yorker story from Jane Mayer talking about his time running a couple of veterans groups, including one that you had a little bit of involvement with. So I want to ask you about this. Here's Mayer. A trail of documents corroborated by the accounts of his former colleagues indicates that he was forced to step down down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups he ran. In one of the cases, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, shout out, LA. He had brought his staff to that strip club. And Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of the management team were sexually pursuing the organization's female staffers. So that's the guy that wants to be that they want to run the Defense Department. Department. And you're aware his other qualifications are being a weekend talk show host. Bill, I'm wondering what your thoughts were about the story and any insight you can have, particularly with regards to that organization, Vets for Freedom, that you had some involvement with.
- [64:58]
Bill Kristol
Jane Mayer and her colleagues at the New Yorker got a lot more information than I knew, or maybe I once knew a little of it. I've forgotten, honestly. But this whistleblower report from several employees, I guess at one of those two organizations, I can't remember which, about his misbehavior in various ways. I guess she's seen this report and quotes it. And so that's from people at the time who presumably signed up with that vets organization because they were sympathetic to Hegseth and to the cause and they're complaining. This is not again, left wing critics or Democrats or whatever. So pretty damning. I think I knew Peter Little in the Vets for Freedom days, as I recall, was very early 2007, 2008. I'm not sure these dates all match up. Maybe when these groups officially got started and when he was just doing stuff. He was a big. He showed up in Washington, very well spoken, ambitious veteran who wanted to supported the war and supported the surge. And, you know, I helped him a little bit, I think, get in, meet some people and maybe get on TV or something. And he was a pretty articulate spokesman for the surge and good to have a young veteran obviously do that. I remember he got to the Bush White House, I think in 2007 or eight, was invited to, I don't know, stand up there when Bush made some speech about the war or about honoring veterans or something. So. But I do remember that enough to remember that there were questions raised about his management of that operation and it was sort of quietly shut down. No, I don't think there were criminal legal complaints or no one was covering up anything that they knew to be illegal. Certainly no complaints from individuals, but enough unseemly behavior that people just thought, the donors thought, let's just close this down. And I think they slid it off into another group or something. This part I was not involved in and I haven't carefully read the article yet. So you're ahead of me probably, if you have. But anyway, just to say it's one thing if you were being, I don't know, nominated for some third level job somewhere, maybe you let bygones be bygones. He can be a. Or maybe, incidentally, let's leave nominated. Could he get normal FBI clearance for a political appointment anywhere? No. Out of the question. This I know a little about because I processed these. I was chief of staff and education and then for Vice President Quayle. And a lot of people came through who had little black marks on their background that came out in the FBI clearance. Sometimes they were disqualifying. Often I actually was a little liberal on this and said this isn't a disqualifying black mark. I'm, you know, a lot of in those days, of course, was smoking dope in college and stuff. So but anyway, people who had misbehaved and stuff. So I'm not even a super hard liner on this. But this is disqualifying. This is not ages ago. This is what, 10, 15 years ago, or in the case of obviously the assault in California, the apparent assault, 2017. And this is kind of repeated behavior with his own colleagues complaining about him. I wonder what references he gave. But of course there's not going to be, I guess an FBI check and he's being nominated for secretary of Defense. He's not being nominated for a GS14 position in the, I don't know, you know, Commerce. Yeah, Commerce is doing public affairs for, you know, for some assistant secretary to promote, you know, how they're doing better job of helping veterans get jobs. I don't wait to minimize, you know, make fun of that work. It's important. But you know what I mean? I mean that's. We all know a million people who've had jobs like that. And some of them had slightly sketchy backgrounds. Probably not as sketchy as Pizza, I don't think. Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Defense. I mean, it should just be so disqualifying that every Republican senator should be laughing for a minute, but not laughing, and then calling up Susie Wiles or Trump directly or whoever they want and say, you gotta withdraw. We cannot vote for this guy.
- [68:43]
Tim Miller
How can anybody vote for this person in good conscience? I mean, look, I just, I'm not a strip club man. I don't begrudge anybody coming down to New Orleans and dancing on stage, getting a little drunk. Like, that's great. That's everybody's parochial, negative. But like the repeated behavior when it comes to female underlings, like, how can this person be in charge of the military? How can you approve somebody if you're Joni Ernst and this has been your issue, like, which is the sexual assault problem, crisis in the military. How can you confirm somebody that has repeatedly taken advantage of his station to abuse in certain cases or to, you know, target younger female underlings? He's had several affairs with them. There have been complaints about him. Now whistleblower reports about the way that he behaved. He did it at every organization that he was at, at both of these nonprofit grass tops, astroturf groups, also at Fox. His behavior in the workplace is unacceptable for somebody to run an organization like this. And then you just add on top of it, just his behavior outside the workplace and the fact that he has no qualifications for the job. It's a completely preposterous appointment. And anybody who confirms him should be filled with deep shame. I wanted to ask you, pick your brain on one thing related to this, which is that there is a kind of parallel. It's almost insulting to John Tower to call it a parallel that there was a long period, I think a half century where there were no cabinet secretaries that were rejected by Congress. And that streak was broken by the nomination of John Tower for secretary of Defense in large part because of reports of his behavior of drinking and carousing and inappropriate behavior with women that happened during your time. So I'm wondering if you have any memories of that and can kind of shed any light on that comparison and how much worse this is than the rejection of towel.
- [70:43]
Bill Kristol
People were shocked that Tower was rejected. He was personally unpopular with a lot of his colleagues. He was a senator, chairman, ranking member, I guess maybe he had been chairman of Armed Services. Sam Nunn, the chairman, was against him. They had bad personal relationship. Tower held almost every Republican, I think all but one in the Senate. But the Democrats controlled the Senate and they did. And Nunn rallied the Democrats to defeat him. He had drinking and womanizing problems. I don't think there was honestly that much evidence that would have made him incapable of being a good secretary of defense. But maybe being a senator is a little different. But those days the standard was so high that you sort of accepted he would be a senator, quite an important senator. But senators can go out Thursday night and get drunk after the three days of work each week and secretaries of defense can't. And maybe they shouldn't be chasing women as much as a Tower would. And so that was considered disqualifying. As I say, it was a party line vote. So I wouldn't make too much of it. This is like so many layers, levels different. It's really amazing. Just two quick points. I mean, the complaints, remember, are from people who were sympathetic to Hegseth. Whether it was at FOX or at these groups. They wanted to work with him. They believed in the same cause and generally had the same general politics. So we're not talking about someone being plopped into an organization full of lefties and hostile bureaucrats who undercut him and are ginning up fake complaints. None of that. None of that. He's never worked in an organization that actually has anyone but people who agree with him. Right, these different grass tops organizations and then fox. But I also want to make a point that I just thought of as you were talking, which is a cousin of the point that David Frum made that you cited earlier about the firing of Wray is in a way as worrisome as the nomination of Patel. Trump's going to fire, I think the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And Hecseth is explicitly called for that the day he takes over, he's going to institute this program where they bring back retired military guys whom they choose to look at the 3 and 4 stars and get rid of the ones whom they think aren't doing a good job, I suppose of making a recommendation to the Secretary of Defense. So it's both putting in someone wildly unqualified, wildly unsuited to be Secretary of Defense who will just be a puppet for whatever any people in the White House want to do, but also beginning the process of politicizing the military, of getting rid of other centers of power in the Pentagon. And so it is that side of it shouldn't be lost sight of either. Right. I mean there's a one, two punch here which is, I mean really can be devastating, I think to the military. Who's going to work there? Civilian employee, I mean maybe, I don't know, military people have a lot of loyalty so maybe they'll stay. I think a lot of colonels might get out at 20 years, but civilian employees at Defense, just like the FBI incidentally, just like the Justice Department. But of course they want that. That's a feature, not a bug. Getting rid of hundreds of thousands of competent civil servants or non political military officers, that's what you want. If you're an authoritarian and you take the chaos in the short term to end up with the political loyalists in the medium long term, imagine if you're.
- [73:40]
Tim Miller
Someone that's followed the rules, it's done, that's done serious work that's done many missions overseas. A high ranking government official, you've got to report to this piece of this like total disaster. A blow dried TV host who plays grab ass with women that work for him and allegedly abuse women and like has no qualifications. You got to go report to this guy on cash but hotel. It's like an insult and the people that are defending it should be ashamed of themselves. All right, I'm going to have a stroke. Keep going through all these topics today. So I just want to end with this. We're going to focus on foreign policy Tomorrow we've got Mark Hartling coming on the pod, which I'm really excited about. But just very briefly, if I could just pick your brain, an open ended answer, but a lot happening over the holiday. We have protesters in Georgia clashing with police peace after the government suspends talks on joining the EU Russophile government. We've got the rebels in Syria taking towns and pushing back aggressively against the Assad regime in the most aggressive counter attack in quite some time in Syria. The Ukraine battles are intensifying in Ukraine as I guess they struggle for position, looking ahead to the potential negotiations during a Trump administration. Administration. Do you have any unifying thoughts on all that or is any anything in particular about any of those areas you want you have thoughts about?
- [75:06]
Bill Kristol
I mean, some of those developments are hopeful, certainly the behavior of civilians and in Tbilisi and Georgia, I mean, obviously Ukraine goes out saying Syria a little more complicated because those rebel groups, we don't love all of them, but still, I think very impressive. I mean, the degree to which people do not want to be live to live under dictatorships and do not want to live under Russian pawns and know governments that are just taking orders from Russia or terrorist groups that are taking orders from Iran is heartening. That people want freedom. They want basically to be live in, you know, the world that we are privileged, have been privileged to live in as much as they can. And I know we can't democratize everything overnight and all this, but that's what's striking to me. And that does seem to kind of be across the board. These are very different places, Georgia and Syria and Ukraine and so forth. So Venezuela, there's a lot of resistance to authoritarianism. Be nice if we had a government that helped those who were resisting in appropriate ways and you can't help everyone and all that. But still that helped those who were resisting instead of helping the authoritarians. I really, this is again, why the degree of disaster of a Trump administration in terms of foreign policy, in terms of strengthening authoritarians at a moment when some of them really seem to be at risk is so tragic, is to be too deterministic, is so warm. Worrisome.
- [76:22]
Tim Miller
More that tomorrow. Lt. Gen. Hurtling, thank you to Bill Kristol. Thank you to everybody that survived this. I think I might need to go have a cigarette after this, after this podcast. Am I going to make four years, Bill? Can I do it? Can I do four what? Four years in a month.
- [76:36]
Bill Kristol
You're young. You're young. I have confidence. I have a little, you know, deep breathing yoga. Don't you? You do all that kind of hippie, dippy kind of stuff, right?
- [76:43]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I do do yoga. I got to go back. I might have to go to yoga today. I just, I, I can't with the world. Thank you to everybody for sticking around. To Bill Kristol to Elena Plat Calabra. One of my faves. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Peace.
- [76:58]
Bill Kristol
I'm not proud of all the choices I've made for a lot of my life. Following the Shadow when I damn well know that behind me that I've lied to my mother. I made people feel like hell.
- [77:25]
Tim Miller
But.
- [77:25]
Bill Kristol
I refuse to believe I have to keep being cruel because I'm a coward myself. And time is in nations. No.
- [77:41]
Tim Miller
Patience takes time.
- [77:46]
Bill Kristol
Excuses will only do good if you're waiting around to die.
- [77:53]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.