← The Bulwark Podcast
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- [00:00]
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- [00:19]
John Heilman
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Bill Kristol
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John Heilman
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- [00:28]
Podcast Announcer
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- [01:21]
John Heilman
Hey everyone, welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm John Heilman. I have the great extraordinary honor, really, it's like the thrill of a lifetime in a lot of ways to be able to sit in the chair normally occupied. I mean not literally the chair, metaphorical chair, Bill, normally occupied by Tim Miller, who's off gallivanting around Europe having all kinds of fun and leaving us basically here. We're like home alone here. It's a little bit like we're the Culkin brothers here. I'll be Macaulay, you can be Kiernan and we'll have fun here on the show today till we're back next week. So for all of you who are like kind of sick of the replacements, the fill ins, the subs, the redshirt team here, he's back next week so everyone can get excited about that. But Bill, I was delighted when I there when I was asked by Tim to fill in for him, I was like I want to do a Monday because Mondays are Bill Crystal Day. And so here we are. Good to see you.
- [02:15]
Bill Kristol
It's nice for you to say I wanted to do Monday when I heard you were pinch hitting for Tim. It's a big upgrade. You know, I'm going to tell Tim that also next week. Next week, you know, we'll see if our, we'll see if Tim's loyal fans out there before I get now 72,000, you know, text messages, emails and posts on social media. How could you be so disrespectful to Tim? He goes away for one week and here you guys are jumping on him. No, it's great to have you, John, and you can fill Tim's shoes.
- [02:38]
John Heilman
They're big shoes, but I'll do my best. And I gotta say it was an eventful weekend. I also like the notion that it's a Monday podcast is basically kind of do a little bit of looking backward because we never, we don't have quiet weekends anymore in our politics. Bill, used to be back in the day when you and I were younger men, we used to spend weekends in D.C. you know, padding around the title basement, taking a bike ride now and then, you know, switching off. But every weekend now is another cavalcade of horrors. Before we jump into all this stuff is what's, what's like at the end of this weekend and we head into this week, what's like the very kind of like here's your, the biggest thing you were fixated on over the weekend, what was like really most front center in your mind.
- [03:20]
Bill Kristol
I mean one of the bad things about Trump era is when instead of being fixated on whatever your favorite baseball team is not doing too well or thinking back still to Spain's fine victory in the World cup, you do get fixated on the things that have to do with Trump. So I guess the military stuff, I guess we'll talk about this. But I mean the degree to which one knows that Hegseth is a very bad Secretary of Defense, I'm now worried that he's doing much more damage to our military than I previously had thought. Which that's one of the institutions you think holds up best under adverse circumstances. And it has many, many times. And I had talked with a couple of people who've served in the military just of randomly ran and saw them or talked to them over the weekend. And they did not disabuse me of my fears, you know.
- [04:01]
John Heilman
So we headed into the weekend after I would say all of last week, the question of there's war plans now in front of Trump. He's backed into a corner and nothing he's doing is working. And might he under those circumstances just decide to finally go forward and do the thing he's been threatening to do basically for the last like five months, essentially, which is like rain hellfire down on, on Iran and escalate the war in a really dramatic way. And the news of the weekend was he was presented with those plans. There was a thoroughgoing debate and he decided no, he was not going to do that. Although the reasons for it are, I would say, you know, to the extent the reporting is, suggests that the reasons are basically, we don't have enough bombs anymore. The munitions stockpile is so low that General Kane was basically like, I don't think this is a great idea. Talk a little bit about that and how we've managed to find ourselves. You were just talking about Hegseth. There's a lot of things to criticize Pete Hegseth, but one of them, it would seem to me, is it's the case that we've left ourselves in a situation now where we basically can't fight a major war. We used to need to want to fight two major wars in two different theaters at the same time. We can't even really fight one now, given the state of the munitions, according to a lot of this reporting.
- [05:14]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, no, it really was striking and I was, I guess, a little rattled by that. I mean, one knew obviously that Donald Trump is not a great strategist or a strategist at all. And he's doing this based on a kind of hubris and a whim and that it's very foolish and we were going to pay a price for it. But the degree to which it's not just him being a bad commander in chief, but drawing down our stockpiles, I think especially of the things we use to shoot down incoming stuff. And that's presumably why people were killed a week ago now. Presumably that is how people were killed. You know, those, the casualties that Trump doesn't want to acknowledge, the Trump Defense Department doesn't believe are part of the war in Iran even. I mean, really unbelievable, right? That thing that actually, that thing was on my mind. I should have mentioned that. I guess I wrote about it last Friday morning. I was so furious when I read that Thursday night. Right. That they removed those four army soldiers killed in action from the, from the website. I mean, that's terrible. But then it turns out to be, I won't say the tip of the iceberg, but a kind of indication of something much bigger, which is the military is kind of complicit, I would say, in the COVID up of how bad things have gotten in terms of our, as you say, our munitions, especially anti drone, anti, anti missile, anti aircraft, maybe anti aircraft as well, munitions in the region. Then over the weekend, there were stories, weren't there, about the appointment of the new chief of naval operations for the Navy and how incredibly politicized that was. You put that together with all the firings we've seen, obviously. So we have hirings and firings, politicized stories about West Point and the lack of free speech anymore, of teaching at the military academy there. There's sort of one thing after another that just made you think it's not just that Trump is a bad commander in chief. It's not just that Hegseth is really kind of repulsive, I'd say, as secretary of defense. It's that they really are doing some real damage now to this one institution that has held up so well over the most, over recent decades through thick and thin, and I had thought, and do think still is probably holding up better than most of our institutions in the federal government against the Trump and Trumpist onslaught. But turns out you can do a lot of damage when you've got a secretary of defense and people willing to go along with him, and he removes the people who might have stood up to him. And he's got the backing of the White House. And he, I guess, wanted to show Trump that everything was going great. So they just, I can't believe the military thought this was wise. They know how many interceptors they have, Right. And they don't think it's a good idea to shoot the wall off in the first two or three weeks. But Hegseth must have been insisting on it. And, and sadly, people in command seem to have gone along with it. What do you think about that? I mean, you've covered this stuff for a long time. I mean.
- [07:41]
John Heilman
Well, I think that to your broadest point, CQ Brown, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs when Trump came back for Trump 2.0, he was an African American gentleman. He was removed. And the argument was it was the beginning of Hegsla's kind of war on dei. Right. And, Bill, I think that to your point about the way in which the damage has been done to the culture of the military, that was the first thing. Because the thing that you and I both know, and I'm not a Pentagon reporter, but I've been around for a long time and talked to a lot of people who have been in the military at the highest levels and all the way down, is that the military is the most meritocratic institution in America. It's a life and death thing. Right? You don't get to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs on the basis of dei. They have no time for dei. It's one of the wonders of the military is that it's been this meritocratic institution that has also proved to be, because of that, one of the great mechanisms of social mobility in America, where extraordinary figures from various parts of the American diaspora, the American gorgeous mosaic, have been able to rise up to the tops. Colin Powell, the most notable. The CQ Brown thing was like, they're starting to wage war on a culture of DEI that doesn't even exist. And I think that you've seen that now play out over the course of the last 16 months. Not just the DEI thing, but the ways in which all of these things have become politicized. And I don't think there's literally an American institution that one should have more reverence for than the military for those reasons. Not to say that everything the Pentagon's ever done has been great, but that the institution itself, the damage that's been done, I think, is. I don't think we've yet counted the cost to it, and I don't think we yet have our arms around it. And I do think it's one of those things that when we get to the other side of Donald Trump, that is gonna need a significant amount of repair and serious repair when we think about, like, what damage has been done to American democracy by Donald Trump over the last 10 years. This is one of those institutions where whoever decides that they're gonna be in charge of leading the democratic restoration America, the first place. One of the first places they're gonna have to start is on the military, counting the actual cost and then doing that repair work. Sorry to go on at length about that, but I feel. I think it's like one of the things that most upsets me, even though I am not a veteran, but I've come over time to really apprec of this institution in American life, and to see it degraded the way it's been degraded over the last 16 months is really upsetting.
- [10:06]
Bill Kristol
No, absolutely. And, I mean, I've been a critic of the military. I'm not a veteran, and I don't presume to have great knowledge of military affairs, but I remember when I was a critic of Rumsfeld and Casey's original strategy In Iraq in 2003, 2004, I was following John McCain's lead, the late Lindsey Graham, actually, and people who knew a heck of a lot more about it than I did, and actual people who'd served and were Serving and quietly were talking to us about the lack of a counterinsurgency strategy and so forth. And it wasn't going as well as Ronald Venting was saying. Even there they made mistakes, I think. But you know, there were the mistakes that get made in an institution, in a bureaucracy, by individuals, by systems. And ultimately they got fixed a little too late. Unfortunately in Iraq the surge worked, but it was too late to really save the overall enterprise and probably shouldn't have done it if it was going to be mismanaged the way it was. But having said all that, it was still a very well functioning institution and people respected it and people respected people coming out of it as they should have. The way I was speaking to someone over the weekend actually was talking about this was, you know, he said, well, you've been a critic of the military. I said, yeah, there are times when I thought, thought their leadership was B or even C or C plus as opposed to A or A minus. But that's just life, right? I mean that's different from taking a wrecking ball to it.
- [11:14]
Audience Member or Guest
Yes.
- [11:14]
Bill Kristol
And that's really what we have now. And I agree very much too. You don't know, we don't know how many people have left. How many people. I just talked to someone today, this morning actually, weirdly, as a relative in the military. Not weirdly, but I'm just talking about this person up for promotion, not at the general officer level, but not too far below that. Uncertain what's going to happen, uncertain whether he or she should stay in. You know, I don't want to give away maybe gender to give away too much. But yeah, I mean just the, the degree to which people have left, people have requested assignments to get them out of Washington. I talked to someone for whom this was the case recently and again, it's, it's probably not good for this person's career. It's less of a fast track, but couldn't stand really being in the Pentagon and the kinds of things that were happening and worried that at some point this person was worried that he or she would have to make a real decision that would be unethical or, you know, contrary to what they thought was right. There's a story in the Washington Post this morning, I think it's in the Post about these drug boat hits which I think you and I have both been very unhappy about and very dubious legality and sort of seemed like murder on the high seas.
- [12:16]
John Heilman
This happened last October and we have, and they were by the judgment of almost every military senior military person person that I've spoken to who is no longer in the military across the spectrum, ideologically, they all are. Like, those look like war crimes to me.
- [12:30]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. And it turns out they're not even cutting back on the flow of cocaine. So it's not just doing things you and I, and I think most people don't like or don't like to too mild think are really wrong to do and not the US should not be doing them. It's also not working. It's not. I mean, honestly, it would be one thing if they were doing things that we thought were over the line, but okay, you know, that's sort of how war is. Blah, blah, blah. None of it's working. They're not slowing the drug traffic. They're not winning the war in Iran. God knows they're not strengthening our deterrence around the world. They're not making us more respected. They're not really not making us more liked or more trusted. They're not even making us more feared. And we're only 18 months in. To your point, just a minute ago we got two and a half more years of this.
- [13:08]
John Heilman
I mean, I could go on at great length about the drug boats, but. But you don't need to be an expert. All you have to do is watch a few seasons of narcos to know that like blowing the, an isolated drug boat out of the water, you could blow 50 of them out of the water. And for the cartels, that's like cost of doing business. That's not going to change anybody. It's not going to change the A, it's not going to change the gross tonnage of, of drugs coming into the United States. And number two, it's not going to create any kind of incentive disincentive to keep trying because those are expendable. Those are drug mules. They're expendable. That is all like in the. It's a rounding error on the P and L for narco, for the narco states and the narco terrorists who run the drug cartels in South America. So again, you have to be a genius to know that this is not going to be effective in addition to being morally offensive and legally offensive, that it's going to be a total waste of time. And that is what it's proving to be.
- [13:59]
Bill Kristol
And what a footnote to add. In fact, I think the article shows that says that they, in fact, the drug cartels have adjusted their, their way of getting, you know, they go closer to the shore. They don't go into international, they use bigger boats near the shore instead of small ones and international waters. So again, that's something that hegseth, I guess. And unfortunately I worry about Kane and about some of the senior people. I assume they know better, but they're not speaking back or they're just overridden or maybe they don't know better in some cases or they just decided to go along. But I mean, this lesson that, you know what, the enemy can change itself, modus operandi, it can change the way it's doing things if we start to do things one way. That's kind of an elementary point about life in general, not just about the military. And they seem not to have thought about that, about Iran or about the drug boats.
- [14:39]
Sponsor Segment Narrator
This segment is sponsored by the New York Times. So John and Bill's conversation today relied on a lot of original reporting. We had things like Lauren Egan's deep dive into Ken Martin's woes at dnc. We had Politico star and Bibi Netanyahu's efforts to get a meeting with Trump. We had NBC in the New York Times reporting on the state of the military and the conflict in Iran. Before John and Bill could give their takes on these stories, however, these reporters had to track those stories down. They had to interview sources and they confirmed the information and then write about it. The foundation of news commentary is fact based reporting. This show and every other show with commentary on current events, that depends on original fact based reporting. The board, Politico, NBC, the New York Times, your local paper, are all sources that you can trust for fact based reporting. Here's one example from John and Bill's conversation over the weekend, Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Swan at the New York Times published this crucial story about the White House's deliberations about the next move in Iran. Now, Eric and Jonathan relied on sources they had spent months and years developing to give us insight into the highest levels of decision making. They found that Trump had been persuaded by his advisors to hold off on escalating our attacks on Iran, at least in part because of concerns about the dwindling stockpiles of munitions. This is a huge story. It reveals that under the Trump administration, the US Military has been so poorly managed that we don't have enough of our weapons. We need to fight the war that we started. And while this may not be a surprising story for those of us who have been critical of the administration, we without fact based reporting like this, the rest of us are just guessing about what's actually happening inside our government. So wherever you seek it out nationally, locally support fact based reporting.
- [16:28]
John Heilman
So let's just think about a little bit more about the Iran thing. You know, Mike Waltz went on, did a round of the Sunday shows and basically said, you know, we have all the munitions we need. And also at the same time, the munitions have been left in a terrible state by Joe Biden. He's the one who screwed us here. And you're kind of like, dude, you're really literally contradicting yourself in every one of these interviews. He's saying, talking out of both sides of his mouth, the war now is on hold, right? The potential escalation of the war is on hold for the reasons that we've just talked about. You now have this week the funeral of Lindsey Graham and it's got a lot of foreign leaders who are in town. One of them, we'll talk about both of them, frankly, because they're both important in different theaters of operation right now. One of them is Benjamin Netanyahu has been banging on the door at the White House trying to get a meeting with Donald Trump. Has not been back to the Oval Office to see Trump since the meeting. Now famous meeting from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's reporting where he made the case for why not only we should go to war, but why it would be relatively easy to have regime change and have uncork an Iranian revolution from the streets. He's now back and he's going to get to see Trump tomorrow. What do you imagine that meeting is going to look like? There's obviously a lot of tension between America and Israel now, tension between Trump and Bibi. And now what do you imagine Netanyahu is going to try to get done in that meeting and what will be a win for him coming out of it?
- [17:52]
Bill Kristol
You know, I don't know. I mean, I don't know how much his pressure or the pressure of his allies has caused Trump to not do what really was the obvious thing to have done after two or three or four weeks or even six or eight weeks, which was to say, okay, we did a lot of damage. You can put a nice face on it. So it doesn't look like of humiliation to the US Even though it is a little bit. I would have been that a little bit and say we're getting out okay, and the Strait of Hormuz isn't open quite the way it was before, but they'll try to paper that over and stuff. That was the obvious exit for Trump. I kind of thought he would take it actually about, I mean, I think I've been right about Trump that he didn't want to go to a full scale war and a ground operation. He knows that that's not a good idea. But I was wrong that he would just take the L, as I say, put the best face on it and get out. So now Here he is, five months, showing up on the fifth anniversary, isn't it? What is today, the 27th? Yeah. So he's showing up on the fifth anniversary of Trump and Israel going to war against Iran. It has not been good for the US it's not good for Israel, incidentally, in my opinion. Will he try to persuade Trump that, yes, you can still do it, go for it all? I just, I mean, with what ground troops? I mean, to seize the strait and then to try to go after the regime change, I mean, whatever the possibility of doing that was five months ago and it didn't work. And it didn't. I don't think Trump was ever going to do quite enough. Well, I'm not sure he could have, honestly, but I don't think he's going to do it now. So I honestly don't know. I don't know. Do you have a thought about what he's going to say?
- [19:10]
John Heilman
I mean, I think Netanyahu at this point is extraordinarily highly focused on his reelection in addition to. Obviously, I don't mean to say that all of the regional security concerns and everything else Israel is doing is not in his mind, but I think his reelection is going to come before the midterms. We know what the midterms have done in terms of shaping Trump's calculus. It remains the case, I believe, that Donald Trump is a lot more popular figure in Israel than Benhu is. And that's not to say that Netanyahu has managed to turn his bellicosity into a political strength for a long time, but he is barely holding together that coalition that he needs to hold together in order to continue to be prime minister there. And he needs Trump's support. I mean, Trump actively turning against Netanyahu in an election, in that election would potentially be the end of Netanyahu. And so I think my guess is at least part of what Bibi's doing in this meeting is trying to get things back on track enough with the White House that he doesn't have to worry about the prospect of, of Donald Trump turning actively against him and thereby ending his reign in Israel and then putting him in a position, as we all know, where he's going to have to go back and face these court cases against him for corruption and a whole bunch of other accountability that he would have to face if he doesn't get reelected. I think that's got to be pretty close to the top of his mind when he gets in there, which is just like, hey, boss, can we get back to being friends again? This kind of, this kind of mounting degree of tension and antipathy is not really good for my politics and therefore for my senior years.
- [20:39]
Bill Kristol
Now, that's a really good point. You know, I hadn't really. The election. How much of it for Bibi will be an election visit? And incidentally, that will mean he will pull his punches, won't it? Probably. I mean, so, for example, the Saudi nuclear deal, which incidentally is another very bad thing I think the administration has done. Israel is actually against it. And normally an Israeli prime minister would, I think, feel compelled, as you know, from his point of view, it's just country's national interest to say, here are all the cautions about that. And if you don't have the kind of inspection standards even, what are we doing giving this path to nuclear weapons to another regime, to another nation in the Middle East? I mean, but maybe he'll pull his punches on that, but then he'll get criticized, maybe at home. I don't know. He's probably in a tough position. But you're right, I think for him, he needs Trump at least nominally on board. I guess they'll talk a lot about the Abraham Accords, which both have touted as big change events in the Middle East. How's that worked out? Incidentally? This Abraham, of course, was signed, what, 2018, 2019 or something. Since then, we've had huge attack on Israel, the war, obviously, in Gaza and elsewhere. Now the attacks on Iran, and Iran being seeming stronger than it ever has been, closing the Strait of Hormuz, something they never did, after all, during all these decades of being at odds, to say the least, with us and of course with Israel. I mean, the whole thing is, I guess they'll try to paper it over, huh?
- [21:50]
John Heilman
The level of inconstancy, foreign policy, inconstancy on Trump's part, and I didn't say incontinence, although, you know, one could metaphorically go there, too. But inconstancy, which is like the notion of doing the nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia was on the table for. It felt like, basically it was on the table for like a couple of heartbeats, I mean, and before it was pulled off again, is a general matter. Not great for American foreign policy to be constantly, you Know, we're doing this. No, we're doing that. We're doing this. No, we're doing that. Consistency is an important attribute, but do you think that there was ever any. I mean, I looked at that deal from the very beginning and thought, there is no way this is going to happen. Right. Given the kind of pushback you would get from Israel and from others, the notion of opening up another nuclear Pandora's box in the Middle East, I just sort of thought somehow that thing's going to fall apart under pressure. And I don't know, maybe it's only temporarily falling apart, but the fact that it fell apart quite so quickly made me think, you know, this is not really. This is not a thing that's long for this world.
- [22:51]
Bill Kristol
Now, you could be right. On the other hand, they did sign something, as the Saudis pointed out. So I don't know. And there's big business interests, real business, as well as Trump family business interests interested in this. So, I mean, God, I really don't know. But your point about the inconsistency is really important. And again, it's one thing to have, obviously administrations change policy over time and the countries change policy over time, but yes, to Change it every 24 hours is not good on a matter of some real importance. I mean, this is where I do think everyone in the world looks at this and says, come on, I mean, we cannot depend on these people. It's not just that they're not nice to us. It's not just that they're not trustworthy the way allies are supposed to be. They're just undependable in the most fundamental sense. And if Saudis think they need to have nuclear weapons now, which is sort of what was signaled by this, right. They're pushing for this even more than they have happen. What did Japan and South Korea think? What do other nations think? I mean, I just think the degree to which the whole thing is fraying because of really just because of Trump. And I mean, obviously there were reasons it might have frayed anyway. I don't want to deny that, but actually, under Biden, a lot of this, the alliances in some ways had come back together a little bit more. I'm not going to defend every aspect of Biden's foreign policy, God knows, but. And it wasn't inevitable, I think that this whole order would crumble to this with the speed it has. This war really has been really bad, really a disaster. I think more I thought it was gonna be bad. I didn't quite expect it would do this much. The damage would radiate out in so many directions. You know what I mean, right?
- [24:11]
John Heilman
Totally.
- [24:14]
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- [26:28]
John Heilman
So let me, let me get to Zelensky here. The other meeting on Tuesday, both these meetings, same day, another leader who was in town for the Lindsay, the Lindsey Graham funeral, and someone who, frankly, the loss of Lindsey Graham is a meaningful thing because there was. Well, you can say a lot of things about Lindsey Graham, a lot of things have been said about Lindsey Graham. But one thing that Lindsey Graham was not inconsistent on was his supportive Ukraine. And if you're Volodymyr Zelensky, you show up in town kind of thinking, you know, I have some work to do here. He's got this meeting to go see Trump. And the most incredible thing about this story is the way in which, in which suddenly, at the center of American foreign policy with respect to Ukraine, Laura Loomer. Laura Loomer, who as batshit crazy as anybody who's ever been on the maga, right, suddenly starts talking like a completely sensible, sane person and says, you know what? I realized that a lot of the stuff that right wing MAGA podcasters were saying seem to be influenced by Russian propaganda. And I suddenly decided, you know what? I should go over to Ukraine and see for myself. She did this interview with the AP where she explained why she's now done a total about face and is completely on the side of Zelenskyy.
- [27:45]
Laura Loomer
I put my other business on hold for about two weeks to come to Ukraine. I've received messages all day from different people in media and politics and people just who follow me online who said, wow, I didn't realize how much we've been lied to. People love being keyboard warriors and saying things are fake, but they should come themselves. I was once that person too, but then I decided to come to a war zone and see things for myself.
- [28:09]
John Heilman
So, Bill, I saw JBL and some of your colleagues there, and Sarah, I think saying, you know, in this one very narrow way, Laura Loomer sounds like she may be the last sane person or the biggest still grown up in the MAGA coalition. But she was quoted in that story, that AP story. She says it's looking good for Ukraine, right? Going into this meeting next week at the Oval Office is looking pretty good. And there was the interview she did with Zelensky Trump on Soap, True Social, retweeted, retruthed or whatever they call it. The interview that Loomer did with Zelenskyy and wrote very good, with about 14 exclamation points. This is his want. What is going on there? In your judgment, about Zelensky standing with the White House and about suddenly him embracing. I mean, if you're Vladimir Zelensky, you embrace anybody who will help you, help you with the White House, presumably because you're trying to. Your. The stakes are existential, but what is going on there from your vantage point?
- [29:03]
Bill Kristol
I mean, God knows. I guess two things I guess I do know. I think Ukraine is doing much better than anyone expected, including me, 18 months ago, really. And really a kind of remarkable story. I bet historians, military historians, you know, 5, 10, 25 years from now will write the story of this country one quarter the size of the dictatorship that invaded it, written off at the beginning and then written off sort of later after Trump comes in and they. We did cut off tens of billions of dollars of aid.
- [29:29]
Podcast Announcer
Yeah.
- [29:30]
Bill Kristol
And somehow its own technological development and innovation and ingenuity. I mean, the drone stuff is really kind of amazing. I talked to some military types and they, they are amazed by it. I mean, and Trump sort of wants to be on the side of winners, and so maybe that makes him less, less anti Zelensky. Plus, Putin's disappointed in my stuff, so that's good. It's very important that Zelensky hold on, the Ukraine hold on, and indeed possibly win. There have been some internal issues. Zelensky, Minister of Defense stuff and all, I can't quote, but it being a democracy, there was a lot of pressure on him. And so he actually rescinded the initial appointment he made, sort of different from Putin's Russia. So that the Zelensky side, I mean, on the Laura Loomer side, I mean, I'm of two minds, as I imagine most people are about this. On the one hand, you don't want, you don't want to give her a
- [30:12]
John Heilman
laugh, at least two minds, you want
- [30:14]
Bill Kristol
to give her a lot of credit, you know, as a kind of serious observer in suit of these things, who knows what's really going on there. But having said that, I got to think it's got to have some effect in Maga world when one after another on different issues. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Epstein, whatever, Luma run Ukraine start to say, wait, we relied to. I mean, doesn't it have some. I mean, it's kind of some effects even on that impenetrable Trump base. I think.
- [30:37]
John Heilman
I don't know how much any of those individual, the individual people like whether it's Loomer or mtg. I think that to the extent that their comments, they amplify a growing sense among a lot of people who voted for Trump that they have been lied to and that Trump either lied to them specifically on some specific set of issues, or that was in general that he turns out to be a fraud and in this all for himself and isn't really different from every other politician that they disdain. I think that that rhymes with a growing sentiment. And to that extent, it's kind of part of the atmospheric difficulty that Trump finds himself in right now in terms of not having that many people who are willing to wanna stand with him. And it's worth saying as we kind of transition out of this. I mean, I think one, the last thing about Zelenskyy here, interesting. I thought this one thing that I saw over the weekend, which was that's one of the things Zelenskyy's gonna do, is share evidence with the White House showing that Russia is assisting Iran in targeting American bases in the Middle east via satellite surveillance. And it said in this reportage, it said they had specific dates, July 19th and 20th, when four bases fell within the Arab interest of Russian satellites. Two in Bahrain, one in Jordan, and one in Kuwait. I mean, Donald Trump likes to be with winners, as you said. Donald Trump has also liked to be with Vladimir Putin, who is, I guess, in his mind, is a winner. For a long time, he thought Zelenskyy was a loser, even though Zelenskyy, to your point, has done one of the most extraordinary things in the history of modern warfare and being able to do what he's done of this conflict. But I just wonder when the rubber meets the road where Zelensky is sitting there trying to basically say to Trump, look, you want to win this war in Iran? I have specific evidence that Russia is helping Iran. Here are the evidence, here are the dates, here's the receipts. Whether that cuts any ice with Trump or whether that is the kind of thing that in a rational world would cut ice with any president, but just won't with him because of whatever kind of core, reflexive Putin love that he. And fear or admiration or whatever that he just won't let go of, maybe
- [32:41]
Bill Kristol
at least helps Republicans on the Hill say, well, whatever the president might have reacted, it seems pretty convincing. And we do need to pass this package that Lindsey Graham was working on, actually, of sanctions on Russia at least.
- [32:54]
John Heilman
So I was saying this thing about how Trump has various people inside the administration who are willing to say whatever he wants them to say, but anyone outside in the Republican Party, the reality of the midterms coming into view is really starting to change certain things on the ground and one of them, as we've reported this morning, that the White House is now telling, as I knew this day would come, Bill, I predicted it many times the day has come where the White House is saying to Congress, people in contested districts and to Senate candidates in contested states, feel free to start putting some distance between yourself and the president. Something that now, who knows, Trump may decide to attack those people when they do it, when it actually comes to it. But the fact that the White House is now telling people, yeah, it's time to start to cut and run here is really kind of extraordinary. And one of the ways, one of the best illustrations I can think of as to why that might be the case was Donald Trump's rather extraordinary performance at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, which I would love to speak with you about a little bit here. I know Tim does not like to play sound of Donald Trump on the show, and I'm respectful of that. I understand the rationale for it. But I was reliably informed that it's not a hard and fast rule and that if we're going to talk about this White House correspondence dinner, we want to, we got to give, let people see what we're talking about, because I assume most normal people were not watching this on Friday night for reasons that we can get into. Donald Trump attacked a lot of people over the course of this hour and five minute long speech that he gave Bill, where he attacked all of his normal political enemies and went after Governor Newsom and Adam Schiff and Chuck Schumer and attacked Bruce Springsteen and said that Springsteen's tour was bored in the USA he's attacking all people. But the most extraordinary in this rambling, insane, lunatic performance was his decision to Suddenly turn on J.B. pritzker.
- [34:45]
Audience Member or Guest
You can't have somebody like a J.B. pritzker, who I understand is not president, sadly. But, you know, some people say never use the fat word. And I don't. I would never call anybody fat. I have my own problems, you know, it's not like I'm perfect sir in the back. Don't call him a fat pig, okay? I'm sticking up for him. Don't call him you. You can't do that, sir. You can't call JB Pritzker a fat pig. Please. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Everyone's trying to figure out, who is that guy? Does he exist? But the nice part is when you do that, the press can't get you, because I'm defending a man who obviously has a Problem, actually, he's lost a lot of weight. I saw him recently, he lost quite a bit of weight. I don't know what the hell. He's got no chance.
- [35:35]
John Heilman
Got no chance. I don't even know what to say about that. Bill, I don't know if you've watched the full speech. I'll just let you. I'll let you speak to the Donald Trump performance at this insane event that I can't believe anybody in my business thought it was like a reasonable thing to go, knowing that something like what happened would happen.
- [35:56]
Bill Kristol
Well, I totally agree on that point, and I agree that he seems to have bombed. I didn't watch it, needless to say, and haven't watched all of it or even chunks of it much. Andrew Egger had an excellent piece on it in warning shots this morning, which people should look at, though, about how pathetic it is that Trump still wants to ingratiate himself with this White House correspondent's dinner. That's like something he went to 10, what was it, 14 years ago now and got insulted by, he thought, by President Obama. And he's like, he finally gets his chance to insult everyone, I suppose. But how sad is that? You're president United States, you're the most famous person in the world, I suppose, and you still got to show that you can do it. But how lame was that thing you. I hadn't seen the Pritzker clip, honestly, even read about it. I mean, it seems to be a piece with many other lame, pseudo jokes that went over horribly. I mean, yeah, he was, he was terrible.
- [36:47]
John Heilman
He was terrible. I mean, even by, like, I sometimes I will say he could be funny.
- [36:51]
Bill Kristol
He could be funny. He can be funny.
- [36:54]
John Heilman
There are times when Trump is actually, you know, it's part of the secret to why the man has won election twice over the course of the last 10 years, not three times as he claims. But is that a lot of normal people think Trump is, you know, is funny. It's not my, again, it's not my preferred mode of humor, but I understand that he sometimes can be quite funny. This was not funny. This was just like incoherent and addled and made mean and, and sort of just anybody who's ever found anything charming about Trump, they were not present in this speech. It was just a, a kind of rambling, addled, savage, stupid kind of performance that I think that even his biggest fans, they watched it honestly would be sort of like he seems to have lost not just his fastball, but his curveball, his slider and his Knuckle ball all at once?
- [37:39]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, no, very much so. And so I don't know what effect it has. And, you know, I hope you're right, that even Republicans are moving away from him. I don't know. On the one hand, they vote dutifully for this stupid war that they don't support in reality, and for the defense budget increase that is very unpopular, that they probably, some of them don't support. And they're going to vote for Todd Blanche despite the fact that they probably know he shouldn't be attorney general. So I'm just curious, because you follow this stuff closely and you're shrewd about it and look around the corners maybe very effectively sometimes, do you think there really is erosion? Will be erosion in support for him on the Hill, or will it be more a little bit of just tonal change of attitude?
- [38:17]
John Heilman
I think it's important to make a distinction between erosion on the Hill in the sense of what they are when they're forced to vote on something versus what you're going to see in battleground districts and in Senate seats that are up for grabs, where, I mean, Trump is in Michigan. We'll talk about Michigan in a second. But Trump is in Michigan today. I can tell you, I think this will be the last time you'll see Donald Trump in Michigan. Mike Rogers is not going to invite Donald Trump to Michigan between now and Election Day. I don't know about Ken Paxton. That might be one exception. But if you're running for Senate in Maine, if you're Susan Collins, Donald Trump's not going to be in Maine. And what the White House is saying to people now effectively, is not so much, hey, feel free to vote against us, but is, hey, feel free to start making arguments on the campaign trail that are either implicitly or in some cases, maybe a little bit explicitly kind of contrary to what Trump says to, to not have him, not invite him to the district, to kind of put kind of some distance between yourself. You don't have to be tied at the hip to Donald Trump going forward. And I think that's gonna be an enormous relief for any Republican who's running in a, as I say, in a battleground district, in a purple district, in a swing district, or in one of these Senate seats that is gonna determine control of the upper chamber. I think you're gonna see, you can go around the map. You're not gonna see Donald Trump in Ohio, you're not gonna see Donald Trump in North Carolina, you're not gonna see Donald Trump in Iowa. No one's gonna want Donald Trump in their district or in their state if it's going to be a close election. And I think the White House is just basically signaled to those people it's fine. You don't have to pretend like you want Donald Trump to come here. And going forward, I do think on things, on high profile things like a lot of these nominations, that there still will be a lockstep loyalty. I want to see a situation in which the United States Senate rejects something Donald Trump wants before I'm willing to countenance the notion that that might start happening with any frequency. There's not been a single example of it in the entirety of the last 16 months. So until there's one example of it, I'm not going to open my mind to the possibility of a whole bunch more examples.
- [40:18]
Bill Kristol
I'm totally with you on that. On the other side, I'm just curious, you've been through some of these midterms, as I have, do you think it will work? The quote, distancing? I would say in the past, it doesn't work, right? I mean, I was old enough to remember 1994, and a bunch of Southern Democrats, Tennessee, for example, really did distance themselves from Clinton in pretty big ways. And they lost just as badly as if they had never died. And Twitter, I mean, we've been through these wave. If it's a wavish election, I kind of feel it will be. It feels like almost it's the worst of both worlds. Some of the Trump people won't turn out, and the normal swing voters, as it were, will say, well, you still need to check Trump. We need Democrats to control Congress. I don't know.
- [40:57]
John Heilman
The elections have been, are more nationalized than they ever have been, number one. And the overriding sense of most voters is correct, which is that the Republican Party has been, is the party of Trump. And that they've been basically operating at, on autopilot at Trump's behest. They're right about that. And putting a little bit of distance between themselves and Donald Trump and giving a speech that says, hey, I know Donald Trump has kind of pretended like affordability is a hoax or whatever. I don't think it's a hoax. I think it's real. It's like, that's not gonna help anybody. The median voter is like, the Republican Party is the party of Trump and if they are interested in punishing Donald Trump, they're going to punish that party. And also to your point before Bill, the level of enthusiasm and this is the thing that there's been some reporting on over the weekend. In fact, I think a piece of good piece in the Washington Post that basically said that Republicans are starting to just freak out over the lack of enthusiasm among core Republican voters. And I want to get to, while we still have time, I want to get to a few of these domestic things. We'll go relatively quickly through them. Michigan is the 1 race in the Senate where Democrats are still nervous. Georgia, which was the other seat they worried about losing, they're not as worried about that anymore. Ossoff has been better than expected performer, has been a way better than expected fundraiser. And they got the nominee that they wanted in Mike Collins, the Trump backed nominee rather than the Brian Kemp backed nominee. So I think people are not as worried on the Democratic side about Georgia, but they're really worried about Michigan. And we have a debate tonight, the last debate between Abdul El Sayed and Haley Stevens. We also had Gretchen Whitmer, who remains a very popular governor in Michigan, who decided to endorse Haley Stevens, I think, not surprisingly. But on Friday. Let's take a look at that.
- [42:46]
Gretchen Whitmer
As governor, I've had one strategy, get things done. That strategy informs everything that I do. And that's why I'm endorsing Haley Stevens for the U.S. senate. Just like me, Haley will do whatever it takes to get things done for the people of Michigan. And we need her now more than ever. Republicans in D.C. are making your life harder and more expensive. Tariffs, cuts to Medicaid, soaring gas prices, it's all piling on. Luckily, Haley is taking them on and putting money back in Michigander's pockets. She helped President Obama save the auto industry and protect 200,000 Michigan jobs. Brought billions home to rebuild Michigan manufacturing, took on Big Pharma to lower the cost of prescription drugs, led the fight to block Republicans from defunding Social Security. And she's standing up to Republicans right now as they jack up the price of gas, groceries and health care. Haley is as Michigan as it gets. She grew up in a middle class household. Her parents ran a landscape landscaping business out of their Ford F150. And she'll tell anyone who will listen about her first Oldsmobile. She knows what Michigan families are going through and that's how I know she will always put Michigan first.
- [43:58]
John Heilman
Haley Stevens has been the candidate of the establishment, the Washington D.C. establishment, not a good thing in this cycle. Abdul El Said has been the candidate of, has now been endorsed by basically everybody on the left from Bernie Sanders, aoc, Elizabeth Warren. This is a very nationalized race. And I would say it's like a microcosm of what's been going on this summer in the Democratic Party. You've got the wet hot DSA summer that we've seen in some of these primaries in New York and in Colorado. You also saw the fallout from the Platner thing in Maine. And so the notion that possibly Abdul El Sayed, he's a rising figure, he's had all the heat. Polling shows the races within the margin of error, but he's kind of had the momentum in that race. But now people are looking up and for reasons that we can discuss and saying this guy might be just too far left for this very, very, very purple electorate at Michigan. What do you see on the horizon there for that Michigan race?
- [44:56]
Bill Kristol
I mean, I guess with the primary just a week off, so. Well, no, yeah, pretty close. I kind of think Stevens might have, I think McMurray dropping out the third candidate and then having Whitmer, who's a bit of popular obviously, and be elected and reelected governor of Michigan endorsing, I think, I don't know, I bet on Stevens. I mean, I also think she's just an underrated politician. She's tough. She's won in the past in House races. So I think she has a pretty good chance. I do think she has a better chance of beating Mike Rogers than El Said. I also think the only one thing I would slightly tweak if I were writing Gretchen Whitmer's little thing there was good, actually, I thought pretty effective. I'm sure she was advised what to say by the Stevens campaign, talk about what she's done in the past in Congress. I actually leave all that out. First of all, a lot of it was attempts to stop things from happening that didn't happen. What she did with Obama 15 years ago on the car bailout maybe, if you want to mention that, I guess in Michigan that's a big deal, understandably. But still, it's got to be a little more. She will stop Trump from doing more damage over the next two years and Mike Rogers won't. There's no reason you can't be establishment and also be forward looking. Shouldn't be. And there shouldn't be a reason why you can't be establishment and also saying I'm going to be as effective, more effective in stopping Trump with those slight tweaks. I thought it was an effective little ad by Gretchen Whitmer and I guess I think Stevens is in pretty good shape. But, but as you say, would have lost money betting on the establishment people in some of these races this year.
- [46:16]
John Heilman
I thought the most effective parts of that video are the parts at the end where she starts talking about her being more as Michigan as Michigan can be. My mother was from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and when I saw these videos going around of her, that she was being mocked by the left for her kind of Chris Farley kind of Michigan way and all that stuff, I'm like everybody I have ever known in Michigan, from Mackinac Island North. There's a Haley Stevens in every ice cream parlor at every roller rink. You know, like, there's a. That's, that's, that's someone who sounds a lot like a lot of normal people in Michigan. And you can make fun of it, but I think that that part of Whitmer, the Whitmer thing, that kind of keyed in on the notion of she's one of us, and that's, you know, that will obviously be, to some ears, will be coded as kind of a. An attack, in a way, on El Sayed. But the biggest concerns I think about him, if you're really. If you're focused mostly on electability, has been his. His unwillingness to climb down from things like his advocacy of defund the police, his embrace of Medicare for all, which is. I understand that it's putting aside whatever the policy arguments are for it. It is a thing that I had Adam Jennelson on my podcast on Impolitic the other day, and Adam had done the Searchlight Institute, had done a big piece of research about the political problems with Medicare for all. He's going to be easier for Mike Rogers. Now, it might be that because he's popular with the base, he can drive more turnout. But if I'm Mike Rogers and I'm thinking, who do I want to run against in this race? I'd rather run against. El Sayed has nothing to do with the fact that he hangs out with Hasan Piker or that he's a Muslim American, that he's a bunch of issues that I think are to the left of where the median voter is in the state of Michigan. And I think that that will be the big concern if El Sayed does pull this off, is that they've got themselves an electrifying candidate who also is just. There's this reporting in Politico playbook this morning who seems to be more interested in fighting with Democrats than he is in fighting with Republicans. You know, there's. He's kind of like, if I win this race, we're going to primary John Fetterman. You're like, why are you talking about primary John Fetterman rather than talking about beating Donald Trump and winning in, in the, in the general election? I just think these internecine fights among Democrats, like your priorities are kind of, kind of screwed up, if that's where your head's at when it comes to El Said.
- [48:27]
Bill Kristol
I think that's right. I think, don't you think if Stevens wins, let's leave aside the merits. I mean, I prefer on the merits, honestly, but still just on the electability thing, I think Democrats end up, they got lucky in Maine, honestly, and I think they end up with a pretty good slate of candidates in these key Senate races. I mean, if you just go one by one, it's kind of there's some older ones, some younger ones, some more establishment ones, some more, you know, sort of progressive ones. Boyd Cooper's a very different candidate from, I don't know, you know, from Haley Stevens or from Talarico. But really, if you just go Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Alaska, even Kansas, it looks like Montana maybe. But then also the key states that we've mentioned, they ended up, I mean, it's not perfect. When is it ever, though, in America, in politics? I mean, it's a pretty strong, I would say electorally and I would say even substantively slate and mostly youngish, which is good for the Democratic Party. It's good to look like Ossoff and Talarico and Haley Stevens, not like, you know, necessarily like, with all due respect to Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin and all these characters.
- [49:25]
John Heilman
So we should mention, of course, Troy Jackson became the formal nominee. And there's the early polling is heartening to Democrats who are thinking that maybe the platinum implosion will be the best thing that happened to them because his support was looking pretty soft. And Troy Jackson is. People have been saying for a while that a generic Democrat beats Susan Collins. The early polling suggests that he's got a two or three point lead even before he's really in the race there. So that's reason for Democrats to be cheerful. The one thing that is not a thing for Democrats to be cheerful about is the state of the national party. And I got to get this in just because Laura Egan from the Bulwark did a fabulous piece that broke a bunch of news about just how bad the financial situation is. The dnc, I could go on about this at great length. But, Bill, you look at Ken Martin and you think about, has that guy had a good news cycle since he became the chair of the dnc, the party's broke. They're using the headquarters as collateral on loans. There's a, like, literally, literally mortgaging the furniture over there. And of course, there's the autopsy and all the other things that he gets heat for. I mean, I guess my question is, do you think that that guy will survive? And do you think it matters?
- [50:35]
Bill Kristol
I mean, I'm inclined not to think it doesn't matter too much. People I know who are really in real politics think a little more worried about the money stuff than I do. I assume the money can go to the other committees and to, obviously these days, assuming super PACs and stuff and to the campaigns themselves and get spent probably just as well. There's some issues, I guess, to get a better rate if the DNC works for them and all that TV rate and all that stuff. But, yeah, I don't think it matters that much. The irony will be Martin will probably have done a horrible job. Then they'll win the House and the Senate. Can you dump the chairman after you win both houses? I guess you can, right? They probably should. Honestly. He really does seem unusually. You and I have seen many party chairmen who weren't great. He does seem unusually.
- [51:12]
John Heilman
Not good.
- [51:12]
Podcast Announcer
Yeah.
- [51:12]
John Heilman
The problem is that people say things like, well, you know, Rahm should do it, and you're kind of like, you know, I don't know, back in the day of Haley Barber at the RNC and Ron Brown at the dnc, when the parties were more powerful, you had serious people who wanted to be party chairs. Like, apart from the fact that Rahm is running for president, Rom would never want to be the chairman of the DNC again. I mean, maybe you could maybe convince, like, Terry McAuliffe, who doesn't seem like he's, like, overemployed right now, to come back in and raise some money for the party. But, like, part of the issue here is that, like, the chairman of the Republican Party, I had to look this up. Do you know who the chairman of the Republican Party is right now?
- [51:48]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, that's a good question. No.
- [51:50]
John Heilman
Yes. I ask you that question because I looked.
- [51:53]
Bill Kristol
Was it that guy from North Carolina? But isn't he running for something?
- [51:56]
John Heilman
No, it's now. The chairman of the Republican National Committee right now is a guy named Joe Grutters. Joe Grutters, who is a Florida state senator who Donald Trump likes a lot and is someone who, I guarantee you, not just me and not just you, but almost everybody who covers politics and lives this Stuff could not pick out of a lineup. This is a job that's been devalued to enormous, to enormous extent. And it's because the central parties, I mean, maybe in the wake of the Supreme Court decision about spending this parties will start to re build some power because they'll be able to direct funds in a different way. But man, this is not a job that a serious person wants anymore. And so, I mean, I don't know, I think, you know, unless the Democrats collapse completely and don't take control of either the House or Senate, I think if that happens, Ken Martin's out pretty quick. But if they take control of one or both can be very hard to get rid of that guy. The last thing on my list, Bill, for you is you did a conversation with an Epstein survivor over the weekend that I think is worth promoting. So why don't you just find this on the Bulwark site, talk a little bit about what that conversation was like and what you got out of it.
- [52:58]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, Bulwark on Sunday with Dandy Bensky. I mean, she really, I had seen clips of her and she testified against Blanche a week ago Thursday. And so you could see clips of that and people saw them and that she was on a couple of interviews afterwards and stuff. But I actually, it was really personally for me, kind of not just interesting, but moving. I mean, she was just so eloquent and herself, but obviously moved about the situation, about the general, of course, neglect of concern about the Epstein survivors. But about the rest, as she made the point, it's not just about them. You know, this isn't just about getting justice for them for what happened to them in the past with the truth out about them, it's for the future. If we're going to have the attitude that, oh well, I guess we're not going to investigate anyone. No one gets prosecuted. The whole thing gets washed under the, shoved under the rug. What does that say about going forward about our attitude towards these terrible crimes? And so she was very eloquent on that and very just impressive. I've interviewed, as you have many, many people over the years online and on podcasts and otherwise. And she was one of the most, most impressive that I've. That I've had the pleasure of talking with for over half an hour or so.
- [54:06]
John Heilman
Well, everybody should go take a look at that. Make sure you go and read Lauren Egan piece about the dnc. And actually, you know, Jonathan Cohn also has a piece about why that Gretchen Whitmer endorsement in Michigan might matter in a way that endorsements don't generally in this day and age because of Gretchen Whitmer's not just being a two term governor, but also she's still sitting, I think her approval rank still north of 50%, which is, you know, almost unheard of for either party at this point given people's unhappiness in general and their disdain for all elected officials in both parties. Bill Kristol, it's great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for everybody here at the Bulwark. Thanks for having me on. Hopefully I haven't totally destroyed the franchise and it'll still be left standing for when Tim returns from wherever the hell he is. The Bork Podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of Lead Producer Katie Cooper, Associate Producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown warning the following ZipRecruiter radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words when you're hiring.
- [55:27]
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- [56:03]
Bill Kristol
Fantastic.
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