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- [00:01]
A
This week on a special episode of WebMD's Health Discovered podcast, we're taking a closer look at a common form of lung cancer that accounts for 85% of all cases. When I first heard the words you have lung cancer, I was in shock. It's a diagnosis that changes everything. So what does it really mean to advocate for yourself when you're living with non small cell lung cancer? Listen to Health discovered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want, like all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha chings from every channel right in one spot. And turn real time reporting into big time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to SH Shopify. Start your free trial today. Hello everyone and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark and I'm sitting in for my good buddy Tim Miller. I didn't have my pearls today, but I'm going to try this hat for just a minute actually. Bill, what do you think of the hat?
- [01:28]
B
Excellent. But you look better. You look better in it than Tim Miller. I'm going to just say that for the record. But you can take it off. You can take it off now.
- [01:35]
A
You can take it off now. The bit's over. Okay, well, just because I am sitting in for Tim, since he is. Nobody works anymore, Bill. No one works anymore. These kids.
- [01:46]
B
Except for us, you know, I mean, except for us. I know, I know.
- [01:49]
A
But just because you don't have Tim doesn't mean you don't get Bill Crystal. Bill Crystal's here to join me after a while. Action packed, news filled weekend. So many things happen. In fact, Monday hasn't slowed down one bit. We have this morning Donald Trump posting himself as Jesus. He is in a hot war with the Pope. America has now closing itself the Strait of Hormuz. And most importantly. And where I want to start is with the big election in Hungary where Viktor Orban yesterday was defeated resoundingly. Resoundingly. And for people who maybe at a macro level say, I know Orban's a bad guy and I'm glad he lost, but maybe they don't understand all of the implications both for Europe and for us. So I thought, Bill, I'd just turn it over to you and let you set the stage for why yesterday's election was so important.
- [02:48]
B
Happy to. And it was important and I found it exciting and moving really. When you saw the scenes from Budapest and elsewhere in Hungary and read about everything that had happened to make this possible. I, I do think it's. We're living in a new world. Right. I was at this long scheduled kind of social get together yesterday afternoon and evening and checking my phone constantly for updates on the Hungarian returns. Looking at this one website that had me too, and I don't speak Hungarian, needless to say, but luckily they had like the colors. You could see the blue dots increasing on the, in the, in the assembly, in the Hungarian parliament and, and actually getting over two thirds, which was important. So Orban's been in Power since 2010. He's been the model of what he called illiberal democracy. He used that term proudly way back 2011, 2012, something like that. And it became a kind of an inspiration and a calling card for authoritarians around the world, including here, Famaga for Trump World Bannon and people like that close to him. Various American conservative right wingers went to Hungary and set up camp there. Obviously as recently as this last week, JD Vance went to Hungary and had a big rally with, with Orban. So, you know, it's a small country and I, you got to be careful obviously about extrapolating the results too, too literally, almost. But the fact that he lost overwhelmingly, having really consolidated power, suppressed opposition media. Imagine Trump in power for like 10 years doing what he's doing today. So it's not just CBS News and, and X that are controlled, but it's everything except the bulwark, basically a couple of websites and it's the. Every business is in know, kind of in league with him, not just some of them and so forth. So the fact that the Hungarian people were able to do what they did is really inspiring. And it seems like it's going to hold. It was such an overwhelming victory. Orban's. Orban did a lot of things to monkey with the elections, but it didn't end up mattering. It doesn't look like huge defeat for Putin. Orban, also within the eu has been one of the main apologists for Putin, has stopped certain actions against Putin. And so that's important, I think. Yeah. So really a defeat for global illiberalism and authoritarianism and a real inspiration. And I think the one thing I will say is I just highest regard for the Hungarian people for pulling this off. I mean, I'm old enough to remember, you know, 1989, obviously the fall of the Berlin Wall. Very exciting. And Americans, many friends of mine, went over to Central and Eastern Europe to try to help them set up, you know, a functioning democracy. And they did, I mean, a lot of them did good things and they helped, I think, get things going there. And many of those places are still very functioning democracies. Hungary was a failure in this case, so maybe now get a success story. But it's the opposite here we can really learn from what they did. And I think we have to have real humility and sort of abandon our usual, we're Americans, we're the place with the 250 year old democracy. And these other places are struggling to kind of imitate us. We now have to try to imitate what the Hungarian people have done and what the movement that Peter Magyar led has, has accomplished.
- [05:47]
A
Yeah, let's talk about some of, some of that because of course I basically learned all about Hungarian politics in, you know, the last week or so and started going deep on it. And one of the things about the opposition, Petyar Magyar. Is that how you pronounce his name?
- [06:02]
B
I think so. Peter. Yeah, Petar. Yeah, Peter, whatever they say in Hungarian. But yes, is.
- [06:07]
A
He was.
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B
You can call him Pete. You can call him Pete. He's our buddy, you know, but he
- [06:11]
A
was basically a, a version of a never Trumper. Right. He was sort of a center right. He used to be in Orban's party, was an actual Orbanist for a period of time who then joined the opposition party and began to lead it. That was an interesting wrinkle to me because one of the things that I think people who are looking at this for the first time might not know is they might assume that Magyar is the, is the liberal opposition candidate, but he is not. He's sort of a center right who also was tough on immigration, but he is somebody who believes in liberal democracy. And so it's not a straightforward analogy to sort of the Democrats rising up in America. So can you talk about that a little?
- [06:51]
B
No, I think that's, that's as I understand it, also having learned much more about Hungarian politics the last week. That's very true. But I, I knew people who were in touch with sort of old fashioned liberals, good people. People have been fighting Orban for 10 years in Hungary and there, there was a little touch of resentments too strong, but like a little, you know, irony in the fact that he is the leader and he will be now the of Hungary president, like I said of Hungary, and not one of the sort of people who stood up to Orban the longest. But Magyar certainly broke with Orban and he did so decisively. I think that's really important to say. So he's a little more like the Never Trumpers. I mean, he's more like Liz Cheney in the sense that she went along with Trump longer than we did. Didn't fake till January 6th. I mean, I think Orban may be a little more like that. It would be as if Nikki Haley and Mike Pence had. I was trying to think of a good analogy, you know, had sort of turned against Trump and run against him, but then really turned, stayed against him and become the leader of the opposition instead of in the Nikki Haley's case, endorsing Trump in 2024 and Pence's case, going off to do whatever, you know, within the Republican Party. But I mean, one forgets Orban had been a Democrat. Orban. I met Orban back in the late 90s, early 2000s. He was a real star of the. Had been as a very young man of the Hungarian democratic opposition. After he lost one race to a populist and I think 2004, he totally flipped and became a. Became what he. What he became, which was embrace the populism, the nativism and all that sort of stuff. And then Putin, as Putin was rising too. The left in Hungary deserves a lot of credit for going along with Magyar as the leader again. It would be as if the entire Democratic Party gets decided to support Liz Cheney or a, you know, more outspoken Mike Pence or something in 2024 or 2028 for that matter, or maybe Adam Kinzinger, if so slightly less shocking example. And they did. Magyar is a very talented politician, clearly. And that's also reminds her that just pure talent, you know, and talent, but also a vision of building a movement, not just a party. People I talk to. And we have a piece on the website this morning in morning shots by David Baer, who's covered Hungry for Us and has been way ahead of the curve. He thought Oran was in trouble a year ago when people thought it's impossible. Anyway, David has an excellent piece making the point. Magyar saw himself as leading a social movement. And when you see those videos, it is right. It's tens of thousands of people in city after city and small towns, even in Hungary, embracing Magyar. He channeled a lot of the historic opposition to Russia way back to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which was obviously crushed by the Soviet Union and used some of the chants from that era, some of the slogans from that era to turn against Orban and against Orban's subservience to Putin. So they used social media and you know, non print media, non traditional media, which they don't, didn't have any access to in Hungary very, very effectively. So probably a lot of lessons there both for in the sense of Magyar being the leader, but also everyone agreeing to consolidate behind him, which I again, I give the left credit. It was, it was a bitter pill for them to swallow. Magyard didn't, I think he's fine on, is fine on democracy and I think he's fine on the basic issues of tolerance and civil rights. But he didn't make a big issue of some of the stuff that the left and people like us honestly would have in the US Made a big issue of with very different circumstances. And he didn't run away from it. He just didn't make it this the center of his appeal and ran a very broad based campaign that made a lot of conservatives who had voted for Orban in the past. And think about the swing, you work on this all the time, persuasion, not just mobilization. It was a high turnout election. So there was some mobilization of people who hadn't voted before. But you get a swing like this where you're talking 30 points or something, you're getting a huge large number of people who had voted for Orban before feeling comfortable voting for Magyar.
- [10:37]
A
Yeah, I mean some of the things that I read about what Magyar did to me were just fascinating examples of how you do this. Number one, like you said, Orban controls the media. And I do, I do want to draw some comparisons to the United States because it is fair to say, and we're going to get to JD Vance in a minute, but it's very fair to say that the Trump administration is actively following a lot of the Orban playbook. Like I think Hungary, like CPAC went to Hungary. The, the conservative right has been observing what Orban has been doing. And I would say Project 2025 was very urbanist in, in what it was trying to accomplish. But one of the things that Magyar did was he started in 2024, so a couple of years ago and because they had shut down like a free press, he went in person all over the country. He was just, he went everywhere, especially to rural areas and spoke to them directly. And I, I think that about the fact that Trump is of course buying up the information infrastructure. He and his allies selling TikTok, CBS, Washington Post, like if you watch that, it is very Reminiscent. But we still have a lot more access to opposition media here in this country. I mean, by a million times. So how did he do it without access to the media? He did it like hand to hand combat. He went everywhere and made the case and, and brought people over to his side. And I think that that is, it's almost like an energy thing. It's the ability to say if, if it really depends on it. Here's what I'm going to do. It's shoe leather, it's going, it's meeting people, it's making the explanation. That level of leadership is really something. You don't have to travel far to lend a helping hand. When neighbors help neighbors, hope can blossom. And when hope blossoms, families and whole communities thrive. And one of my favorite things about the Bulwark community is how you all show up when there is a need in the world. The dedicated staff and volunteers of the Catholic Charities Network believe a neighbor isn't just someone who lives nearby or down the block. It's someone who shows up and sticks around across distance or discomfort. It's the one who acts with compassion, who follows through and carries on in the moments of need. For more than a century, the Catholic Charities Network, with 169 agencies nationwide, has served communities across the country and down the street, no matter beliefs or differences, whether it's through housing, food, disaster relief, job training, or simply listening. Because when you faithfully serve as a neighbor, the life you change could be your own. Be the hope around the corner in your neighborhood nationwide. Learn more and volunteer at People of Hope Us. When I was also reading about it, I was staggering to me the extent to which the chips were stacked in favor of Orban. It's not just that they had the media, it's not just that they had the courts. They also had Putin and J.D. vance. So, and let's talk about J.D. vance because this is where not only has the Trump administration been following the Orban playbook, but they actively decided to, to go and campaign for Viktor Orban. J.D. vance went there. Bill, talk about what level of defeat this is for Trump and for J.D. vance.
- [14:00]
B
Yeah, I mean Trump I guess did a few posts about it and had welcomed Orban earlier at Mar A Lago, as I recall, just a few months ago. But yeah, they sending Vance. Rubio was there, I guess, right after Vance this week and explicitly endorsing Orban, rallying with him. There's a photo of the two of them holding their arms up together and so forth. In the old days when there was A sort of liberal versus authoritarian type referendum. You could sort of assume the US Was probably on the side of the liberals, implicitly would be on their side and maybe a little bit of help. Now it's the opposite, right? I mean, the people of Hungary repudiated both Putin and Trump and Orvan. It's pretty impressive and as you say, without many levers of power at their disposal. So they certainly used the ones they had. I hope it has a big effect. I think it'll have an effect in Europe. I mean, obviously there's been many countries that are teetering between the populist authority, authoritarians on the one hand, and liberal democrats in the broad sense of liberal and democrat on the other. They've since back and forth in some of these countries, Poland, Slovakia, elsewhere, Czech Republic. And so I, this has got to make other people think, hey, if the Hungarians can, can go down this path, we can too. And I hope it makes Americans think that. I do think. You know, I kind of feel like, geez, if Hungarians can repudiate Trump advance, can't we repudiate Trump Advance? Kind of easier for us, as you say, we're not, not as nearly as far down the road to authoritarianism as they are, and we have a long tradition, a much longer tradition of liberal democracy than Hungary. So, yeah, I don't want to overstate it. Obviously, there are many zigs and zags in the fight against authoritarianism, and many countries have gone, you know, the right direction, then others have gone in the long direction. Bolsonaro lost in Brazil that other people have won. You know, it's been a very much of a mixed bag in the last several years. This was such a explicit referendum. He was the, one of the first, one of the first of the illiberal democrats and as you say, so prominently hailed by all these Trumpists and MAGA types in the US That I think it's a little more significant than maybe just, you know, sort of different elections that have gone back and forth around the world.
- [16:02]
A
Yeah, I mean, Bill, when you and I were starting out in our Trump opposition, right, you and I were the OGs together, and we were, you know, working ourselves up about what we could do. And we started going, you know, trying to learn more about the environment. It's when I started doing focus groups. But it was also, I think, when it was, I realized just how much Trump was part of a global phenomenon at the time. In large part, I think at its most basic level, there's all kinds of things that feed into this. But at its most basic level, it seemed to be a bit of an authoritarian backlash against mass migration to a lot of different countries. Right. And including ours. I do wonder now if, you know, we're 10 years on here, they were 16 years on in Hungary, because, remember, these are people who voted for Orban in the first place, just the way people here voted for Trump. But, but the economic stagnation that is basically post Covid, that caused the inflationary environment that ended up getting Joe Biden. Right. He was part of the incumbent wave, where sort of all the incumbents lost in that post Covid inflationary environment. Is it possible, though, that we are at the beginning of a global backlash to the competitive authoritarianism of. Of Orban that is basically like, okay, we tried you guys out, you authoritarians, and actually all we got for it was a ton of corruption. Which, by the way, that is another lesson I would really like to point out. I think in this country, this is also what happened in Russia, like the way that you could get at a lot of these leaders and Trump, this is another place where he borrows the playbook almost exactly, which is how to be completely corrupt and give everything out to your buddies and enrich them and enrich yourself. But is it possible that this is a beginning of a global backlash against these corrupt authoritarians?
- [17:54]
B
Yeah, I mean, for one thing, as you said, it's harder to be an authoritarian in power than to be a demagogue out of power. And Trump has twice defeated incumbent parties, the Democrats in 2016 and then 2024. And now, having been elected, he's now unpopular again, and they're going to have a big defeat, I think, in 2026, assuming it's free and fair election. So, you know, I think it's just harder to govern. And they get blamed for their poor policies, which genuinely, in Orban's case and in Trump's, this is a good, I think, comparison, are poor policies. That is, people had the sense that Orban's policies were hurting them. It wasn't just that, you know, globalization and technology, that could also become a grievance. And that could be a legitimate grievance in some cases, and it certainly could be demagogues, as Trump has shown and others have shown. But this was particular policies Orban was pursuing that were just. Hungarians could look across the borders to Romania and to other countries and say, well, those countries are doing okay in the last 15 years, years, again, whatever their internal issues, like we have with manufacturer, I suppose, with distribution of wealth and so forth. But basically, the Living standards have going up and not so much in Hungary. Population's been decreasing. So I think the degree. There's a good comparison there with some of Trump's policies, I think. But I think your point about the global character of it is really important. I mean, it turned out in retrospect that Brexit summer of 2016 was a real harbinger of Trump. Right. I mean, the global populist movement was going to start winning some victories. And Brexit was a close thing in Britain. And Trump's victory opposite in 2016 was very close and somewhat flukish, even in the electoral college in the U.S. but people like. And this made me think about the 70s, which you weren't born yet, but it really helped us young Reaganites. It helps give us a sense that the wind was at our back and sort of momentum was on our side. When Thatcher won in 79 in Britain. And then this is a bit of a stretch, but Pope John Paul took over in, I think, the end of 79 and went to Poland. And he was a great anti communist. So if you were a young anti communist, you had a rough time with Vietnam and the mid-70s and Carter and all the defeats, and suddenly there was a sense of, no, you know what, you can fight back. And suddenly it's like, I don't know, maybe Thatcher's the wave of the future, not Jimmy Carter or not sort of, you know, having to kind of accede to communism in a sort of detent Henry Kissinger way and not to torture this analog, this comparison too much. But I think, I think they benefited on the right from the sense that neoliberalism was the way of the future. Don't you think we were the ones sort of defending the old institutions and the old ways? I think we were right. The world is better off with those with the post World War II order. But we were kind of playing defense and you tried. And we tried to turn the defense into offense. But it helps to have the sense that it's happening elsewhere. I do think Hungary is not Britain. It's a smaller country and less connected to us, obviously. And the Pope analogy is pretty good incidentally, though, right? I mean, having a pope who sort of is speaking for what you believe and also came out of nowhere, right? I mean, John Paul was the first, first non Italian pope in 400 years, I think, and then the first American pope. So some of these analogies are a little. Are kind of striking. And again, I do think it just helps practically, for all the people say Americans don't care about the world. And there's some truth to that. You want to have a sense that you're in sync with some other people elsewhere in the world, you know?
- [21:09]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think there's the wind at the back point. I also just think, you know, that jbl, our great friend JVL and I have this talk a lot. And when he's doing dark JVL and he's feeling especially bleak, one of the things he's always hitting me with is Sarah Howard, we going to rebuild after this? How do we ever get back to something after we've cratered our credibility and we've destroyed so many of these institutions? And by the way, there in Hungary, they did a very similar thing to Doge, right, where they got rid of all their, the people who ran their, their institutions. And it's a tough thing to look at what's happening in America and think, well, how do we get back to this thing that we used to be, right, where we had a clear sense of who we were and our role in the world. And I just think Hungary is a little bit, bit of a slice of hope against that that you can now, to be fair, I don't want to overstate it. Just like you, you know, we are, this guy just won. Then we. He says he's going to go dismantle many of the illiberal things that that Orban has done. But we'll see. And obviously America and Hungary are quite different. The impact of our role in the world is deeply different. The fact that we've betrayed our values with Trump is like, it has just a much bigger impact on everybody else. So they're not one to one comparisons, but I should and I'd like it to. It gave me, gave me hope. What I like about it for America is to see what it means to have people who once voted for Orban, once supported Orban, turn on him aggressively and to see that, that there's this sense in America that we are so polarized and of course we are, that something like this could never happen. But I think history moves on, right? These guys become the old guys. I mean, I'll just take. Just because we're talking about two things here, but Trump posting a picture of himself today as Jesus, not being held by Jesus, not as the Pope, not earthly figures, which he has done in the past because he is a narcissistic lunatic. But today he posted a picture of himself as Jesus and the evangelical community is up in arms and there is a little bit of Me that wants to say, oh, did you notice that he's a terrible person. Is that something that you're just waking up to? Good morning. Welcome to the party palace. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that part of why you're seeing such an enormous backlash against this. This is everywhere today, the fact that Trump did this, and lots of evangelicals who normally are very supportive of Trump are really upset about it. I don't think that they would be as willing to criticize Trump the way that they are today if Trump weren't flailing to some degree, if people didn't feel like the winds are shifting a bit and this is what can happen. The winds start to shift, people realize the guy's a lame duck. They realize he's failing at his job. He realized that the people that they called names going into the last election were correct, and they're starting to move to get on the right side. And that is how things shift. I don't know if you agree with that. I'm just making a statement now, but yeah, no, totally.
- [24:07]
B
And I mean, and sadly, I mean, you've been tracking this very closely. People have moved against Trump. I mean, again, if you want to think of the analogy here, I mean, Orban lost X percentage. I don't know exact numbers of his supporters. He had been in, I think, 160% or something in 50 in the 50s, certainly in 2022 in the last election. And now this election, he gets maybe a lot more like 40% of the popular vote. It's a little hard to figure that out, actually, for the way that's very complicated electoral system they have. But anyway, and Trump himself got almost 50% in 2024 and is now at, I don't know, 39%. I saw on the CBS you got poll, which is a pretty mainstream poll, I'd say not usually a terribly bad one for Trump, actually.
- [24:46]
A
No. And they're all hovering and they're all H at 40.
- [24:49]
B
Yeah, 50 to 40 is a pretty quick drop. I mean, it's not that different for. Or, I mean, he'd have to go down another, you know, 10 points to your favorite 32%, you know, Bush number to really be in Orban territory, I guess. But. But incidentally, the Orban drop also came late. The real collapse came as the momentum built, which is another hopeful sign perhaps of 2026 or 2028, or maybe we already have that momentum now, I guess, don't you think, with him flailing. I feel like these things do become a Little self reinforced people. They do somewhat. Once you see some of your peers deserting Trump and also saying, you know what, he's flailing, then somehow it's not like you and me have been saying it for years. It's like, oh, okay, I guess I can say that too, right? I do think that's happening a bit now.
- [25:30]
A
Those are those pesky permission structures I always talk about with the voters. I've got a quick word from our sponsor, Delete Me. Deleteme makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. With Delete Me, you can protect your personal privacy or the privacy of your business from doxing attacks before sensitive information can be exploited. The New York Times wirecutter has named Delete Me their top pick for data removal services. It's easier than ever to find personal information about people online. Having your address, phone number and family members names hanging out on the Internet can have actual consequences in the real world and make everyone vulnerable. I'm always thinking about this. I think anyone with a public profile has a lot of this on their mind. But no matter who you are, I think good digital hygiene is super important. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your delete Me plan when you go to join deleteme.com bulwark and use promo code bulwark b u l W A R K at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com bulwark code bulwark. Thanks, DeleteMe. Speaking of the 2028 elections, I want to talk about J.D. vance a little bit because not only did J.D. vance go campaign for Orban, as we just discussed, so therefore put his stamp all over the defeat, the Trump administration's stamp all over the defeat. In fact, I was, I was gratified to see that it appeared that when he went there and, and gave his speech, it actually caused Orban's approval to drop. It actually caused his polling to drop. So JD Vance really does have seem to have the sort of the kiss of death, especially this weekend. He's having a particularly embarrassing stretch after being somebody who, you know, was gonna be like the no more stupid wars. We're never doing these things in the Middle east now to have to Sort of drag Trump's war around with him, number one. Number two, the Orban defeat. And then number three, Trump was like, hey, I'm going to a UFC fight with Marco Rubio. Hey, J.D. vance, you go deal with the Iranians and do that negotiating in Pakistan. And you know, he comes out on. I don't know if it was Saturday morning or it was Friday night, but it was basically like, yeah, no deal. We couldn't get one. Turns out, actually, this stuff's hard. Turns out if you just start a war and negotiate later, it gets hard. What did you make of them sending J.D. vance of the failure of J.D. vance? And also, this has led us directly to the fact that now the Strait of Hormuz once again is completely locked down. And I don't know where things are going this week, but we very well could be in a hot war again any minute.
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B
Well, just to begin with, the least important thing, I suppose, which is the going to the cage matches with Rubio. I had a bull work on Sunday yesterday. Sarah Matthews, our colleague and former deputy press secretary in 2020 to Trump, who therefore knows Trump much better than we do and knows the Trump White House. It still talks to people who talk to people, to people who are there. I asked her on World Work on Saturday yesterday, did Rubio invite himself to that or how does it work? I mean, does Trump invite you or do you sort of angle for an invitation? And she said, well, people are always angling, of course, to be close to Trump and invite him. But no Trump, Trump in this respect. Trump knows what he's doing. Right? Trump wanted to have Rubio. He didn't have to have rocker Rubio. I mean, you don't think. I don't think UFC championship fights, I don't think Marco Rubio is the obvious guy to have. There are a million other people in Trump's orbit who are kind of feel like that stuff better probably. But he's wanted to toy with Vance somehow and maybe have Rubio there. I don't know which is more insulting, that you're the Secretary of State and you're at some match in Miami and not at. At running the most important negotiations that the Trump administration has been engaged in yet in foreign policy. Maybe it's a consolation prize for Rubio, but maybe it's also sticking it to Vance a little bit and Trump playing kind of cute games with Vance and Rubio and so forth. Trump's certainly capable of that. But I mean, on the substance, I mean, they are flailing. They didn't reach the deal they had hoped to reach, the ceasefire, I guess, is still holding on the other. And Trump then announces he's closing the strait. It's a little unclear who he's closing it to and how we're going to enforce this, but oil prices promptly went up about 10 bucks. I think overnight. Edwyger has a good piece on this and warning shots. I mean, the flailing, the back and forth now has gotten ridiculous. The one thing he doesn't want to do, I do think this is. He may still change his mind, of course, is sending ground troops. I mean, all the bombing, the closing of the strait, are all ways of avoiding sending in ground troops to really try to destabilize the regime or to really guarantee the opening of the strait. I'm not for sending in ground troops. I have no trouble trust that these guys could do it competently. And I'm against. The whole war has been so misconceived. I'm against making it even bigger, don't get me wrong. But this is sort of a box Trump's got himself into, and I don't know quite where it goes. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm worried because it always could escalate. I had a good conversation last night with Pete Wehner, our friend, who has been very interested in the psychology of Trump more than I have. I've been a little, I'd say probably not interested enough in it, because I just sort of think it can be a bit of a distraction and we should just focus on the, you know, levers of power and the sort of the fight, and not so much on analyzing him, which is a little bit of an endless rabbit hole. But I've got to say, Pete's been good on this, and some of our colleagues have been good on this. Pete made the point that he's pretty worried, and I am that. Just as Trump gets frustrated and more desperate and watches the polls going down and the Iranians not doing what he wants, and Orban losing, the lashing out can get more and more dangerous. I mean, the destabilization of his own psyche, whatever one thought of him in the past. And God knows there was plenty of destabil, plenty of terrible, terrible things. One also sort of thought that he was canny in a way and a little bit pulled back from the brink of doing really catastrophic things for himself, for the country. He kind of knew that, you know, those would not help him, even if only for his own personal self interest. But I don't know. What do you think about that? I mean, how wor. I mean, how worried should we be just about the personal kind of meltdown and unhinging of Trump?
- [31:54]
A
I would worry about it a great deal. I mean, and I even think like last night when he, in the middle of the night, he kept posting and posting and one of them was this thing of Trump as Jesus. I mean, he said, and these long screeds against the Pope. I mean, I don't know, in any other time in American politics, don't you think everyone would say, I'm sorry, he's lost his mind and this is really scary. Why is the President of the United States, who is in the middle of this negotiation for this insane war that he started without Congress, he doesn't go himself. He hosts this enormous UFC fighter, goes and takes Marco Rubio, whatever. The one place where Donald Trump is still going to get an unreservedly warm reception, probably a UFC fight, if that is the case. It's cute playing them off each other. It's Trump playing mind games with Vance and Rubio. Well, that in itself is an insane thing to be doing with American foreign policy. And you're right, though. I also looked at it and I was like, I don't know who. He's like, who's getting the shaft here in this. Is it, is it Vance? Because Trump's like, I'm going to take Rubio with me. Vance, you go handle this horrible thing over here. That is a, that is a total catastrophic mess that I've made. And also that you were the one person against and now you're leaking to people that you're against it, or is it. No, Marco, I'm going to let J.D. handle this. Even though your Secretary of State and maybe the only person in my cabinet who has any legitimate experience, you know, I mean, because what they're going to send Trump builder Buddy Witkoff and his son in law, neither of whom, both of whom have conflicts in the Middle east, who, who actively make money or lose money, depending on what happens over there. So, like, those are not our best negotiators. And so that he sends those three advance. That's a strange choice. Anyway, I just didn't know what to make of all of it. All I did know is that when gas is seven bucks, Remember that picture of Trump at the UFC fight, fight with Marco Rubio? I mean, here's what's happening with voters. It's very simple. They do not tolerate the price increases on gas, at least not for any length of time. And over and over now with swing voters and even With Trump voters. The episode I released this weekend with Amy Walter, that was a group of two and three time Trump voters, all of whom are extremely down on Trump and horrified by what's happening and frustrated that prices are still going up. Which by the way, just to take it back really quickly to Peter Magyar, he ran on health care, affordability and education, like that's what he ran on. And, and really on, on affordability and prices. Because that's what people are frustrated about. They didn't want this war.
- [34:32]
B
No, I think that's right. I mean, with Magyar, I think he ran on all those particular issues to make clear he was in touch with people's concrete frustrations against the backdrop of a broader can't go down this path of being Putin's lap dogs and being, you know, alienated from Europe and, and not being a freedom democratic nation. So I think he did a good job of combining kind of the, let's call it the broad liberal democracy message, but making clear that that was not at the expense of caring an awful lot about and being very attuned to people's very concrete concerns and then trying to tie them together. Because of course, for Hungary, being at odds with the EU has practical consequences. The Trump sort of decompensation or whatever is scary, I think. I mean, honestly, in another world, if we had a non maniac as Secretary of Defense and a non toady as Secretary of State and a serious person as chief of staff and stuff, they would be privately calling the congressional leadership and saying, you know what, you guys need to start impeachment proceedings, removing proceedings here. And we're going to be, we're not going to say anything publicly. We're working for this guy. But we'll, we'll keep things under control here as much as we can. They'd be calling the military and saying, we want you to check things with us. If he ever calls you directly, as happened at the late, very late stage of Nixon. I mean, none of these guys is doing that, which is one reason why it is genuinely scary moment, I think.
- [35:48]
A
Yeah, I think the scariest part is, is that the two mechanisms that we have at our disposal in america are the 25th amendment and impeachment. And I've seen a lot of renewed calls for the 25th Amendment, including from some on the right. It makes sense. Right, because people are watching him decompensate in real time and it's starting to freak people out, including people as part of his own coalition. But unlike the first go round, Trump 1.0 where you had a cabinet that could potentially, you could potentially convince of 25th Amendment even. Now, of course they, they didn't. And, and we really only heard them talking about it in the wake of January 6th. But you're just not going to get this Cabinet, anyone in this cabinet, to, to do anything close to the 25th Amendment. You know, the impeachment failures of the last two, I think make impeachment a pretty unlikely. Like, people are like, I've seen this movie before, it's not even the voters don't like impeachment. They're just like, what's the point?
- [36:44]
B
But even before you get to the 25th Amendment again, which makes it even scarier, is we do know as a fact that from especially after November, after election day in 2020, the Justice Department, Bill Barr, Vice President, United States Mike Pence, Secretary of Defense Mark Esprit was then fired. But other people at Defense who were still in touch with him, General Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, they did a lot to stop Trump from doing things that he wanted to do.
- [37:07]
A
That's right.
- [37:07]
B
Overturn the election. Right. I mean, we focus on January 6th itself, the date. But of course, those two months were very, very, very important. And Liz Cheney was involved behind the scenes and that's when she really broke, obviously in a totally decisive way with Trump and they organized that secretary's, former secretary's defense letter. Anyway, a lot of things happened within the government to provide some guardrails against Trump. None of that is happening. So you got a Republican Party controlling Congress that hasn't yet broken in any significant way with Trump and a Cabinet that isn't doing anything even behind the scenes to check him and he's decompensated. Yeah, that's not good.
- [37:42]
A
I do think that there's some incredibly on the nose irony about Trump and Rubio going to watch two, like, greased up, shirtless men beat the crap out of each other and they're like, see, this is what Alphas do while there's an actual war that America is like teetering on the brink of, is in and out of that is affecting us domestically. But it's like, no, we're gonna go watch like greased up men beat each other up. We're not gonna go do like our foreign policy.
- [38:12]
B
You know, it's a good point. I hadn't really thought about just the visual. I mean, I say things of when I was in the White House ages and ages ago, what would have if they were in the middle of foreign policy, crisis in a war and you aren't going to literally like go to the front, let's say. And what would you do? Well, you would visit troops here.
- [38:26]
A
Yeah.
- [38:27]
B
You'd visit the people. You'd visit families here, maybe of the soldiers who were deployed over there. You'd visit one of the bases from which the soldiers or sailors had deployed and you'd sort of thank them from their home base and talking to their bob buddies who are still here or getting ready to deploy. There are many places Donald Trump could go and take Rubio or Hegseth with him. That would be appropriate, you might say. Last weekend. Yeah, a UFC fight maybe.
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C
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- [40:51]
B
Because our American Pope is pretty traditional Catholic teachings about preferring peace to war and so forth. And I guess because he's American or. I don't know, because it's having an effect. I mean, this is a question. Does he have reason to believe. Are people telling him it's kind of an actual practical political problem for him that the Pope is saying these things? He may well be. He is the first American Pope, after all. He's saying them in English. It's so striking to me. One is so used to watching, watching popes speak Italian, basically, or I guess in John. Well, even in John Paul's case, I think he'd speak Italian when he spoke to the kind of papal press corps, you know, abroad the plane and here you see little clips and it's like the guy's speaking like English, not just English. He sounds like a guy from Chicago. It is kind of a little. I'm still not really used to that, I gotta say, you know, and. But I guess it has much more effect back here. I call him the Bulwark Pope too, but I can't remember what the origin of that is, apart from the fact that we like him and we think he might be kind of where we are and being sort of conservative. Ish. But. But anti Trump. But I mean, why do we call him the Bulwark Pope?
- [41:53]
A
I think it's exactly that. I think he's got. He's got like a MAGA brother who Trump's always truthing and being like his brother, loves Trump and so he's better. And this Pope is, you know, I think, like us, just a normal guy who previously kind of had some center right cultural ways or center, different center right positions, who, who also though, believes in liberalism and human flourishing and taking each life seriously and not demonizing different groups of people. And as a result, he finds himself in that very weird sweet spot of bulwark. Those of us at the Bulwark. But Trump hates him the same way Trump hates particularly never Trumpers. But to me, what's interesting about. Well, there's a lot about it that's interesting. Some of it is again, goes to decompensation and also so Trump clearly feeling under siege in a lot of different areas. But part of it is like J.D. vance, and I do think J.D. vance is really the through line of so many of these stories. Right. J.D. vance. This is a meme on social media that is just a little bit Funny about JD Vance being a cooler, you know, like the last Pope he went and visited and then the Pope died and then he went to Hungary and campaigned with Orban and Orban gets crushed and then he goes to Islamabad, Pakistan to negotiate and we find ourselves back in a war. Like this is not a talented guy. And so, but the Catholic piece, you know, he's J. Vance has a book out right now, his second book following Hillbilly Elegy, and it's all about his conversion to Catholicism. I don't know if I could have imagined a series of events lining up so clearly to ensure that JD Vance doesn't have a political future. To have an American pope actively dislike JD Vance, number one. Number two, JD Vance to run as an anti war president, while he's gotta now carry around Trump's foreign adventurism, stupid Middle east war, and also just getting into a place where like voters just don't like him. People have the stink of a loser all over him by the time he tries to run in 2028. What is your assessment of the political prospects of one JD Vance?
- [44:11]
B
From Eurolips to God's ears. God knows who will end up as the nominee without Vance. I don't think it's going to be Rubio. I think it'll be someone even could be someone more extreme. I mean, when these movements break apart, when these authoritarian movements break apart, they go in very unpredictable and different directions. Different parts of them go in different directions. Some will be more radical, some will be more fanatical, some will be, well, you got to get back to some version of normalcy. We've got to go outside of politics. We got to Trump family. I mean, God knows where they, where they go. It's funny, we've been talking, though, about this. I just, there's been so much news the last three days. Melania Trump, that was kind of a big event. I haven't talked to you about it. I mean, we haven't talked even about it. So I just want to get your. I discussed it at some length with, I think a good conversation with Sarah Matthews, who had real insight, obviously has insight into her, into how that works in the White House. How does the first lady end up giving a speech in the cross hall wall of the White House, which just to be clear is that's where presidents give major speeches from. It's where Trump gave his Iran speech from the week before. Standing at that podium. We've all seen the image. You walk down that red carpet to come to the podium there with A seal of the President on the lectern, which is supposed to be used for the president, with all due respect to the First Lady. And then she arranges to give a five and a half minute speech about where would she defend herself against charges of having been no exception, what Epstein was up to and so forth, without defending her husband at all. I don't know. What is that? Just. I mean, that's got to be another example of something Trump isn't very happy with and a bit of a meltdown in general in Trump world. I don't know. What do you. What do you make of it?
- [45:41]
A
Yeah, I mean, I didn't talk about you. I did jbl and I did talk about it, I think on secret. But my general assessment, just as like from a communications matter, when you look at that, the obvious thing is, okay, so she's trying to get ahead of something. There's a story that's about to come out. I actually thought it was going to come out this weekend. I assumed it would. Now, I did see one explanation, or I would say that the explanation that seems to be out there is that her best friend, Melania's longtime best friend, had like, her husband as a Trump friend, and they got divorced and so the husband tried to have her deported. So she's kind of in a rage state, ready to tell all. Now, that may or may not be true, I don't know. But something there is. You don't do something like that, that without. Especially. One of the things that seems so strange about it is it doesn't. It's not clear it was sanctioned by Trump or that Trump even knew it was going to happen. And I didn't hear what Sarah Matthews said about the actual internal machinations, but the level of tight control around narratives like that from Trump, from the White House, like that is a rogue move. So you gotta think something else is coming. You know, now he's fired Bondi, he's looking for a new person in that role. I mean, look, you want to be so careful about saying the walls are closing in, the wheels are coming off. You know, you think about Orban. I thought a lot about this with orban, with like 16 years he was there. Like, there were clearly times when people thought, you can't beat him. Right? There's no way. But, you know, time goes on and people do get tired and events do matter. Like Joe Biden been lost for a lot of reasons. But one of them, and then Kamala Harris, one of them was just where inflation was and people feeling in Fact that was a major one. And so I want people to not lose hope that nothing can change because I do think whether it's Trump's age, which is a real issue. Right. For I think he's lost a step. He's not the same person. He's the same person in the sense that he, he's evil and corrupt, but he's not the same person in that he is as good at deflecting it, as good as controlling the narrative as he once was. And at some point the wheels can come off and this feels as close as we've been in a long time.
- [48:04]
B
Yeah. And on the Biden point, I do think in 2020 he may well have been the right person because people wanted some reassurance and stability and so forth. So the almost 80 year old, I guess he was late 70s and former vice president for eight years, was kind of the right person to nominate and also a moderate Democrat, the easiest to win, but not the right person for 24, obviously. And Harris never just, I mean, whatever, she either didn't have a chance to or didn't succeed in defining herself as much other than Biden's vice president. So it was still sort of the status quo anti, you might say, running against Trump. I mean, one thing about Magyar and this, he has in common with Zelenskyy, who I think is also a very important figure if you think about the broader picture here. So we have in Europe now two leaders, two anti Putin leaders who have come. Magyar was more traditional, more of a traditional politician than Zelenskyy had been, but are both young, both dynamic, both very talented and skilled politicians. And I got to think that's gotta be the motto for us. Maybe someone who hasn't been in politics that much, that would be Zelensky, but. Or someone who's been in politics but has sort of is different from a traditional politician, repudiated his past to some degree as Magyard did, and then turned out to have the real talented leader of a broader movement than just a typical Paul who's adjusting his positions and stuff. I'm not sure who that is in the US incidentally. And maybe our system isn't quite as well set up to make it as easy to penetrate, though Trump did incidentally. I mean, speaking of people who hadn't been traditional politicians, I don't know, but I feel the generational change part with Maggior, I mean, Orban's obviously not, not nearly as old as Trump. It isn't that much older than Maguire, but being the credible candidate of change at a really a new start in a way that Biden couldn't have been and Harris couldn't, really wasn't able to be either. I think that's very important going forward.
- [49:48]
C
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- [50:50]
A
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- [53:02]
B
I very much agree with that. And so and Cuomo, they dumped and didn't nominate him, even though people like us probably would have been closer to him ideologically than to someone like Mamdani. But to the, you know, I don't blame the New York Democrats for saying no, we're not going back to some sex pest here. You know, we had to quit as governor two years before and now we're going to make him our mayoral nominee. That's crazy. So for me, the Swalwell thing and all the others, but Gazales Mills and the Epstein matter people are going to want change, turnover. I think the odds for every challenger to any incumbent are going get so much better than they were a few weeks ago in the sense that just say this guy is part of the system and it's Ellie. Every single Democratic republic was getting along fine with Eric Sowell and every single Republican member of Congress was getting along fine with Gonzalez. Right. And now it's unfair. Obviously they didn't know presumably. And they knew. They didn't know for sure. And anyway, you gotta, he's your colleague. You can't do anything yourself about it if someone's unwilling to press charges. So I guess. But the degree of anti incumbent, anti status quo, anti old boys club sentiment that there is in this country now and I think will be for the next three years, can't be overestimated.
- [54:12]
A
I think I would just want to say real quickly, this is the difference between it's not the thing that everybody seemed to know is that he was kind of like a, he'd get drunk and like he was, you know, out there, you know, philandering around. That's different than like assault, which it also sounds like he was, it sounds like people kind of knew about the bad behavior, which is very different from knowing about like actual criminal activity. But he is now, now it looks like they are going to prosecute him. And I noticed with some interest that Anna Paulina Luna had tweeted that she was sort of, she was going to lead the charge on expelling him from Congress. And I think you and I assume we're on the same page here, like, go right ahead, expel him from Congress. But like have you met Donald Trump, Anna, Polly and Aluda, the extent to which Republicans are sort of blind or unwilling to grapple with and because I pointed this out out on social media, which social media is a cesspool and whatever. But many, many people came to tell me that Donald Trump, nothing's ever been proven against him. Nothing, you know, and I'm like, are you kid, like the willful blindness on. Not only did he tell us on tape about where he grabs women because he's a star, not only did he say in a deposition that, well, it's just true, you know, men are allowed to do this if they're rich and, and famous. Unfortunately, it's. That's true. Also he's been been accused, I don't know, certainly in the teens amount of times, maybe more than that. And he was found liable by a jury for sexual assault against Eugene Carroll. Like he, he has a conviction on that. So like I don't know what to make of it other than exactly what I say which is the, it would be, it would be nice if Republicans cared about any of this whatsoever.
- [55:51]
B
I know. I think, I think you're right and I think Democrats are, would be wise to certainly not defend Swalwell. Not defend, I think it's another Democratic member who's charged with, about to go to trial for I think it was a more or financial crimes if I'm not mistaken. But anyway, no one should be defending people they shouldn't be defending at this point. And, but again, I come back, Melania, we were talking Milani Trump stood up in the White House and said these rich executives who benefited from Epstein haven't paid enough of a price. Who is one of those executives, you know, who's, who's who sort of has not been held accountable for Epstein. Some of them, I think she said something like some of them have, you know, left their jobs. But, but we need a more thorough going. The truth needs to come out. Well, what chief executive hasn't left his job because of, because of his association, close association, incidentally, with his pal Jeffrey Epstein. So I think the Epstein thing will not go away also. Not just because of a lot of, but because it just isn't going away, period, at this point. At one point I'll make though, maybe we can close with this because you and I and Tim have all made this point a lot over the last few months. This is not a matter of ideology. You can be a centrist Democrat. You can be quite a conservative Democrat. You could be the equivalent of Aguar if you want. In terms of where you are on particular issues. You could still be as resolutely anti Trump, as resolutely probably individual rights and liberal democracy as resolutely. We need fundamental change. If you're the way in which you want to end up with fundamental changes more of a FDR type reforms than democratic socialist changes, that's great. But FDR didn't pull his punches because he wasn't in agreement with Huey Long and he wasn't in agreement with the communists and socialists who were around in the 30s. He didn't go in that direction. And I think the moderates need to be as fervent in their desire for fundamental change, don't you think? As the progresses.
- [57:37]
A
Do I think this. Oh my gosh. I mean, this is where, you know, you brought up Mamdani earlier. Mamdani. I want to take what he's doing on the communication side and just force feed it to the rest of the Democrats. I mean, it is, although I gotta say, right now the best communicators in the Democratic Party are aoc, Mamdani and Pete. Now, Pete's really good on a CNBC panel. I don't know if you saw that with him and Joe Kernan, but Pete,
- [58:02]
B
I know I, Pete just like, like
- [58:04]
A
took him apart and it was so glorious I needed a cigarette afterwards. But this is such an important point. And honestly at the end here, I'll just say this is what my whole book is about. It is about rejecting the idea that you need to be more centrist or more progressive. You don't have to align yourself with the far left or with the Never Trumpers. You don't have to do any of that stuff. It is about thinking about the voters and what the voters want. And you know what they want. They want you to take the economy seriously. They want you to take the border. Seriously. They want you to be anti corruption. They want you to tell them that they can have a better future, that education can get better in this country. And it is about Democrats finding somebody who can lead. Because the way you build the big broad coalition isn't by like, I'm going to go on this podcast and this podcast and you should go on, you should go on all of them. But it's about you being a leader, you being able to set an agenda that other people can lock into. And a lot of that is by looking at what is happening right now and going so hard at it as the antithesis, but also having a clear and this is what I think you can learn from Maker, which is he also had a clear vision of where he was going, not just being anti Orban, but also what he was going to stand for, what he was going to do, how he was going to improve people's lives from where they are right now. And so that is the part I would love to see more from Democrats. Because, Bill, I gotta say, I do think the wind is at our backs a little bit. The backs of those of us who believe in liberal democracy. And it's a good day, it's a good day for liberal democracy today, having
- [59:44]
B
the wind at our backs. Gotta take advantage of it though, right? Not just, that's a certain tendency to say, you know, well, illiberalism, anti authoritarianism was inevitable for a while and now liberalism's inevitable for a while. That would be the worst possible lesson to take from this, this last weekend.
- [59:59]
A
That's exactly right. We have agency and we've got to use it. Stop crying, start working. Bill, Crystal, thank you so much for joining and thanks to all of you for listening to the Bull Work podcast. Don't forget to rate and review us. Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcast. Tim will be back soon, don't worry. Thanks everyone for listening.
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