Bill Kristol (2:59)

That's literally in the Constitution. I mean, the idea. Yes, it's funny, I had the same analogous experience this week. Some conference, a lot of learned political science, con law types for a while and talking about what went wrong. Why isn't, why aren't checks and balances working? And at the end of the day, you know, the system does not work if Congress does not exercise any authority or take any responsibility for anything. I mean, it doesn't check the President in particular. And, but then, you know, we all, of course, Congress, Congress isn't working. It's kind of a euphemism or a mask for saying the Republican Party is preventing Congress from doing its job, as the Democrats would, would presumably, you know, or say they would fix a lot of the, check the president on a lot of these things or try to the degree to which we've just slid in nine months. And so the first term had its problems in this respect, but really, people in Congress still vaguely thought they should push back on things. Right? I mean, that's my vague memory at least, and did sometimes somewhat successfully, including some Republicans. It's really the capitulation is complete and Trump is just a little dictator raising. Now, is this the most important thing in the world, 10% additional tariffs on Canada? No. I mean, but it's not nothing. And it's the predicate for anything else he wants to do anywhere. And he's. Yeah, but Argentina, Argentina's great. You know, Argentina's doing great in Canada.

Tim Miller (4:14)

Okay, let's get to that because here we go. You know, look, I should say that the Treasury Secretary was out this weekend doing the rounds and all the Sunday shows, and you'd think that. And the Treasury Secretary would have a sensible argument for this tariff. Right? Let's listen to what he had to say about it. This week, President Trump abruptly broke off trade talks with Canada and put another 10% tariff on Canada in response to an ad that the government of Ontario ran. It features former President Ronald Reagan. Why is the president setting trade policy based on a television ad he doesn't like? Good question. Well, Kristen, let's. Let's think about this. This is a kind of propaganda against US Citizens. You know, it's psyops. Let's think about this. It's psyops. The Canadians are running psyops on us, so we have to punish. Who? The American people. We gotta punish people. We gotta put a tax on Americans buying Canadian goods because the Canadian sneaky Canadians are running psyops on us. What the fuck are you talking about?

Bill Kristol (5:22)

The sneaky Canadians are showing a correct and accurate video of Ronald Reagan criticizing terrorists. That's terrible. That's terrible. Psyop. I give you a lot of credit for being early on the real loathing of Scott Besant. I want to say that our fine Treasury Secretary, he is terrible. I mean, there's something about him. He's not as insane, obviously, as some of them, but he's not a guest as unqualified as, you know, Bondi or Hagsett. But that, that mock earnestness and condescension with which he explains these things, he's, you know, I don't know, I think he's in the top three or four of the worst.

Tim Miller (5:53)

It's like from a different era. It's just like this. He's like a stuffed shirt elite, like, condescending to the people. It's like, this is maga. This is the forgotten man's representative. You know, I just. He is just so phony. Let's just keep doing it. There's one other clip I had to play of Scott Besant speaking of his phoniness, who wasn't just asked obviously about the tariff, the random tariff we're putting on Canada because Trump had a diaper tantrum, but also about the fact that we're like, really, really harming farmers in the country. I saw some economic stats on Iowa that are decently alarming compared to the rest of the country that came out over the weekend. Harming farmers a bunch of places particularly obvious soybean crop since China is no longer buying our soybeans stuffed shirt. Scott was asked about this on abc. Let's listen to that.

Bill Kristol (6:42)

China has been boycotting American soybeans and American farmers have really suffered. Do you see a real light at the end of the tunnel there? They may allow soybeans again.

Tim Miller (6:56)

Well, Martha, in case you don't know it. I'm actually a soybean farmer. So I have. I have felt this pain too. For the audio listeners. You almost have to watch the video of that on YouTube because he's so proud of himself with this talking point. He kind of smiles. I am a soybean farmer as well. Really, Scott, Those hands, those little dainty hands have been in the dirt. Just because you purchased some land that other people farm does not mean you felt the pain. What pain have you felt? He lives in an unbelievable Barbie or actually I think he sold the Barbie mansion house. I've been corrected. He lives in a different unbelievable house. No longer in the Barbie mansion. Extremely rich. He's a soybean. He wants us to think he's a soybean farmer feeling pain.

Bill Kristol (7:39)

I mean I haven't like looked at the fact checking on what is it? His hedge fund bought some share of some farmland. You know, is probably raking. Right. He's probably mistreating farmers on some farmland they bought or something like that. But the nice touch about that fitting into your stuffed shirt, cloying, smarmy Scott Bessant thing is the Martha, in case you don't know it, I mean what.

Tim Miller (8:00)

Is it in case you don't know?

Bill Kristol (8:01)

It's just he's so. He's relishing. They prepped for that. They. He had. He had that in his back pocket. The kind of that the trump card he was going to play on Martha that you know that I am soybean farmer.

Tim Miller (8:12)

Martha. Yeah. Have you really. Have you been out in the fields? You know that son. He's going to pay.

Bill Kristol (8:17)

He's suffering a lot. Just like the actual farmers who are watching their crops and their livelihood go down the twos in Iowa. He Scott Best. That is really paying a big personal price.

Tim Miller (8:26)

Yeah. He's got 25 million in farmland in North Dakota and. And it's generating good news. You know according to quick search on this we can correct this but it appears to be that he's generating about a million in rental income for him and that's soybean. I wonder if that rental income is affected by the fact that the actual people farming can't sell the crop. I kind of find that hard to believe. I have to. Do you think he's letting them off the hook?

Bill Kristol (8:47)

Do you think he's giving them a deal, no charge this year. That would be a good thing. We should start that campaign.

Tim Miller (8:52)

Yeah, we should ask giving the people renting this land for him, you know, a couple months off since for no reason, we started a trade war with China and they can't sell the crops on the land. I wonder something worth looking into. He also, I'm not going to do any more audio. We can only take so much. But he also obviously defended the Argentina bailout. I mean, you do wonder when this stuff or if this stuff like ever begins to add up to create like real unrest in farm country. You know, the fact that we're bailing out Argentina while they're allowed to sell their soybeans and we aren't.

Bill Kristol (9:27)

And aren't they selling the soybeans to China maybe? I think so, yeah.

Tim Miller (9:30)

Yes, yes.

Bill Kristol (9:30)

So it's like, I mean, it's like actually the worst of all worlds. Argentina is an ally, he explains. So I thought, how crazy is that? I mean, is Argentine an ally? But they are one of the 20 non NATO major allies designated over the last 20, 30 years sporadically by various US presidents, which is fine. We do a little more military cooperation with them than we would do with a non NATO major ally. There are a lot of countries that are non NATO allies. I think Tunisia and Kenya. It's not like a huge thing necessarily. But Canada, if I could just come back to close the loop on that. Canada is an actual NATO ally. Canada is a founding member. Now, Canada fought with us in World War II. They fought with us in Afghanistan. It's the longest undefended border. I think it's the longest land border in the world, but it's the longest undefended land border in the world. It's kind of, it's a wealthy, it's four times wealthier, I think per capita than Argentina. It's had a very good run actually the last century, which Argentina hasn't. And we're bending over backwards to help Argentina and Canada. We're just sticking it to Canada. I mean, I feel like there's a little bit of. I thought Trump was at least a hard headed, real politic type guy. It's kind of more important to have good relations with Canada than with Argentina. And leaving aside all the other things we have in common with them, as I say, we owe them in some ways for fighting with us. I mean, it's really.

Tim Miller (10:44)

I can build this one for you. An ally now means somebody that is an ally with the Donald Trump family and Trump courts.

Bill Kristol (10:51)

Totally, totally correct. It is Trump first, not America first. And you're absolutely right, it's a personal ally of the Trump family in some corrupt scheme they're engaged in.

Tim Miller (10:59)

Right. That's what it means to be an ally. That's why El Salvador is an ally, Argentina is an ally, and Qatar is an ally. Canada? No, no, we're not Canada anymore. We might even invade Canada, who knows? But Qatar, they have Sharia law over there, but they gave Trump a plane. Mbs Saudi Arabia is an ally. Beheaded and beheading American journalists writing for American outlets and they're an ally. El Salvador's prisoning people, imprisoning people on our behalf in Argentina. So that's a good the coalition of the. Well, there's something here. The coalition of the Trump willingness. We'll work on this. We got some storms this weekend in New Orleans, so that meant that the neighborhood Part Time Cats Back in the House this cat is a wimp. This cat is kind of like me. It's a Louisiana cat, likes the heat like summer. Once that temp goes back under 70, it gets gets chilly, wants to come inside, get on our living room blankets and I just have to deal with that now as part of the negotiation I made with my child and I got a I was out and about and I got a photo for my husband, picture of the cat eating its smallest cat food in my living room once again. So that seems to be a trend that is coming and I'm just happy that if the cat's going gonna come, it's getting food it can enjoy. This podcast is sponsored by Smalls. For a limited time, get 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com the Bulwark Smalls Cat food is protein packed recipes made with preservative free ingredients you'd find in your fridge and it's delivered right to your door. That's why cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. Starting with Smalls is easy. Just share info about your cat's diet, health and food preferences. Then Smalls puts together a personalized sampler for your cat. Isn't that fancy? No more picking between random brands at the store. Smalls has the right food to satisfy any cat's cravings. Smalls was started back in 2017 by a couple of guys home cooking cat food in small badges with their friends. A few short years later, they've served millions of meals to cats across the US and now you can add other cat favorites like amazing treats and snacks to your Smalls order. Aretha really likes the treats especially, so I'd recommend those. What are you waiting for? Give your cat the food they deserve for a limited time because you are a Bulwark listener. Get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com thebullwerk one last time. That's 60% off your first order, plus free shipping when you head to smallS.com the Bulwark on the corruption stuff. You guys read about this in morning shots. Andrew did. But I think it's worth mentioning there are two items. One is on this drone company. The Pentagon awarded a significant contract to Unusual Machines, a company that retains Donald Trump Jr. As an advisor. I'm sure based on his expertise in drone warfare. It has his work as somebody that can provide a lot of guidance and wisdom to the CEO when it comes to development of this type of weaponry. Shares in the company jumped 13% on the news that they got this contract. It's worth reminding Judd Legum pointed this out that Trump Jr. In one of the many podcasts he does, talked about how he helped screen candidates for top Pentagon jobs and explicitly discussed looking for candidates interested in moving more defense spending into drones. So that's convenient. I'm like among Hunter Biden's biggest haters that were not involved in actually trying to uncover his laptop. I'm not a fan of Hunter Biden. It was ridiculous that he was on the board of Ukrainian natural gas companies. But this is, this is just totally on another level from anything that was happening that was complained about endlessly on Fox.

Bill Kristol (14:43)

Yeah. And as I said, what's really kind of chilling about this is the Pentagon is now wired enough to be giving contracts to this firm. So it's not just the White House thing putting an individual on a board that doesn't require the bureaucracy to be colluding. It just requires Trump and himself or Biden if you want to be doing unseemly or maybe illegal things in the case of various Trump White House payoffs and so forth. It's not just one person, right. To make this contract happen. There are a whole bunch of people, I guess, going along with this, pretending it's legit competition, signing off on various documents. You know, the Pentagon has a pretty big bureaucratic structure for these grants, or maybe they just went around it, I don't know. But again, it sort of gets the question of how much can Trump ruin the US Government in four years as opposed to simply personally kind of grifting from it. Right. That's happened before in a way. Right. And certainly at the municipal level.

Tim Miller (15:34)

Right.

Bill Kristol (15:34)

People make money off thing, you know, get payoffs for deals. But I mean, how much you can get the whole government operating this way, or at least good Chunks of it. And that's bad.

Tim Miller (15:43)

And also goes to like the JVL favorite JVL topic about like, you know, even in our best case scenario where a Democrat gets in in 2029 and they're reformed, whatever, you're going to have to weed out these corrupt actors like throughout the entire government, which is a very different challenge than what happened in, in 2021. Anyway, on the corruption side, our colleague JBL is really fired up about the White House ballroom. Wants to raise it from the ground if the Democrats ever get back in charge. And I appreciate his vim and vigor on that front. I've had less passion there. The donors, the corrupt side of it though, I do feel like needs an even greater microscope because it's truly insane what they're doing. They are privately funding this, the Donald J. Trump ballroom and the people that are funding it. Egger pointed out in the newsletter this morning, many of them are these companies trying to get back in his good graces because they had stopped donating to Republicans after January 6th. So all these companies took a principled stand after January 6th are just like Bill Cassidy and Mitch McConnell. Corporate America is no different than Bill Gassey, Mitch McConnell. I will be principled for a week and then things have changed and now I'm going to give you $1 million to your big dance hall. And so that's one element of it. But the other element that I just, I think is worth just really being explicit about is these are the most entrenched interests in Washington. Like this is the traditional swamp, right? There is this MAGA swamp that we're talking about, right? Where it's like Trump and all these kind of weird characters from the Star wars bar that are like, you know, getting favors and stuff that's happening. But also the traditional swamp has just totally co opted him and it's all the big defense contractors, tech companies are all now giving him money. And there's no even, like the White House isn't even pretending to do the, you know, we're going after the corrupt moneyed interest element anymore. Like that part of the MAGA populism is just gone and they're, they're happy to be co opted. And I think there's some interesting and obviously the policy, the potential actual corruption there is interesting, but also politically potentially a vulnerability for him, I think.

Bill Kristol (18:01)

A vulnerability but also a strength because obviously if it were just the MAGA swamp and corporate America were uncomfortable with it or even rebelling against it or saying we gotta stop this, it's too Crazy. That would be better politically than corporate America and oligarchic America and billionaire America saying, okay, we've all figured out how to kind of co opt it ourselves or go along with it. I mean, it's unclear who's co opting whom, I guess you could say here, right? I think it's mutual backscratching. But these are powerful people. If the US government and the most powerful corporations in America are engaged in mutual back scattering with no oversight, no checks within the executive branch, no congressional checks, not much in the way of judicial checks because that part's pretty hard. I guess that's kind of a bad situation. And I do think incidentally that's sort of the pattern of other authoritarian regimes. They come in with populist rhetoric. They maybe go after one or two people to make an example, one, two oligarchs or something. But at the end of the day they become powerful by the interaction meshing of the huge corporations and the corrupt administration.

Tim Miller (19:03)

For sure. And I hear what you're saying on the mutual back scratching versus somebody getting co opted by the other because that's true, right? They're both co opting each other in a sense. But I mean just looking at the one direction though, I think is important just in the sense of like if you are one of the big government contractors or one of the big tech companies, right. It's not hard to imagine a different type of Trump administration that goes directly at you because they started that like, that I do like initially doge, that was what Elon was going to do, right? Like we're getting ripped off by these military contractors. You're going to go in and go after them. The big tech companies are all woke and are censoring Republicans and we're going to use our anti, you know, we're going to use the tools that they've used to go after media companies and law firms to go after the tech companies. And that isn't happening, right? Like this administration's not going to go after any of them anymore. And they've, they've totally managed to buy off Trump just by like buttering him up and now getting him this, this fancy theater, but also by like in.

Bill Kristol (20:04)

The media case, don't you think? By actually changing their media properties coverage and now buying more it sounds like with cnn, I haven't really followed that in detail, but I don't fully understand it. Paramount, CNN and all this buying more so they can have more pro Trump or at least Trump acquiescent coverage in that respect. It's Scarier in that way, I think.

Tim Miller (20:23)

Yeah. Just because we've like the behavior. We've seen the change of behavior. I guess that's definitely true on the media side. Probably not from the big military contractors. I mean, I guess maybe they probably changed their hiring a little bit. Like you got to worry if you're a woman or a person of color that is being hired for a contract. But besides that not really changing that much. And now getting a. A White House that is just completely aligned with your interests. Noteworthy. We'll be trying to speak to some of the populist maga righties about that, see if any of them are upset.

Bill Kristol (20:55)

I mean, is this going to strengthen the. And shouldn't it strengthen really the populist side of the opposition and of liberalism?

Tim Miller (21:02)

No doubt, no doubt. And to that point, I guess we should say. I was going to get to it later, but I was pretty struck last night. And there's a big rally in New York for Mondani. That mayor's race is up here. Eight days. A lot of energy. You know, again, it's New York. A lot of people in New York, you know, you can fill a rally, but it's for a mayor's race. I don't really recall Eric Adams or Bill de Blasio like filling stadiums, really, or Mike Bloomberg. So noteworthy in that sense. Noteworthy. Also in the speakers at Bernie aoc, Kathy Hochul did speak and the crowd started like shouting her down, tax the rich. So, okay, but you can kind of see how a merger of the populist and, and more traditional left might emerge that way. Like regardless of what the actual views are, like where the Democratic Party ends up on like more traditional ideological lines as far as views on taxing and spending and views on social issues, like the idea that there will be kind of an anti establishment. We need to go after the existing power structures and rip them apart, root and branch. That element of the left, I think, is certainly empowered by what we're seeing.

Bill Kristol (22:18)

But someone like me would prefer if that became a sort of, I don't know how to put it. Free market populism where we go after these corrupt big businesses in order to have real competition and smaller. But I mean, who knows whether that will be strong enough to. As opposed to a more traditional. Just kind of.

Tim Miller (22:32)

Somebody should try that, though. Someone should try that. And it's hard to think about who would hold the mantle of this David Serrata fellow Denver Nuggets fan, a lefty Bernie staffer who I think he won't even be mad at me for saying, can get pretty off the chain on the Internet sometimes. All right, so David is maybe one of those that probably do better off of Twitter than on. But he wrote for us a thing about how there needs to be a Democrat McCain, where if you go back to that McCain, what would have been 2000 race primaring Bush, which obviously, you know a lot about where he was, he really was kind of foregrounding more of like these reform type issues, like, you know, campaign finance cleaning stuff up. I mean, that could work for the. And it certainly would be better than some of the more, you know, how shall we say, vanilla type of Democratic campaigns that we've seen, you know, trying to do a. Okay, you know, we need to actually clean up the system. Like a populist left thing that goes after some of the billionaires, some of the corrupt big corporations, goes after the Trump corruption. Right. And have that be an alternative to the whatever, the more DSA socialist left type populism. Maybe that would not work. Who the hell knows? But like, that would certainly be worth a try. And there's not really anybody carrying that mantle. And Murphy is trying to do it a little bit, but Murphy's also sort of flirting with the Bernie wing a little bit. So there's not anybody that's like really sticking that out at this point. I do think that there's an opportunity for someone to at least give that a try.

Bill Kristol (24:05)

Yeah, I agree. And you'd be. The centrists are so, I mean, you know, defending the establishment sometimes correctly against really irresponsible assaults, but that they, they are going to be timid about doing this. And then the moment someone says you sound one bit like AOC or Bernie, they'll all freak out and go back into centrist, you know, crouch. So that's a bit of a problem. And then the left has, you know, creates some problems itself with some of their stuff. So that would be interesting. Yeah, we need a McCain Democrat.

Tim Miller (24:30)

Right.

Bill Kristol (24:30)

I mean, I think if you want to think of it this way, maybe this Romney, and this is kind of a stupid way of putting it, maybe analogy, but there's Romney Democrats totally down the middle, honest, decent, centrist, whatever. Then there are like, that's. What do we call them? Santorum Democrats, you know, true believing believer populist radicals. We sort of. McCain is kind of neither Romney nor Santorum. I don't know if that's for our Republican, those of us who remember Republican races. This is a maybe. Yeah.

Tim Miller (24:56)

And I don't mean McCain Democrat necessarily. Just if we're going to play this out for people who are listening who are maybe not following the nuances. I don't really even mean it in the sense of like a hawkish idea.

Bill Kristol (25:04)

No, no, no.

Tim Miller (25:04)

Change hawk policy. Yeah. Talking about his branding as kind of like a reforming maverick type person who could like because McCain was basically policy wise like in the establishment oove of the Republican Party and he went against the Bush tax cut. So he was a little bit, you know, of a maverick in that sense. So like somebody that would be in the just sort of main body of the Democratic Party but who prioritizes like these sorts of reforms and more populist type issues of kind of going after the big special interests. Right. Which is what McCain did on the right anyway. Might be something interesting there. While we're talking about what's happening these cell types, we have a shutdown potentially an end to this is kind of emerging but in a very hazy way. And I've been saying for a while it's like hard to see how anybody's incentivized to stop at this point. Both sides are being served by this in various ways, but the American Federation of Government Employees is out this morning urging Dems to stand down. SNAP is going to go away next week. You've got some states Cherry Polis in Colorado, some others are coming up with creative ways to make sure SNAP can keep going. But in other states SNAP will not be available food stamps for people. And so that's like real harm being done to folks. What's your sense for the state of play and how the Democrats can handle it from here?

Bill Kristol (26:31)

I've always thought the Democrats might lose this in the sense of not get the policies they are fighting for, but win it, do well enough politically in a sense of highlighting for everyone that the cuts are Republican cuts in healthcare and some of these other areas too. And they just didn't have the ability to stop them because they weren't willing to make government workers pay even more in the way of lost wages and stuff. And that's what the American Federation of Government Employees is saying. And that is a fissure or break in the pretty solid wall of support for the Democrats among the liberal interest groups. And I don't blame them. I mean they're representing hundreds of thousands of employees who aren't getting paid and some of them not all well off people. And maybe it's better for the Dems to figure out a way to I don't know, I hate to be the council of slight retreat here, but maybe figure out a way to lose on the policy while blaming the Republicans and then just scream and yell over and over and then just say, okay, you've been back a day where the. You said you might fix some of these cuts in Obamacare and in Medicaid. Where are the fix? And just kind of keep insisting on it over and over again, but maybe have to yield on keeping the government open.

Tim Miller (27:38)

This was the thing from the start, was my issue with the shutdown strategy was always just like, what is your end game if you're the Democrats? Like there isn't one really. Like they never had one. And so it's not really great to get into a battle where you don't really know how you're going to get out of it. That said, I think it's been effective so far, at least at ratings.

Bill Kristol (27:57)

Don't you think if they give in tomorrow, and I mean, it'll be annoying for 48 hours, just Michael Johnson and Trump and everyone will take their victory laps. But after that, I kind of think the Dems will have come out of it okay, actually.

Tim Miller (28:08)

Yeah, I think so. And I probably wouldn't give in tomorrow, but yeah. And I think that the.

Bill Kristol (28:12)

No, I know.

Tim Miller (28:13)

Look, I think that there's probably some more work to be done on just making sure Republicans hold the bag on the premium increases on the insurance, because that's just really starting to hit with people and it's really next month that the preponderance people are going to see that. And so probably, and this is where this is, the other weakness of the Democratic strategy from the start is that the shutdown is a PR game. And so I'm trying to think about, like, who is the point people in carrying this? Hakeem and Chuck? Not ideal point people for carrying this from a PR standpoint, but, you know, figuring out a way to raise the salience on this and put pressure on the Republicans. As you said, they said that there can be a vote on this. Okay, is there going to be a vote on this? How are we going to do it? When is it going to happen? Is the House going to pass it? You know, so putting the pressure on them on that front, maybe even doing a quote unquote deal where it's like, okay, we're going to have a vote on this. Let's make that. Let's see them do it. Can the House pass that? I don't know if they can. Maybe they can. Will Mike Johnson really bring it up as far as extending the Obamacare subsidies? I find that kind of hard to imagine maybe he would. So I think that there are some things that they'd have to do to execute an end game here. But the pressure from people that are being materially harmed by this will increase. And you can't totally ignore that if you're the Democrats based on the types of constituencies that you have. I don't think.

Bill Kristol (29:40)

Speaking of votes, how about a vote on the Epstein files? I think the process of, I'm going to say of giving it, I didn't mean tomorrow but you know, over the next maybe couple of weeks in ways that make both maybe cut a deal or try to get promises or if you don't get the promises, berate Republicans for not accepting things that they said they before they would accept. Whether it's a vote on Epstein or the actual fixing of the Obamacare premiums and stuff, I think there's a way to manage this. But yeah, it's not maybe these.

Tim Miller (30:07)

And you do have to then seat the Arizona congresswoman, which is insane that Adelita Grialva, her father had passed away. Then she won the seat in the special election. The fact that she hasn't been seated, it's been almost a month. I don't even like, I don't know, time's a flat circle so I don't have it in front of me. But it's been a while.

Bill Kristol (30:27)

I think a little more than a month maybe.

Tim Miller (30:28)

Yeah. And the fact that Mike Johnson is holding that up, a big part of why is that that would give the Democrats the votes to release the Epstein files and doing that as a cover up effort and just as part of the general way in which the Republicans bully, don't have any care for the rules or responsibilities of governance. I think it's pretty, this shows the asymmetry of things where we expect this type of behavior from Republicans. You can imagine the inverse of Nancy Pelosi or whatever not seating like some Republican that won a special election and how Fox would act around that, how it would be treated. Total hair on fire outrage. And this is a total hair on fire outrage moment that she hasn't been seated. And then you add on top of that a big part of the reason she hasn't been seated is because of the Epstein cover up.

Bill Kristol (31:16)

Yeah, I agree. I mean maybe the broader, I mean, do you agree with this? This is like slightly extension of this point. I mean in a way the conventional wisdom among political types is, you know, kitchen table issues. So the health care issues are the strongest. That's why the shutdown is strong. And it's nice to have these no Kings rallies on the side. Maybe the opposite is the truth. And I'm sort of, I think I want the opposite to be the truth. So I don't trust my judgment on this. But maybe no Kings is the strongest message and the other stuff's fine. It's good and it gets to real constituencies and it's a real issue. I don't, don't get me wrong, but maybe at the end of the day we kind of with Epstein and with the seating of someone who's been unjustly denied her seat for over a month and with all the other, you know, belated just scorn of law and ethics and corruption, maybe let's call it the no Kings message is. It's good if the no Kings message reemerges as the key message. Maybe.

Tim Miller (32:04)

Well, and I also think that it's like the timing on all this matters. Right. Because sometimes there's a fighting the last battle element. I guess I would just say pretty obviously that the no Kings message is probably not the right message for reaching the marginal voter, the working class voter the Democrats struggled to reach in the 2024 election. Sure. But that's not really who they're talking to right now. Right. Like the ma off off year midterm elections in New Jersey and Virginia, pretty high education states. Virginia, obviously, with a ton of government workers. You know, New Jersey with the sprawling New York suburbs that JVL lives in, et cetera. Right. Like the, the type of person you're talking to is, is a little bit different. Is the type of person that, that is more animated by this, by this thing you wrote about this this morning or Andrew did. You're also trying to engage highly engaged people who do things like the boycotts and going after companies that are yielding to Trump. You want all of that to demonstrate you have momentum. There is this element of there's political advantage right now to demonstrating opposition strength rather than opposition weakness. And people, I think are going to be more animated by just broadly speaking, a no King's message than your health care premiums are going up now. Again, I think that the marginal voter somebody want to turn out next fall in the midterms, 2028. That's a different calculus probably, but given what the political environment is right now, I don't think that's a crazy observation. Speaking of no Kings, Trump did something. Are we allowed to say when Trump does something kind of encouraging? Yeah, Trump does something kind of encouraging this morning. There's a lot of catastrophizing here at the Bulwark because things are bad, because we're in a catastrophe. So it's good, it's appropriate to catastrophize when you're in the middle of a roiling catastrophe. That said, Trump was asked about Bannon's 2028 musings this morning. I did a little monologue on Friday where I talked about the right thing to do towards the Bannon musings is make fun of him and point and laugh and just talk about how embarrassing this is that he wants an 83 year old slathering on orange makeup to be a King Lear meets Weekend at Bernie's in 2029. But still, people are nervous about this for good reason. And Trump was asked about this on the plane this morning with Marco Rubio standing behind him with like a Cheshire cat grin on his face, which is just repulsive. And the headline is kind of. You can look at it two ways. Right. Like, I'm sure we'll see a lot of headlines in left media outlets in particular, which is Trump saying something to the effect of I'd love to run in 2028. Because he says something to that effect. Right. But like, like he does so in this manner where he's being cheeky. And when he's asked specifically about the one constitutional area that's like the grayest as far as him being able to run again, which would be him running as a VP and somebody else running as president, and then that person resigning or just being kind of a, whatever, acting president or Trump has all the power. Trump specifically rules that out and he says it's too cute. I don't think the people would like it. Could he change his mind in the future? Sure. Are there other fucking things that he could do? Sure. Are there millions of things to be worried about with regards to Trump trying to hold on to power illegally? Absolutely. But I thought that was noteworthy, that he specifically ruled it out.

Bill Kristol (35:31)

Well, he rules out that VP gimmick because he says correctly. I think it's too much of a gimmick. I guess I'm slightly more with the lefty media outlets and the catastrophizing than you, but I'm kind of to your left hand these days. And what can I say? I kind of think, like he's signaling that. I just think he could, well do it. I mean, who knows what his health will be and stuff like that. Bannon saying over and over that he's going to do it. Bannon's pretty plugged in, I think, so. I don't know. I, I think they're laying the groundwork for the option of him doing it A and B, very much laying the groundwork for it not to be simply a clean handoff to Vance or to Vance and or Rubio. I mean all the grift. I was thinking about the Gr. The corruption. We were talking about the grift. It's risky for him to let anyone but the family almost take over. This is why the authoritarians don't give up power. Why they do dotter on until they're in their 93 years old or whatever. They, they are nervous deep down that whoever takes over might have once been with them. But maybe he, he or she will get a decide. I can get good press by kind of, you know, getting rid of some of the denouncing the corruption of my predecessors. That's another thing that happens in authoritarian transitions. Right. So I, I wonder I, I took it a little bit more as him signaling that as he said, I would like to do it it and then he might do it. I'm not sure how different we really. I'm slightly.

Tim Miller (36:42)

Yeah, no, it's time to look for a little ray of light. That's good.

Bill Kristol (36:47)

It's good.

Tim Miller (36:47)

You should do that occasionally. You tough out there.

Bill Kristol (36:49)

You can do that Tuesday. On Tuesday through Friday.

Tim Miller (36:53)

That's really not acceptable.

Bill Kristol (36:54)

That's not acceptable on the Monday. That's not acceptable on the Monday. You know, on the Monday podcast.

Tim Miller (36:59)

I know who's on tomorrow. So I'm not expecting, I'm not expecting much optimism. The most compelling counterargument is the fact that he has acted brazenly, illegally, in a lot of these corrupt ways. And why leave power? Why give up power when if you assume that whoever replaces you will target you? And while Donald Trump might have immunity, broad immunity, Donald Trump Jr doesn't. Eric Trump doesn't. And seems to me like they're involved in some illegal schemes, some illegal, corrupt schemes. And I don't know that Donald Trump actually cares about his kids. So maybe he doesn't care about that. But something worth noting. Just trying to say the VP scheme, everybody brings it up and I think it's just worth noting. He said he thinks it's too cute. I had one other Trump item, but I kind of wanted to end with a laugh. But it's too late. It's too late. We're here now. I just, I want to let. We're going to do it. We're on Trump on the plane. I know people don't like the Trump audio So you can hit the fast forward. 30 seconds. 30 seconds. But I got to do it because he, he was discussing the Democrats. Well, let's just listen to it.

Donald Trump (38:10)

They have Jasmine Crockett, a low IQ person. They have AOC's low IQ. You give her an IQ test, have her pass. Like the exams that I decided to take when I was at Walter Reed, I took. Those are very hard. They're really aptitude tests, I guess a certain way, but they're cognitive tests. Let AOC go against Trump. Let Jasmine go against Trump. I don't think Jasmine. The first couple of questions are easy. A tiger, an elephant, a giraffe. You know, when you get up to about 5 or 6, and then when you get up to 10 and 20 and 25, they couldn't come close to answering any of those questions.

Tim Miller (38:52)

It's interesting that the right wanted to bring back the word retarded when this guy got into the office again, because it's just like what. The first questions are easy. It's a tiger. It's like a three year old. Those are three year old questions. Identify this animal. That's one and a half years. That's like your first words. It's like mama, papa, tiger. What are you talking about? So that he still thinks that that test that was tested, whether you have serious dementia or not demonstrates that he's smarter than you should know. But black women, women of color.

Bill Kristol (39:27)

Yeah, well, I mean, the low IQ thing has just become a term for black or black and Hispanic, you know, minorities and, you know, women maybe a little more often than men. But I think he maybe uses it about men too. The racism. Can I just say at this point, not to get true now that I'm going, you know, becoming just a left wing lunatic. I mean, the racism and misogyny in Trump world is increasingly just. The mask is off. Don't you find this when you look around at some of the. I mean, it used to be the really fringe types who would just say it. Now it's the. Then it was the sort of fringy maggot types, but they would still sort of hint. Now it's just at least online, it's not quite with most elected officials yet, but it's pretty astounding. And Trump, of course, is not hiding anything. AOC is an intelligent woman. I mean, I think there's very little doubt about that. And I say this as someone who would prefer that she not be the presidential nominee in 2028 of the Democratic Party. So, I mean, it's. Well, it's just ridiculous.

Tim Miller (40:20)

He did it. Elephant.

Bill Kristol (40:22)

Does that appeal? Well, what do you think about it, though? Why does he want to do it? I mean, that's an interesting question. Is there some part of I. The base likes it? I guess, right?

Tim Miller (40:30)

He likes doing dog, bullhorn, racism, dog whistle. You know, it's like, not really dog whistle, but he likes doing it because he thinks people like it. He thinks it is a little. Makes you a little rascally. He like, it's a little bit of a troublemaker. He likes to do that kind of stuff. He likes to see liberals do outrage, you know, about it and, you know, say, oh, you, why don't you guys coach your fellows? Like, they like doing that. So I think that's part of it. It's also a power thing. It's like how he puffs himself up, right? Sets himself up like, these women are stupid. You know, this black and brown women are stupid. So I think it's that if I was him, I would probably try to find some. Some other points. There are other arguments that he could make and he made a lot of money in his life. And there are other things you could turn to besides the test where he was correctly able to identify the outline of an elephant.

Bill Kristol (41:18)

That is kind of amazing.

Tim Miller (41:21)

Okay. He's really, really proud of himself for that. It's like you can. It is childlike in a sense of not. Most children are not evil and mean and cruel like him, but you sense that pride of a child who does something for the first time very well. It's like, papa, Papa, look what I did. Anyway, Mark Kirtling, I want one more thing for you and then we'll let you go. Is in the bulwark this morning on what's happened in the Caribbean. And he writes, why are we moving one of America's rarest and most capable instruments of military power from a theater of genuine danger to one of political ambiguity? Because we've talked about, Howie, the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, super carrier now coming to the Caribbean to chase these allegedly drug boats. It's pretty striking. And it all comes around these other moves to make it seem like they're pretty serious potentially about some sort of effort in Venezuela, in addition to the fact that Trump last week, I guess it was just when he was asked by Phil Wegman at a press conference about. About this, and he's just like, I just want to kill him. We're just going to kill him. How about that? If they were trying to bring drugs, we're going to kill them.

Bill Kristol (42:33)

I mean, I think Mark Erlingspeas is very good. It really shows how kind of crazy if you're a serious military leader as he is, you know, how this just seems ridiculous posturing. And he explains why that's the case and why it's not the right. It's not what you need to have in that area. And it is taking real assets away from great power competition areas or Middle east type areas where you might want to have a giant aircraft carrier that can, which eight sorties I think, I believe it is, can be flown kind of quickly at one time against Iran or whatever. But you know, he doesn't, honestly, Mark doesn't consider, well, maybe we really are going to go to war with Venezuela. I mean, I just reading the piece, I kind of thought to myself, Mark is such a sane person that even he thinks this is foolish posturing. And I'm not going to put words in Mark's mouth. He's perfectly capable of imagining the other alternative too, but that he doesn't quite dwell on the fact that maybe he's planning a massive bombing campaign, a large bombing campaign against Venezuela and maybe that he thinks that's the predicate to getting rid of Maduro and stuff. I discounted that. I just think Trump isn't. He does know the wars are tough to pull off if you're a president. And they often hurt presidents who get involved in them. And, you know, he's been pretty cautious in that direction. He loves blowing up innocent, you know, little boats that can't fight back with people on them, some of whom may be connected to drugs, some of whom innocent fishermen. But I don't know. What do you think? Is it possible. I think I've underrated the possibility that he's actually going to launch major airstrikes. Venezuela, yeah. What is the Maya Angelou quote? If they do this, if they show that they're going to do this, just believe they're going to do it. I'm kind of getting there on this.

Tim Miller (44:09)

Look, I have no prediction. I'm like you, I think it's crazy. And he has shown an unwillingness to do this. You mentioned before in other areas. He does, he doesn't want to be the war president, which is one of the great gifts that we have, frankly, that he doesn't. It could be the inverse where we have a 12 year old that thinks that's the best way to demonstrate how tough he is is to invade lots of people. So there's that and just the part that Venezuela is such an absurd choice. It's just Not a threat in any way to us. There's oil there. But he hasn't really blurted out the I want to take their oil thing, which that could be a Trump thing. You remember that he had talked about that during Iraq. So I don't know. All I know is that they're doing the things that you would do if you were going to start a major campaign in Venezuela. So we'll see. One last thing I forgot to mention, when we were talking about Bannon last week, I said that his interview, where Bannon was talking about in 2020, it was in the Guardian, it was in the Economist. I should shout out the Economist folks that were doing that interview. And the other thing I did in that modeling that has turned out to not be wrong, but the lay of the land has changed. I was being, I was talking about there are some optimistic clearance on redistricting. Virginia acting, Colorado looking to act in 2028. That doesn't help. That was for 2026. But Virginia potentially ready. You get three more seats out of Virginia, I think, really pretty easily if you look at those maps. And then there are two other smaller issues. But if this thing ends up being on the margins, this stuff matters. Where Indiana was originally looking to redistrict, they're going to squeeze up, block a Democratic seat, just one seat that felt like Mike Pence talked people off the ledge behind the scenes. It seems like now Mike Braun, the governor, is going back at it. So Indiana's back on the table and then Illinois. This was from Lauren Egan's reporting over the weekend for us. I just need to read this because it's so crazy. This is the state senator, Willie Preston, the Senate chair of the Illinois Black Legislative Caucus. There's no world where I could accept a loss of black representation, certainly not a voluntary gift of black representation so that the Democratic Party could win. And this is crazy talk, like letting identity politics get in the way of this here. And when I had Pritzker on, I was trying to understand what he was talking. There's some worry that some of these districts that are majority black in Illinois go from being like Democratic plus 20 to Democratic plus 10. So conceivably, at some point, one of those black legislators might be in more of a swing district than they had previously been in. And so conceivably, they could lose that seat at some point. The times are too serious for this type of stuff. And if the, if Illinois, which is already gerrymandered quite a lot, so they can probably only squeeze out one seat, unlike Virginia If Illinois can do something that would likely gain the Democrats a seat in November of next year, they need to do it like the difference between the Hakeem Jeffries. So I should note, as a black guy, being speaker of the House next year and Mike Johnson is pretty dramatic when it comes to the future of the country. Country. So, anyway, I don't know if you have any final thoughts on that.

Bill Kristol (47:14)

No, I agree. I mean, I guess on the slightly optimistic side, this thing is hard to game out. I saw some study, quote, study, but I'm genuinely sort of pretty serious attempt to game this out. If Dems could win the generic by 8, then all these Republican redistricting issues become. What do they call it? Dummy.

Tim Miller (47:31)

Dummy manders.

Bill Kristol (47:32)

Dummy manders. Because you've suddenly created a lot of. Instead of wasting votes in an R +20 seat, you've created a lot of R +8 seats. And if the whole country goes D +8, you're sudd. Created a lot of Democratic narrow victims.

Tim Miller (47:45)

Eight is a lot, though.

Bill Kristol (47:47)

Eight is a lot.

Tim Miller (47:48)

Yeah, eight's a lot.

Bill Kristol (47:49)

Eight's a big midterm wave. Eight's 2018, I think, was eight.

Tim Miller (47:53)

Yeah, look at that. Bill Kristal. Nailed it. It was eight.

Bill Kristol (47:56)

Gotta air that. Air that.

Tim Miller (47:57)

18 was eight. We're gonna air that. 2018 was eight. I don't know. I'm not feeling 2018 quite yet, but we'll see. I think people are pretty surprised by Trump last time. And so I think we're in a little bit of different moment, but. Okay, good. So a little mix for us. Bill Kristol, negative about Trump running as a third turn and becoming a dictator. Optimistic about how the gerrymandering might backfire on the Republicans in the midterms. That's what we like here. Okay. We don't, you know, you can't be predictable. You gotta just tell people where you're at. And on some things, optimistic on the end of American democracy, kind of negative. Bill Kristol, appreciate you very much.

Bill Kristol (48:40)

Thank you, Tim.

Tim Miller (48:41)

Everybody else will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. See y' all then. Peace.

Poet/Performer (48:46)

Welcome. This is a farmhouse. We have clusterfires, alas. And this time of year is bad. We are so very sorry. There is little we can do but swat them. She didn't beg oh, not enough she didn't stay when things got tough I told a lie she got mad she wasn't there when things got bad I never ever saw the northern lights I never really heard of cluster flies Never ever saw the stars so bright in the promise Things will be all right? I never ever saw the northern lights? I never really heard of cluster flies? Never ever saw the stars so bright in the promise Things will be all right? All right, all right? All right, all right, all right? Woke this morning to the stinging lash? Every man rise from the ash? Each betrayal begins with trust? Every man returns to dust? I never ever saw the northern lights? I never really heard a cluster of flies? Never ever saw the stars so bright in the forest? Things will be all right? I never ever saw the northern zeit? I never really heard of cluster flies? Never ever saw the stars so bright in the front.

Tim Miller (51:06)

The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.