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- [00:00]
Ryan Seacrest
It is Ryan here and I have a question for you. What do you do when you win? Like are you a fist pumper?
- [00:06]
Tim Miller
A woo hooer?
- [00:07]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [00:25]
Bill Kristol
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- [00:53]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We are back. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday or is still having a wonderful holiday. Much has happened since we talked last. We'll be getting to Timmy's Oscar worthy Bob Dylan performance of course at the end, Jimmy Carter's passing, the coming debt limit and speakership showdowns here next week, 2025 foreign policy outlook, Musk versus Maga. But our guest has implored me that the place to start today is MAGA versus Miller. And it is of course, Bill Kristol. Bill, I hope you had a wonderful Hanukkah and I turned over to you. What were you curious for? More info about my my encounter with our old friend Kari Lake in Phoenix a couple weeks ago.
- [01:36]
Unknown Speaker
Good to be with you Tim and happy New Year a little ahead of time. Yes. Well, you wrote so well about your encounter with Kari Lake and Laura Loomer playing the peacemaker at that insane Charlie Kirk event that you seem to like going to each year. Is that some kind of character defect there? But anyway. But anyway, I feel like there must be more color that you can give on that. What exactly. You went to a party, you know, an after party. Invited by whom exactly? If I could ask.
- [02:02]
Tim Miller
Yeah, correct. So I had, I'd interviewed Steve Bannon and we, and we talked about that a little that both articles were put in the show notes if folks were taking a break. This was I guess the Friday before Christmas and had interviewed him about kind of the future of maga. But the newsy bit that he talked about was, you know, how from his perspective, cash Patel is going to follow up on his plans to target the people that were in his book on the so called enemies list. I think that's particularly newsworthy. Cause there are a lot of senators, even John Fetterman, a lot of Republican senators acting like that's not gonna happen. And so I think that could be an interesting data point given the close relationship between Cash and Steve for a confirmation hearing. So anyway, after that interview, it's just one of those things where the MAGA takes over downtown Phoenix. And so we're in a hotel, we were doing this interview. I go downstairs to the hotel lobby and I just. I bump into people. Bill, I don't know these people. They know me. They're from a past life or from current life as a, you know, some of them really hate me as a MAGA provocateur. Some of them are old colleagues that work for on campaigns. So I started chatting with some people in the lobby, including Matt Gates. I don't think, did I include the Gates bit in the article. I started to see Gates in the lobby. He was definitely a little bit chastened, I would say the last couple times I've seen Matt, he's been very brash and shit talking. We're about the same age and he supported Jeb initially. So I know Matt decently well. I definitely think he was a little bit chastened. And he had his. His wife was right next to him the whole time. I saw him and he said to sneak off to do a Oan hit his new job. He's a competitor now. I guess I did tease him about that. I guess the only newsworthy thing he said was kind of about how he wants the deportations to be able to start day one and how that impacted the importance of having an Attorney General in their day one. Again, could be BS and bluster, but interesting thing to say. So during all these conversations, I get invited by somebody that I had known to James O'Keefe, who you might know from Project Veritas. They did the undercover stuff. He had an after party. So it's like they have all the speakers and the blah, blah, blah. And then at the end all the college kids go to try to find. Get some MAGA lovemaking on and they go to these after parties. And this one was hosted by James O'Keefe. He was going to do a dance performance. But unfortunately I was unable to stay for that because of the Gary Lake confrontation. It started to get a little awkward in there. So I don't have any video of the James O'Keefe dance number that he did, though I've seen some of it on the Internet. If people are very curious. And, yeah, I go in there, frankly, most people either don't know me or are, like, curious about my presence. And I was having a pleasant conversation with somebody, as pleasant as it can be in that audience. I just. I think it's interesting to actually hear them off of social media, right? And, like, try to get. Understand what they. What they really think about things. And Carrie just kind of blindsides me. Like, she sees me before I see her, and she comes sprinting up to me like, I'm. You know, I'm. I'm prey on the Savannah. And, like, immediately starts. At first, she had her arms wide, and I thought she was gonna hug me. Like, I don't know why. I just. I had a. I had this feeling like maybe she wants to bury the hatchet. It was an incorrect Malcolm Gladwell blink assessment of what was about to happen. And instead of hugging me, when I go to kind of touch her on her shoulder, she immediately says, don't fucking touch me, and starts screaming at me, you are a piece of shit. Over, like, for like, a minute, and then turns around and then turns back around and comes back for more, starts calling me a piece of shit again. Says, I'm an alcoholic. She points at my drink. It was the only drink I'd had that night. She seemed a little. I don't know, in this new regime with the. With the lawsuits going around, I don't know what she was, but she definitely. Her eye was definitely not looking square at me. I guess I'll say that she had a wandering eye, and she was just looking up at me, attacked my outfit, and said I didn't care about Fentanyl. Mothers said I was a piece of shit over and over again. And I was just trying to de. Escalate. I teased her a little bit about. I was like, you had this new great job as the director of Voice of America. Shouldn't you be happy? Why are you so mad at me? And, yeah, out of nowhere, Laura Loomer emerges and says to Gary, like, yeah, he is a piece of shit, but, like, you know, let's chill out a little bit. So there you go. Laura Loomer, the racist conspiracist de escalated.
- [06:23]
Unknown Speaker
The attack, who then was in the news a lot later in the week with her fight with Elon Musk. The two things that are amusing about this. Are you saying casually, truthfully, that you knew Matt Gaetz from the old Days when he was a Jeff supporter. I mean, it just brings home so wonderfully in a way what it was like 10 years ago when these people were either not who they are today or they were who they were today. But it's a different circumstance and so they manifest differently or whatever.
- [06:49]
Tim Miller
This is how societies work. I mean, there were elements of. Inside of all of us. There were elements inside of Matt Gaetz that he kept. Because he thought it would help him to advance his career to act more like Jeb Bush or his dad, Don Gates or whatever. And you know, he has been unleashed for his worst impulses have now been unleashed, you know, but it is important.
- [07:06]
Unknown Speaker
For people to, I think, actually who aren't going to be quite as close to it, honestly as we are. I mean, to understand that. I've been very struck by this too, the degree to which people one sort of knew they weren't entirely where one might want them to be as human beings. But they weren't obviously psychopaths, you know, or sociopaths or racists or anything like that, at least not obviously. And they were in our circle, as it were, in different ways. And the degree to which that happens in a society and that 10 years, many people have written about this, obviously in terms of Europe in the 20s and 30s and all that. Ten years later, they're just sailed off into a totally different place. And anyway, it is just kind of interesting. These people didn't come out of nowhere. I mean, a lot of them were, yes, in that world. That part I like that part. I like Laura Loomer being a peacemaker.
- [07:49]
Tim Miller
You're correct that that is true, that there are people who shape shifted or whose darker impulses were, you know, unleashed by the Trump era. I will say this though, that crowd, though, it's like very mega. You know what I mean? Like, there are select people, there's select people that have embraced it in various ways. Like including, frankly, Charlie Kirk, who runs the event, who is like a basically a Sean Hannity College Republican. You know, that was just a hack. Like, so there's some people like that, including Charlie. Look, I said this article, there's something to be said. Charlie gets some credit. Like, it's hard to imagine a Democratic group that four days before Christmas has 20,000 people flying somewhere to go gather for something like this. It's a real grassroots enthusiasm. But the types of people that are drawn to it, it is strange. Like, I guess the other color that I didn't include in there is like one example is this guy, the Washington Post Did a big takeout on him. He was the Deep State Marauder, Ivan something. He's wearing a shirt called Retribution. He has this black book, I guess, of people that should be targeted. I'd never heard of him and I'm pretty deep in this world. Mainstream media outlet wrote a takeout him about kind of how this is scary. Like that there's this guy out there that has this list of people for the constitutional sheriffs and the incoming administration to target. And it is scary in a certain way. But then you meet him and it's like, this is an insane person. This is the person that like Steve Bannon would want to hang out with. Like, I was just standing there in the group and he comes up and starts ranting about like really wild eyed crazy stuff. And then like he leaves. And I was like, who was that to everyone? I was like, oh, you don't know Ivan, the Deep State Marauder? Like, no, I don't.
- [09:29]
Unknown Speaker
How old is.
- [09:29]
Tim Miller
He's like 40. It's hard to tell. He didn't really look that great. Just like how you've. We've said many times in the inverse, you can feel very comfortable at a freshman Democratic orientation these days, even if we disagree on the specifics of regulation policy. It's usually like high achieving, high sociability, normal people. It was a motley crew, to say the least there.
- [09:51]
Unknown Speaker
I mean, I sort of assumed that the young people who've never seen another world, if you're 24, five, you got into this world maybe when you were 17, you've never been in a pre Trump Republican world, obviously, or even in a pre Trump world, you know, politically that you're, you're all in. You're a true believer. I guess I've assumed the older people and I want to come. Bannon in particular is a good example of this. I think I'll come back to him in a sec. Have to have some sense of distance or irony or something. They remember a past before this. But maybe I'm wrong about that. Or they don't have necessarily have distance or irony because after all, Kari Lake, of all the people. You mentioned Matt Gates being a JEB Supporter in 2015, if you went to Arizona to do an interview with a local anchor, the interviewer was probably Carrie Lake and she was a totally normal, ambitious, pretty anchor person, right. On a local news TV station. So I think I'm wrong to think that only the young are fanatics. Correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I've always thought I knew Banner A little bit. When he came to Washington 2013ish and started various enterprises and told me he's going to compete with the Destroy, the Defeat, the Weekly Standard and all this, he always felt a little different to me. And I think he.
- [10:54]
Tim Miller
That's.
- [10:55]
Unknown Speaker
And he. I think he has a different attitude towards you too, and towards us in a way. I mean more of a. I'm sure he wants to crush us and won't, you know, blink for a minute when we're sent off to the camps. But on the other hand, I don't know, I feel like it's a little different. He has a little more sense of what he's up to and what he's doing and what we're up to and so forth. Am I wrong about that? And is that, does that permeate a little bit beyond him personally, if I'm right or is that just him?
- [11:17]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I think he's a pretty unique character for people who do want to Google this Deep State Marauder. Ivan Raiklin is his last name. R A I K L I N Bannon is savvy. A lot of these people are stupid is really what it comes down to. A lot of them are stupid. And so Bannon, I think in one way you can't get into a man's head or soul and kind of who cares and who would want to be. But there's a through line back to 2013. I think that he has a level of genuineness about certain aspects of the populism. About the populism, but the nativism, closing the borders about going after the rich. I mean, see what you want about Bannon. Bannon is like the only one out there at these events. Tucker I guess now too. So maybe I'd throw them him in the same category who is like talking about we should tax the rich, we should go after the billionaires, we should go after the big bankers. Their populism is a little bit more a full spectrum right wing populism in a way that's kind of scary. Right. But it's also authentic. It's not like the fake. And so I do think that him like there is this kind of puckish troublemaking nature of like, sure, I'm going to go along with the hunter bind and is a whatever Chinese agent or the voting machines. And so that's all very dangerous. I don't want to minimize it. But like I do think that both are happening at the same time. Right. Like there is. I will go along with this fake performative populism in whatever I need to do to keep Trump happy while also actually having a real populist agenda that I want to advance. And this really does take us to the Musk fight.
- [12:48]
Unknown Speaker
Yes, very much so. I mean, I'd say also a real, I don't use this term, but I mean semi fascist agenda. I mean Bannon read all these wacko Italian fascists from 1920. That guy Avola, I think I first heard of him from something Bannon wrote or said or something. So there's a kind of worldview. It's a very dangerous view in my opinion and it's deeply anti liberal in the broad sense of liberalism and therefore can lead to people being sent to camps. It's not like he's a nicer guy or has better outcomes than the, you know, more simple minded, rabid 23 year old MAGA types. But it is somewhat different. Anyway, Bannon weighed in on these. So let's get to. Well, I'm curious. So at your thing, this is pre Elon Musk versus everyone, pre Maga versus Doge is the way I think of it, I guess. Did you didn't see any indications of that at this. At your.
- [13:33]
Tim Miller
A little bit. I mean, so in two ways. So we spoke about this during the Bannon interview and you know, and he was very blunt, just about like he's been critical of Elon going back to 2018. I think there was a tweet going around about Elon bragging about how like Bannon attacking him is the best PR he's gotten like six years ago. So this is long standing, you know, like this was simmering, you know, it was under the surface during the campaign. You know, they were allies of convenience. You know, during the campaign Musk was putting in 250 million or whatever he put in to the campaign. Insane amount of money. You know, they weren't going to fight somebody that's paying you like frankly. Right. You know what I mean? Like you don't, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. And so this was always under the surface. So there was no tension at the convention. I will say this though, on stage I could sense, I think I kind of referenced this in the article that like this isn't lasting. There was not a coherent worldview being presented from the stage besides Trump adoration. Right. Like literally it was going speaker back to back. It was like Ben Shapiro sounded like Paul Ryan 2012. If he, if he thought that Donald Trump was a prophet as well. Like if he had those two views together, then it was Bannon, who is doing his nativist, quasi fascist stuff. And then it was Ben Carson, like, who sounded like, you know, a Christian conservative. And then it was Tucker who was like, even more like more insane than Bannon. Sounded like a Marxist revolutionary. Right. Like, it was Don Jr. Went up on stage after Bannon, and Bannon was attacking Mike Johnson for not passing the spending bill. But Don Jr. Didn't understand Bannon's critique. And so he was attacking the. The 15 people who opposed Mike Johnson. There was no coherent message. And then there was some of the tech guys. Patrick Bet David some. He's not really a tech guy, but business guy. There were some of these other New MAGA people who spoke. I, I guess I didn't see Elon Teal or Andreessen or Sachs, who are kind of like the core of that group that I, when I think of them. But the fact that there are these disparities, I sensed that though I wouldn't have expected, you know, a week later they would have been at each other's throat on Twitter.
- [15:38]
Unknown Speaker
And what do you make of the disparities? That is, I think on the one point of view, someone pointed this out to me at a Hanukkah gathering last night. We were chatting about all this. You know, there were like million fights within Mussolini's camp and governments from 1922.
- [15:52]
Tim Miller
I thought you were to be like, there were a million fights in the Reagan gop.
- [15:55]
Unknown Speaker
That's where you're going.
- [15:56]
Tim Miller
But no to the Mussolini.
- [15:58]
Unknown Speaker
No, but I'm just thinking of, like, you can have a pretty nasty authoritarian reg that has a lot of inconsistencies and different types and some genuine arguments about should we be in Mussolini's case, he was anti clerical, that he's prolundy the church. He's, you know, got the church on board. And some of that annoyed some of his early supporters. They held power nonetheless. And I guess, do you think it's a serious, you know, thing that they're gonna have to resolve? Can they just live with the tension between. I guess one way to call it is MAGA versus Doge. I don't think that's a bad way of putting it. Right.
- [16:26]
Tim Miller
Magaver's tech bro. For people that don't really understand what Doge is. But Doge is a tech bro. Crypto coin, but that's the term they've.
- [16:32]
Unknown Speaker
Kind of adopted for themselves. I mean, I feel like obviously there are more humans in the MAGA camp, I think, who voted for Trump than in Doge camp. But there's More money in Doge world and that ways that matters to Trump too. I don't know. What do you think?
- [16:45]
Tim Miller
Trump seemed to side with Elon. So just really quick background for people who haven't paid as close attention. And essentially this all started when Trump appointed an Indian American immigrant to be an AI ambassador or czar advisor in the White House.
- [17:00]
Unknown Speaker
Really?
- [17:01]
Tim Miller
Advisor, yeah, advisor. A low key job. But this is a person who's been a big, BIG advocate for H1B visas and all these sort of immigrant visas to bring workers particularly to Silicon Valley, but also other, other industries. And this exploded in this like a paroxysm of like racism from the MAGA world, but also just people they were feeling betrayed. Like why is Trump bringing these people in? Like being against visas such as this so that American workers can get jobs is at the core of what MAGA is. And then Elon and Vivek and all of them start defending this appointment and saying you could reform H1B but we need to value immigration. And Vivek did some weird analogies about like saved by the Veil, how Indians have a better culture in order to rationalize this. So anyway, yeah, the Saved by the.
- [17:46]
Unknown Speaker
Bell stuff spoke to your generation. It did.
- [17:48]
Tim Miller
I was like, what are you talking about?
- [17:49]
Unknown Speaker
I did not catch those, I did not catch those references personally.
- [17:52]
Tim Miller
Well, Vivek clearly wasn't watching enough Saved by the Bell because he didn't really get the references exactly right. Zach had a better SAT score than Screech. But anyway, so this fight, some of it I could see how somebody might think, oh, this is just like the King's court fighting in any, you know, for attention in any regime. I do think that the immigration thing though, if there is anything that is core to maga, it is immigration and nativism. And Elon went so hard to the map on this. He sent a tweet that talked about how he will go to war saying F you to somebody who had been attacking him over this. There was this tweet by Autism Capital which is like a crypto thing where they were trying to summarize the fight and the two factions on the right and this guy writes that the tech right or the doge right is saying that American workers are too these jobs and you can't out train being. And Elon Musk replied to that guy saying that pretty much sums it up. This was eye opening. So to me, again, you're not going to kick Elon out because of the money, like I said earlier. But it does reveal a fundamental rift that if these guys aren't willing to swallow the tech guys their views on immigration, then eventually I would think that they're going to lose out to the Stephen Miller wing internally. And I guess the last thing I'll say about this, I'm curious your thought is that the immigration fight could be the first fight because revote and those guys want a reconciliation bill in the first 30, 60 days. This goes back to what Gates told me about doing the deportations day one. They want a reconciliation bill on immigration to fund the border, to fund the jackbooted thugs, to fund whatever else they've come up with ASAP so they can get moving on their deportation plans. And so who knows, maybe they end up just kind of ignoring the legal immigration part of the fight and they can move forward. But it's not like this is something that's going to simmer and then they'll deal with it in 2026 and it's coming soon. So anyway, what do you think?
- [19:56]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I agree it's unpredictable. Which of these fights, just as this one was totally unpredictable and was May shouldn't have happened. It wasn't like this was going to happen, people eventually. Well yeah, eventually, but it could have happened six months from now. They could have all been on. They had demagogy, to say the least about the Haitians in September. And Elon and Vivek seemed to be perfectly comfortable with that and didn't either object to it or in Vivek's case, I believe, joined in on it. And that was from Trump advance. That was not like gee, wacko, you know, you know, third tier MAGA people. Right. So they weren't exactly rallied to the defense of legal immigrants there, dark skinned legal immigrants there. In a certain way this could be put off. Again, they could all agree on deporting criminals, not even deporting non criminals. They're not H1B holders. Obviously the people that these are holders they're deporting. And the money, I guess in that original reconciliation could just be for border security and for funding all the deportation and the expenses of it, administrative judges and so forth. Not for it might not address the legal issue, I guess is what I'm saying. I don't know. I think generally my view now is very hard to predict when you have an administration like this with so many impulsive oddballs and Trump himself at the top and some so many things they want to do or say they want to do, some of them conflicting with others. Who knows what rifts open when and how and what. I think it's very important for Democrats and for the opposition to be very flexible in that respect. It's important to take advantage of these rifts. I do think that, and this is one. And if that weakens Trump a bit and knocks him point office approval and that's all good, I mean, that's what has to be done. And I don't know if you agree with this. I was talking so about this last night too. For the next three months is a matter of chipping at Trump and chipping at, especially at the appointees who are weaker than Trump. Trump's their strongest person. Vivek is weaker than Trump. Musk is weaker than Trump, Cash Patel is weaker than Trump. Pete Heck's chipping at all these different figures, nominees, policies where there are cross cutting cleavages that I think is probably the opposition agenda for the next few months at least. You can't just, Trump's won the election. You can't stand up on January 21st and say he's not, he shouldn't be president to I'm not normalizing his presidency. Well, that's fine. I'm not for normalizing his presidency. But I mean, he's president, you know, he won an election. So I think that in this respect, the willingness of them all to go fighting, Trump's relative unwillingness to intervene pretty quickly to stop it does suggest there could be an awful lot of this going on on a million issues. I mean, it could happen on Ukraine, it could happen on. Well, they're obviously just on tax policy. I mean, what if Bannon actually says.
- [22:24]
Tim Miller
It'S going to happen on tax policy?
- [22:25]
Unknown Speaker
It sort of does get to the fact that Congress still exists. If they want to pass legislation, they have narrow majority, especially only a very narrow majority in the House, not that big one in the Senate. I know they all got to capitulate to Trump mostly, but maybe not forever and not on everything. And so I kind of think there are more vulnerabilities there than one might have thought in the aftermath of Trump's victory and Republican control of everything. And we're doomed.
- [22:51]
Tim Miller
I think he looks way weaker than he did the week after the election. I don't think that there's.
- [22:56]
Unknown Speaker
Is that right?
- [22:56]
Tim Miller
That's a chance? I think so. I would have expected people to be much more in line and Maybe that changes January 20th, a month from now. He looks stronger than he does now and he's just been focused on golfing and being the DJ at Mar a Lago and who knows, I don't know, maybe he gets in there and you see iron fist Trump appear, though I kind of don't expect that at this point, but I think it's certainly possible. On the just immigration rift as an example, I do think that the vulnerability is kind of the public stuff. So there might be a temptation to be like, oh well, this is all who cares? Let's not focus on this little petty fights. But to me, I think that is where you can create fissures and divide them is over this public stuff because the nativists are going to win the private fight. Elon already showed that he doesn't know what he's doing on this government shutdown thing. And Elon doesn't even know the committee process. Was even sure that there are two different chambers of Congress. A month ago I'm not 100% sure he was. And so I think that Elon is not going to win the internal fight. Now Trump, I think sided with them on this H1B thing in an interview with the New York Post. So at the kind of top level, Elon is winning and access to Trump is winning. But who's going to be writing the immigration bill? Stephen Miller. Who's going to be writing the rules that DHS puts in place as far as dealing with asylies or dealing with dreamers or whatever it is? Stephen Miller. It's not going to be Elon and his buddies. And so that like tension is going to bubble up on the public facing stuff at some point. So it's just really quick. On the tax thing, they're only going to be able to lose two votes in the House. Like they're going to end up having disagreements on the tax thing that are in the details. Devil's in the details on this stuff that's not like about these big thematic things. It's going to be about whether they can extend the salt deduction. Like the New York and California Republicans might decide to be hassle on that. Right. Like, and Trump's not in there writing this bill, you know, so they're not going to feel like they're opposing Trump. If they're opposing certain elements of the tax bill, they're going to figure out how to make it work, you know, to pass the reconciliation rules. It's just like very challenging. Again, there's stuff that vote and Miller can do, like separate from all this fighting, that's going to be very alarming and dangerous. I'm not saying this is a clown show that will that they'll end up doing Nothing but, like, the big legislative fights, I think, are going to be a lot messier than I had maybe anticipated a couple of weeks ago.
- [25:28]
Unknown Speaker
And I think the notion that they could do two reconciliation bills, I think that's kind of nuts. I mean, they're going to have to jam it all into one and just exert maximum pressure to get to 218 on that one bill. The idea that they can do that twice within the year, maybe if Trump gets stronger, but it is very striking. Six months ago, I remember saying one of these meetings of what are we going to do if Trump wins? We gamed out some of the stuff which was actually kind of useful. People were much too complacent, I'd say, about what could happen.
- [25:54]
Tim Miller
But people too complacent in the meeting where you were planning.
- [25:58]
Unknown Speaker
Yes, it was all like. And they were all like, I'm worried that the IRS could come after some of the 501c3 organizations. I think I said some version of. I don't know, why do you think that? Why won't DOJ just launch criminal investigations of all this? Or why won't Musk fund, you know, a million civil defamation suits? Oh, no, I think the irs, I mean, people were not alarmed enough. Having said that, I made sort of obvious point I thought, was that the transition was important, that if Trump, Trump, if he won the election with 51% of vote, let's say 50%, and enters office at 55 or 57, he's in very strong shape. An elected president who has a honeymoon. If he enters office with 45, he's in weak shape, and if he enters office with the same 50 he had in the election, he doesn't have much momentum. And I think that's where we are now. I did look up just kind of his approval. That isn't that much polling, and it's a little meaningless until he's president, I suppose. But he's around where he was in the vote, actually. His approved disapprove is like 5149 or something like that, you know, so. So Trump has not built momentum. I very much agree with you. I don't know how much weaker he is, but I think somewhat weaker. Some of these Cabinet picks, there's enough resistance to Kennedy and Patel and Gabbard that I don't think that's going to be a smooth show over the two or three weeks after the new Congress gets sworn in this Friday. And so I agree that he has various problems coming conceivably in these areas. And The Congress, yeah. There still is a Senate and there still is a narrowly divided House. And they're going to want to give Trump certain things to start with. But it's a good question how many of those things and every defeat, every obstacle, in my view, though, helps anything that slows the momentum. The one thing I would say about Vaughn and Miller, though, is they do understand this better and it was interesting. So Musk intervened against the continuing resolution, the CR they'd worked out. Trump changed the topic to the debt ceiling, the debt limit, Remember, I don't know if that was Trump having it studied deeply, the debt ceiling deadlines. That was vaught, presumably from OMB, kind of knowing this stuff and saying, Mr. President Elect, we need to, if we can push this back, that'll help us a lot. This is kind of not what we want to deal with in our first six months. And Trump's refocused on that with a tweet that you called my attention to. I actually missed it last night.
- [28:04]
Tim Miller
Let me just read that really quick because you mentioned. So the new Congress constitutes Friday. They're going to have to elect a speaker. And so there are two fights coming even before he gets in, in addition to the confirmations, which will start before the inauguration as well. And boy, will we have wall to wall coverage for U of the P Tag south confirmation. I've got. I've got big plans for that. Here we go. This was Trump on the debt ceiling, the extension of the debt ceiling by a previous speaker of the House. He's Talking about Kevin McCarthy, a good man and a friend of mine from this past September of the Biden administration to June of the Trump administration will go down as one of the dumbest political decisions made in years. Kevin just can't catch a break. Break. Sarah's crushing him on panels. Matt Gates is owning him. Trump is just calling him a good friend, but then saying he made the dumbest political decision in years. Anyway, Trump writes, there's no reason to do it. Nothing was gained. All caps, and we got nothing for it. A big major reason that McCarthy's speakership was lost. The Democrats must be forced to take a vote on this treacherous issue now during the Biden administration and not in June. They should be blamed for this potential disaster, not the Republicans. It's interesting that Trump sets the debt ceiling timeline in this bleat as June. Some experts have said that the debt ceiling would hit quite a bit before that, early here in 2025. Regardless. Yeah, I'm curious your big picture thoughts on. I mean Are the Republicans going to be able to extend the debt ceiling? Will the Democrats want to help them? Can Mike Johnson navigate this and stay speaker again? It's like much more challenging than I think it might have seemed from the purchase of of November 5th.
- [29:40]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I think it's very interesting this. I, I can see why Trump wants to get it out of his hair, so to speak, before he has to take over take office. I'm not sure he's right that it's such a huge problem for them. In May or June they'll resolve it the way they've resolved that ceilings in the past. But anyway, he's decided this is someone told him and maybe he's right that this is the last thing he needs to be dealing with at the same time that he's dealing with all the other stuff we've been talking about. So let's do it and let's sort of send me blame Biden RIP It's a piece of legislation. Biden would have to sign it. Trump wouldn't be in the embarrassing position of signing a huge expansion or delay or extension of the does he care about that though?
- [30:12]
Tim Miller
Who cares? He's the king of debt.
- [30:13]
Unknown Speaker
Well, that's what I don't quite understand. But they've told him it could screw.
- [30:16]
Tim Miller
Up his I think it's the House guys. I think they're worried about Chip Roy and them that there are enough House guys who are just out there on this that they can't do it.
- [30:23]
Unknown Speaker
And he would have trouble getting Democratic votes without making real concessions on the tax package or on immigration or something. So that's fair enough and so therefore get it done now. So I think it's not a crazy idea of Trump's because let me just back up. I think they will bring it to the floor next week. That is, people have sort of forgotten that Congress gets constituted. Mike Johnson and the new majority leader John Thune in the Senate could do stuff in the next two weeks just because Biden's still president. Now normally you don't when there's a change of office in the presidency because normally you're not passing, you're passing your legislation, not the Biden administrations. And so why would you do that until your guy takes over and can sign it? Right. So normally the new legislation goes on January 21, you know, but it doesn't have of course, the these legally constituted bodies, the Senate and the House. And I do think Johnson now sort of almost has to bring to the floor or try to bring to the floor a debt Ceiling extension. He can't get enough Republican votes to pass it because of the Chip Roys of the world. Now maybe they think though, this puts Democrats in a tough place and maybe they're right. I mean, do Democrats all vote against it? It is kind of a, I mean, they've, Democrats are on record a million times saying this is stupid, we should get rid of the debt ceiling.
- [31:28]
Tim Miller
I have a Democrat that is a listener that has been texting me saying that he thinks that is a win for the Democrats to be like, let's extend it. Let's get rid of the debt ceiling forever. Let's just do it now.
- [31:38]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. And I can make a case that fighting it looks petty and actually ultimately self defeating. They're not really going to. Democrats are not going to really destroy the US Economy because of some fight they're having with Trump on immigration or tax policy. So it's not a good thing for Congress. Never really wins these debt ceiling fights in the end, I think. So maybe they should give it to Trump on the end. If they give it to Trump, some Democrats will complain. Are you kidding me? The first thing, before he's even president, we're making Biden sign a debt ceiling extension to take political pressure off of him. Trump, that's not what an opposition party should do. And part of me sympathizes with that, incidentally.
- [32:09]
Tim Miller
That's the side I'm on and people.
- [32:10]
Unknown Speaker
Will scream about that. On the other hand, the other option isn't so bad and that could be like actual legislation that's on the floor of the house on January 7th or 8th. So the next two weeks are going to be pretty wild between the nominations. And I heard from someone else this morning who seemed to know what he was talking about. I'm not sure that there are other things they want to bring to the floor now. Some of them they'll pass and I guess they can hold them, you know, not send them until this 20th if they, you know, they have a week or something to hold the desk or it takes a week to get through both houses, but that they're not going to not legislate for these two weeks. And they want some of this stuff to pass so Trump can sign it on the 21st and so forth. So. But in this case, they want to make Biden sign it. I'd been very focused on the nominations, but actually there could be a lot of activity in the next two weeks and some of it could strengthen Trump and some of it could weaken him. Right?
- [32:55]
Tim Miller
Yeah. As somebody who still has Some of my vestigial Republican positions. I think the government is too big. I don't know. I think that having a debt ceiling is not actually that. Not that bad a thing. And so you're not really going to win me over on the argument that the Democrats should, like, grab this great opportunity to get rid of the debt ceiling forever. I think that the debt is going to be a problem coming here in the next few years or decade. So I'm not for that. My strategic Republican brain is on here, which is make Trump and Chip Roy work this out. All right? This is their problem now, not the Democrats problem. They shouldn't bail them out of this problem. But I do think that there will be Democrats who have, have earnest views that, like the debt limit is a problem and that we should take this opportunity to get rid of something that is. That is stupid and potentially harmful and damaging to the country. I understand that perspective, though I don't share it.
- [33:43]
Unknown Speaker
No, and I tend not to share it, too, because why do it now? You can just tell Johnson we're open to voting for this in two months when we have a normal process going and we can talk about how to package it with something. We're not going to give you this just in these first two weeks. I think that's a defensible position. But the Ro Khannas of the world are busy telling everyone that, you know, we got to work with Trump where it's appropriate and we can't. We got to not just be an opposition party. And if Doge has a good idea, we need to be for this good idea. And a lot of these guys, I don't know, they might be tempted to sort of, let's look like we want to cooperate with Trump at first. I. There are many cross currents in this, including within the Democratic Party, not just within the Republican Party. So, yes, I guess it'll fail. Well, I don't know. I don't know. That would be a very interesting question for, actually, for Hakeem Jeffries and those guys. Can they hold their members together on it, or did the Democrats suddenly splinter and half the stories next week are Democrats in disarray, not just Republicans.
- [34:31]
Tim Miller
You know, Democrats have been together. Say this about the Democrats. Maybe too much agreeableness, frankly, has been part of the reason that's got them here. But the Democrats were lockstep on the fight before the holiday over the government funding. So I expect that they'll continue to be a lockstep.
- [34:49]
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- [35:20]
Bill Kristol
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- [35:37]
Tim Miller
Carter died yesterday after a long time in hospice. I feel like so long that I feel like we've already done a bill and Tim tribute to Jimmy Carter. At one point he wanted to stay alive to vote for Kamala. Unfortunately that did not yield a positive result in Georgia. But that was something that he I think had said to his son. So I'm just wondering if you have any. I, I didn't get to meet Jimmy Carter. I assume you did working for Quail get to talk to Jimmy Carter a few times.
- [36:04]
Unknown Speaker
I did. Well, you even, you probably weren't even alive during the Jimmy Carter press, right? Was it? Right. I voted for Ford against Carter. I voted for Scoop Jackson in the primary against Carter and I voted for Reagan against Carter. So I, I was not a Carter supporter. I didn't hate him or anything like that. I just, you know, thought Ford would be a better president. But I mean what was striking about Carter was just, just to go through that when I was, I guess was in college and grad school really in 74, 56, his emergence, it was kind of crazy. One term governor of Georgia, not well known even when he was a governor. Not the most famous liberal southern governor that you know at the time, even kind of and he just campaigned and it was going to start at 1% government as good as the people. And post Watergate it hit and there were enough still kind of Christian conservatives in the Democratic party to give him support in the South. But he also campaigned, was a good government guy, sort of, you know, northerners like northern Democrats, like southern liberal Democrats who've gotten elected if only the one term. I think it was at a one term governorship in Georgia. He won the nomination somewhat amazingly almost lost the election. Ford started 20 points behind and came within a point, you know, so I had friends who were for Carter, they thought he would save the scoop. Jackson, Hubert Humphrey, Cold War wing of the Democratic Party. That did not happen. I mean, historically for my generation, that was the moment that neoconservatives moved to the Republican Party. Some of it happened in the late, in the early 70s, 1970s with Nixon and you know, in the, the 73, 4, 75. But really it was the failure of the Carter administration, the perceived failure, let me be fair, in both economic policy and in foreign policy, that led to the sort of everyone being fine with Reagan by 1980, whereas 1976, even in quite conservative neoconservative circles, Reagan was like maybe a bridge too far. The Panama Canal really is at the core of our foreign policy agenda and stuff.
- [37:49]
Tim Miller
So apparently it's back.
- [37:51]
Unknown Speaker
Trump remembers that. Trump remembers those days. The current administration was an important moment, but more I think honestly because and I the degree to which the perception somewhat similar to the Democrats today. He was not personally that left wing. He had been the more conservative candidate. But the party just seemed to be in disarray and the left was pulling the chains and the teachers unions wanted an education department, so they got that. It was all stuff that is not really very important in the big scheme of things, probably, but it let a lot of people go to the Republicans. And obviously the failures of both the economy and foreign policy in Iran, especially in the hostages, helped get Reagan elected. So it changed America. His presidency changed America. Not in the ways he hoped, honestly. I think I met him a few times when he was in his post presidency, when I was Vice President Quail's chief of staff. Carter was always going on these foreign trips, mostly contrary to the, you know, to what our foreign policy, what the Bush administration's foreign policy was. He was going to bring peace to the Koreas. You know, he was going to go visit North Korea or some crazy thing or I think he got a little involved in the run up to the Gulf War. He was going to make sure that war didn't happen and talk to Saddam or to people close to Saddam, I can't remember. So of course he would come, of course. But he would come to the White House as a former president to get briefings on this trip. And you know, we would all the Bush administration would try to prevent him from doing too much diplomatic damage from our point of view. But everyone was very polite. It's a different era. George H.W. bush. So he of course would see President Carter. But somehow my main memory is this may have just happened once or twice. I can't remember. It was since Quail was Vice President, that was a high enough level to deal with the former President. But also Quayle was vice President and Bush could happily slide after his 20 minute meeting with Carter, could let Quayle and Quayle's office organize the briefings for the former President and the nice lunch at the Vice President's residence with the Assistant Secretaries of State of whatever region, you know, Carter or some outside experts that Carter was going to and stuff. So I have this vague memory of sort of as Chief of staff, like, handling in some weird way some of Jimmy Carter's visits to Washington and to the White House. And he was always personally courteous and pleasant to me, I've got to say. But in my very brief dealings here, but that's my main memory, was the sort of, this is the Vice President's lot to go to a lot of funerals abroad to deal with things that the President doesn't really want to deal with. And Jim Baker, the Secretary of State, did not want to spend a lot of time discussing policies with Jimmy Carter. And so there we. And Quail was such an unusual matter. Catch up with Carter in a funny way. I think I once joked with Carter that Quayle had been elected the same year as Carter. Well, they were elected in the same year in 76. Quayle was knocked off, an incumbent Democrat in Indiana in the same election in 76, that Carter won the presidency and became a House member of the house at age 29. I think it was. I don't think Carter thought this was as amusing as I did, though. I think what he knew about Quayle is that Quayle was this kid who got elected and opposed about every single thing he tried to do as president. It for four years.
- [40:44]
Tim Miller
Yeah, right. Anyway, different era, a good and decent man. And this is a different time. And I wish we could go back to having those kinds of disagreements. Carter, Carter's heterodox nature on social policy is something for the Democrats to think about. You know, in the end, you say he gets kind of bogged down by the left or the perceived elements of his policies being too far left. But to get elected as a Southern governor, I mean, he. He took a number of views used on cultural issues that were, you know, moderate or more accommodating towards the conservative side. And that's maybe something that the Democrats are gonna have to learn from a little bit going forward. In addition to his personal decency. You tweeted, I do want to include this from Ronald Reagan speaking to Jimmy Carter in 81 Mr. President, I want our fellow citizens to know how much you did to carry on this tradition. You've shown we are united people pledged to maintaining a political system which guarantees individual liberty to a greater degree than any other.
- [41:43]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, he praised Carter for the transition, but a pretty nasty, pretty tough campaign. Reagan versus Carter in 1980. And certainly the liberals thought it was the end of the world when Reagan won. And even though they didn't love Carter. So that was nice of Reagan. And we'll see if Trump, I guess Trump will say some version of that. Maybe they'll write some version a sentence like that for him to say about Biden. I wonder, what do you think?
- [42:06]
Tim Miller
No, I don't. It, I don't see it.
- [42:10]
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- [42:41]
Bill Kristol
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- [42:58]
Tim Miller
You did a great interview with Eric Edelman. People don't know. We have a foreign policy podcast called Shield of the Republic and Eric Edelman is one of the co hosts. He was was part of this bipartisan commission analyzing the national defense strategy. You did an interview with him on Crystal Conversations. We'll put a link in the show notes that I just had a chance to listen to yesterday. The interview is from I guess about a week and a half ago now. But it's very much forward looking at all the different threats. I don't know, maybe if you have a one or two sentence takeaway from that and then we can direct people to a longer conversation.
- [43:29]
Unknown Speaker
I mean, Trump inherits a world with many challenges and crises. He's leaving aside the merits of Trump's own views and appointments. And I think that's we were talking earlier about what issues could flare up you know, during the campaign, it was all, well, voters don't care about foreign policy much. Even some of us would say, well, could we talk about Ukraine for a minute? You know, but in the real world, as president, foreign policy does affect how presidents are thought of. Biden learned that, I think with Afghanistan, but of course, Carter learned that with Iran. We could find many, many instances. Bush with Iraq. And I don't know, some of these decisions Trump faces, even if he were running the kind of administration we would be much friendlier too, would be tough decisions and not easy ones to implement, even if he went in the right direction. But I mean, dealing with Putin, dealing with Xi, dealing with an Iranian threat, where Iran is both. This is, I think, was Eric's, one of his most interesting points. Iran is much weaker than it was a few months ago because of the damage Israel has done to Hezbollah and then the fall of Assad in Syria. But that weakest could lead them to sprint towards nuclear weapons. And there's some evidence they're doing that. And what is Trump going to do and what is Trump going to do if Bibi comes to him and says we need to attack? I mean, I think the degree to which we could have foreign policy headlines in the first two, three months of the Trump administration has been a little underestimated.
- [44:41]
Tim Miller
I think the nuclear weapon point was super interesting and I just direct folks to listen to the whole conversation. My additional takeaway was just for an unstable president, for a chaos president, he is coming into a much, much more chaotic world than he came into in 2017.
- [44:57]
Unknown Speaker
Totally.
- [44:58]
Tim Miller
And so you. I just think that that is a little bit underappreciated in the conversation like that. There are a lot of tough decisions. There are a lot of interest to balance that. Sure, there's always risks of things to prop up, but there was much more stability globally in 2017 than there is right now.
- [45:19]
Unknown Speaker
Totally. Yeah. Largest land war In Europe in 80 years, major changes in the Middle east and who knows, for better or worse or both. Obviously Xi Jinping much more aggressive, it looks like, than he was seven or eight ago. And us having committed to be more confrontational, which was fine to me with China. But then what does that really mean? And then Trump flip flopping on that with TikTok at all, incidentally, are any of those China hawks are all telling us how tough Trump was going to be on China? I haven't seen their apologies there and.
- [45:48]
Tim Miller
I haven't seen a lot of statements. I haven't seen a lot of statements on Trump's TikTok Flip Flop. No, I haven't either. We'll keep an eye. I've got a little alert for Tom Cotton's press office. We'll see if anything comes out of there. All right, Bill, I do need to recommend to folks. I assume you did not go see a complete unknown, Timmy Chalamet as Bob Dylan.
- [46:07]
Unknown Speaker
No, actually we had dinner with our daughter Ann and her husband Matt Count Nettie, and they had just seen it, actually.
- [46:14]
Tim Miller
So what was their review? What was their review?
- [46:16]
Unknown Speaker
Very positive.
- [46:17]
Tim Miller
Very positive. Okay, great. I was worried that I was blinded. I love Timmy, longtime Timmy fan and so I was always going to love it. Our in house culture editor, Sonny Bunch, not big on Timmy. And so I was worried that I was going to be buying. I have my own perspective. But my straight guy buddies that like Bob Dylan were all positive on it or all blown away. Maybe generationally, maybe not. If you really knew, knew Bob Dylan, I don't know. I guess I would say maybe your perspective might be different, but I thought he was just phenomenal. And Edward Norton as Pete Seeger was really great. I would highly recommend it. I had feelings at times during it and my main takeaway is I Wish it was two hours longer. It stops in 65. You don't even get to Blood on the Tracks and some of the other later, later Dylan stuff. So maybe we can get a sequel out of it. I don't know. So there you go. That's my holiday recommendation to people a complete unknown.
- [47:11]
Unknown Speaker
Okay, maybe we'll go see it. We thought after talking to Anna Matt that we might go see it. I mean, Dylan was. I'm a. It's funny. Dylan was huge, obviously, when I was young, but he was already. Not in the past exactly, but other people were singing songs that I listened to in high school. So I would have, what, 68, 69, 70. There were many Dylan songs, but they were at that point already being sung by other people. Right. Because his voice was not considered that good.
- [47:33]
Tim Miller
I still think Hendrix most famously.
- [47:35]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I still think listening to Dylan, singing Dylan is kind of interesting and captivating in a certain way.
- [47:43]
Tim Miller
And Timmy nails it. It's so close. He's so close. His voice is so close. He gets close. It's not the same, but it's different enough. But it's in the ballpark. It's right.
- [47:52]
Unknown Speaker
I look forward to seeing it.
- [47:54]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Bill, Crystal, everybody else, we'll be back tomorrow. Our plans for this week, we got a pod tomorrow. We're bringing in all the faves this week. So you got a pod. Tomorrow we'll have a pod. Thursday we're going to take off New Year's Day. One more day for you guys to enjoy your family or football or hangover or whatever it is that you want to do on New Year's Day. But other than that, we're going to be back with probably more than a full schedule, probably a double schedule. As Bill points out, there's going to be a shit ton happening in January. So we'll be here for you. Bill will be back next month day Enjoy the last somewhat peaceful week and we'll be seeing you back here tomorrow.
- [48:30]
Bob Dylan
Twas in another lifetime One of toil and blood when blackness was a virtue the road was full of mud I came in from the wilderness A creature void of form Come in, she said, I'll give you shelter from the star and if I pass this way again you can rest assured I'll always do my best for her on that I give my word In a world of steel eyed death and men who are fighting to be warm Come in, she said, I'll give you shelter from the storm Not a word was spoke between us There was a little risk involved Everything up to that point had been left unresolved Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm Come in, she said, I'll give you shelter from the storm I was burned out from exhaustion Buried in the hail, Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail Hunted like a crocodile ravaged in the corn Come in, she said, I'll give you shelter from the storm.
- [50:05]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
- [50:11]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [50:42]
Bill Kristol
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