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- [00:00]
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- [00:38]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday, so I've got editor at large Bill Crystal back from a very non vacation vacation. You know, people do vacations differently in the summer. Myself JBL others decided to check out for the news altogether. Bill Kristol was texting me more than ever last week while he was with his grandchildren. So maybe that's a, that's a comment on the grandchildren, maybe not, I don't.
- [01:02]
Bill Kristol
Know, quite the no comment on the grandchildren. I have to explicitly and emphatically and truthfully about that. We did have the hurricane which was out in the Atlantic, obviously had spillover effects at Bethany Beach. So there were two days of basically, you know, pouring rain and stuff. So a little more time in the house and therefore text prone, I suppose. And also the news, maybe you didn't notice this since you were working so hard all last week, but the news was not all great. The news was the health of a liberal democracy in America.
- [01:29]
Tim Miller
So on that point you return with the newsletter this morning saying it's not democratic backsliding, it's a march towards dictatorship, despotism, one or the other. Both talk about the biggest picture there. And then you kind of list a couple of the things that happened that we'll get through.
- [01:45]
Bill Kristol
I mean this term democratic backsliding has become pretty common in the last 10 years, I guess in the U.S. but it really was invented, I think invented or certainly you popularized to describe the troubles in Central and Eastern Europe and actually Russia and the former Soviet Union itself after 1989. The tendency, the difficulty of getting rid of the old authoritarian habits, the, the old authoritarian people of getting democratic institutions solidly embedded quickly enough and democratic habits. And it's a very reasonable political science concept. And there are different countries that backslid more quickly than others and some haven't, so that's that it's not an inevitable thing but the impression it gives and I think it's especially true when it's. Well, and why I think it's misleading now to apply it to the US is, you know, there's sort of, there's just this pull away from democracy in countries that haven't had it for a long time.
- [02:38]
Tim Miller
And it's kind of an old habits die hard.
- [02:40]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, yeah. Which is perfectly reasonable. And you'd be an idiot to go to, you know, Poland or Bulgaria or something and not spend a lot of time thinking about how do we get rid of those old habits, how do we change them, how do we, how do we embed new ones, how we do. But that's not the case in the U.S. i mean, so in a complicated way, you could say it's sort of the case in the us we have some old habits that have died hard and that are authoritarian and that didn't go away and are now we're backsliding towards, you might say. But that's not the real story here. The story here is less backsliding and war. A genuine purposeful march towards despotism, dictatorship. I use the terms kind of interchangeably. I don't really. Authoritarianism seems a little too, I don't know, too fancy and too nice almost. And as I said in the piece, there are authoritarian tendencies in every society and every individual and every group and every. And they don't go away. They can be managed, they can be limited at times. They have to be, you know, part of just life and government, obviously in different institutions. So that's not. That makes it. Authoritarianism makes it sound like it's kind of, there's a little too much of that stuff and too little of the liberal stuff. That's true as far as it goes, but that doesn't capture what Trump and his people are up to.
- [03:52]
Tim Miller
You go through a list of various things that have happened over the past couple weeks. Military leaders, intelligence professionals purged, critics homes raided, obviously. John Bolton, that happened on Friday. I mentioned the continued Epstein cover up. The major corporations extorted. I want to get to that. Presidential control of law enforcement in the nation's capital intensified with promise that it will expand to other places. The list goes on. Which of the. I'll give you a dealer's choice there. I want to go through most of those. Where do you want to. What is the most acute for you?
- [04:23]
Bill Kristol
I do think, don't you think, the takeover of the D.C. police force, the Guard, the use of troops in LA, and then the kind of open ended promise by Trump that he's just going to do this elsewhere in the country. That's a pretty standard marker. That's not backsliding that's Trump choosing to embrace an authoritarian and pre dictatorial, as it were, method. And then an awful lot of people, awful lot of people coming along with it, including the entire Republican Party. I mean, that's one thing that strikes me. I said in the piece I was being a little careful, something like almost no, I've heard almost no Republican voices objecting to any of this. I actually, I think I originally wrote I've heard no Republican voices objecting to any of these things. Then I thought, I don't know, maybe one of them has been objected to by one female member of Congress. But it's really kind of amazing.
- [05:10]
Tim Miller
It is, yeah. I think on the military thing in D.C. and a couple of things have happened since we last talked about it and Trump explicitly said they're planning to expand this into Chicago and New York. He went on a strange Trumpian rant about how all the black ladies in Chicago are very excited. We just really want him to come save them. Which has some psychological questions I think that maybe would be better explored with a therapist. But he's doing that. The New York, there's kind of a subtle Zoran kind of threat there and how we'll see what they decide to do. Maybe we'll have to send the military in there. He's gone back and forth with Wes Moore about sending the toad into Baltimore. I want to get to Westmore in a minute. But like all of that, I mean, to me this is what a lot of us that were sounding the alarm had said was going to happen and warned about. And I think that the playbook here is the most straightforward of all of the things he's doing. And I thought Kinzinger posted something either this morning or yesterday, I forget that I thought was interesting on this point about how in addition to just kind of gathering whatever military, federal government power in these big cities by using the National Guard in these other states, he's also kind of undermining this whole second Amendment, the other part of the Second Amendment, part of the need for a well regulated militia. Essentially the states have these rights to have, you know, their own forces. And, and Trump is like kind of slowly just, you know, gathering up those forces. I don't want to, you know, catastrophize about what that's for immediately, but as you look at, you know, the march towards despotism, like the combination of that, the takeover of the cities and also the co opting of the Guard, I think, you know, those go together and I.
- [07:08]
Bill Kristol
So that probably should be 1, 1 category I think I split it up in my little piece. But, yeah, I mean, that's just a huge expansion of ice. A lot of what's happening in dc, it strikes me most of it actually is basically a giant ice raid with some other stuff going on on the side. And I. Because that is so central to their.
- [07:27]
Tim Miller
Agenda and kind of like a fascist play. Yes. It's like play acting with ice raids together.
- [07:32]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, totally. No, and the play acting part is really striking. I had something on this and took it out of the draft, I believe later this week. I'll just say it here that. I mean, it's also ridiculous. You mentioned the Trump, the tweets and the rants and the, you know, getting peeved that people was there on TV or something like that. And one tends to dismiss it as kind of ludicrous and ridiculous. But then, you know, one has to remind oneself that things can be ludicrous and dangerous at the same time. I don't think we normally think that, and I don't know. I mean, normally one thinks dangerous is serious, ludicrous is comical, you know, and maybe it's annoying. I mean, it's not healthy for the country, but it's not really dangerous. But I went back and read a little bit about the 20s and 30s and Italy and Germany in particular, and of course, they all thought Mussolini was farcical, giving those speeches, attending, you know, reinstating the greatness of the Roman Empire or something like that. And Hitler obviously was made fun of by many, many people, including Charlie Chaplin. And so it's very. But it's hard to get one's head around that a little bit, I find. Maybe just me, but I mean that the kind of. The ridiculousness and the dangerousness go hand in hand. And maybe it actually helps today. Helps them, unfortunately, it makes it entertaining. You know, the dictatorship becomes more entertaining.
- [08:43]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Diary of a Man in Despair was a little. A little homework book reading for people if they want, on this point. That was the most. At the beginning of the Trump era. This was something I read. It was. It was really striking to me. It was written by, you know, maybe a John Bolton type. I guess he wasn't really in the government, but like a conservative, traditionalist type in Germany who was writing a diary about, you know, the barbarians at the gate, apparently, and how kind of goofy and ridiculous they were. And I'd always got this right. Like, there was a general impression that Hitler was kind of silly and, you know, clownish, but, like, the degree to which it was the case from people Inside. Anyway, it was something that's interesting. I want to keep going, checking through your your list here on our, on our march towards despotism. This I don't think I even talked about last week. That's the problem with kind of, you know, there's just so, so much this stuff is happening. So I wanted to spend a second on it because Mark Hertling writes about it in the Bulwark this morning as well. And that is the military leaders intelligence professionals purged item. Just a couple of the examples. There have been more than this, but a couple of the recent ones. Lieutenant General Jeff Cruz is the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was removed, all indications are because of the intelligence assessment about how the Iranian nuclear facilities were not obliterated. Like Trump said, it was more nuanced assessment. Air Force Chief of Staff David Alvin, he, he was kind of pushed out into an early retirement. Again, I guess he had offered some criticism of the focus of the administration. These are just a couple of the latest examples. And yeah, I mean, again, like these are like not this is a category difference from the Boltons, I guess, in an important way. Right. That it's like it's not just the regime critics that are being targeted. Right. It's anyone offering dissent.
- [10:39]
Bill Kristol
Right. And this goes back to very early in Hex S10 here, where he fired the chairman of the Detroit Chiefs and others really just for the sake of firing them. There was no evidence of unlike in these cases, they hadn't said anything particularly maybe they did when they were before Trump. They said things that Hexaf found offensive because they but they were very careful, honestly, and not political is my sense from talking to people. Anyway, they got fired. So part of it is getting rid of people, as Mark Hertling says in the book, who might offer a unbiased and honest opinion. They don't want that. But a lot of it is the message it sends to everyone else to shut up. And a lot of it is bringing in their own people. I mean, I don't think one shouldn't forget that the practical effect of firing A is that you get to a point B, you know, and these are important jobs. And so it's not just that he got rid of a guy who was going to tell the truth about a US Military action when testifying to Congress and but also they putting in someone who's not going to. So I think that's a very important flip side of the firings to the Bolton part.
- [11:38]
Tim Miller
Well, I guess I haven't really we haven't spoken since this, since it happened on Friday. So. So what? Just give me your top level thoughts and I'll go into a couple of things.
- [11:46]
Bill Kristol
I mean, it's ridiculous. I mean, that is to say, whatever. I don't believe there are any legitimate concerns. If there were legitimate concerns. They know where John Bolton lives. He's not fleeing the country. They can call him up, he has lawyers, they can arrange a meeting. He's not going to. They can surveil his house if they're worried he's going to sneak out with some documents. For all I know, they were already wiretapping his phone. One thing that our friend Ryan Goodman pointed out to me is Bondi had loosened the rules for phone wiretapping quite a bit early two or three months ago. I don't really know the details of this, I don't hold it exactly to it, but he thought it was not impossible that they were doing that. And maybe they've got one sentence somewhere where, who knows, right? And then, of course there's these weird stories about foreign intelligence. Who knows, again, where that comes from? We've been down that road before with the Russians and so forth. So, yeah, he wanted, again, he wants to punish Bolton. I don't think we should ever underestimate the retribution part of what Trump's doing. He wants to send a signal to people, you're a real vociferous critic of mine, especially if you worked for me once or knew me a little bit. Enough to give yourself extra credibility as a critic, which Bolton certainly had, as opposed to people who've just been anti Trump, like US 2015, you know, you're going to get especially targeted and the rest of you just, you know, be a little more careful. I think it has a real chilling effect. I think that part, everyone's focused on Bolton, but I think people are underestimating that side of it.
- [13:10]
Tim Miller
I think that just to your point, on, like, the ridiculousness of it, it's just worth sitting on that for a second, like, yeah, we'll see what they are claiming to have or whatever. Right, but.
- [13:23]
Bill Kristol
Or we may not. That is to say, it could, this thing could just be left open for months. They don't quite ever go to court, they never produce, you know, the affidavit and so forth, but it sort of hangs over and they're working on it. They've got some worrisome things that they're looking into. Right.
- [13:37]
Tim Miller
So, sorry, It's a fair point. No, no, it's a fair point. And, and like, you could just imagine there are other Trump administration officials wrote books. You know, it's like, it's hard. It's impossible to imagine Mark Meadows, for example, like his home being raided. Right. Like just. It's like, on its face, farcical that this was necessary, like, in this. In this situation. And all you have to do is just think about any basic counterfactual about how they would act if it was a pro Trump person that, like, wrote a. Wrote a memoir from the first term that's, you know, they had some notes or whatever they come up with. And this was. I want to shout Aaron Blake over at the Post because he flagged this quote that I think was pretty striking from Ed Martin back in May where he said this. There's some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. If they can be charged, we'll charge them. But if they can't be charged, we'll name them and we'll name them. In a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed. You think that Ed Barton would know that doesn't work since he should have so much shame. But anyway, it's telling about where they're going with all this. Right. That it's like, okay, we're going to use the doj, we're going to hassle people or to shake them down. Maybe we'll charge them, or if not, like, we're just going to create problems for them.
- [14:55]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, this, you know, the silent head show trials, of course, famously, I think it was our friend Ben Weddis or someone else who came up with the term show investigation. S H O W investigation that the point of it is demonstrating to others what could happen. It's not an actual, you know, sincere investigation of a secret that has gotten out from what, seven years ago that our enemies are taking advantage of, you know.
- [15:21]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Did you. I mean, do you get a sense for the. I mean, it's not like you and John Bolton are close friends, but like, is like, what the level of concern is among him or others in that world at this point.
- [15:33]
Bill Kristol
People very close to him are saying, you know, he's calm and not worried. He didn't do anything wrong. And this was. He expected something like this. And I think it won't come to trial, and I suspect they may think that, too. That's an. Bolton's a tough guy and he can. But look, it's going to be. He's got to keep quiet or has to, but I suppose he will choose to. It's prudent. I'm sure. His advisor, his attorney is telling him to. He cried for a while now. Does John Bolton not being on cnn, you know, once a week for the next two months change the fate of the Republic? No, but, you know, it's a step, right? It's a step.
- [16:02]
Tim Miller
Yeah. It's still a chilling effect throughout the entire. You know, like, this stuff is expansive. We've talked about this in the past, like, with the chill from CEOs, which get into the intel thing next. Like, a lot of business leaders don't want to speak out. You know, administrators don't want to speak out. And, like, there are a lot of. We did a. Jokingly, I think it was a couple weeks ago, about how my guys, Oasis are coming on tour this year and their band manager told them not to speak out. All that stuff is an individual is not that important, but in aggregated is.
- [16:37]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, very much. I mean, someone I know with very good intentions, someone I think very highly of, experienced person. I texted John literally in one sentence out of, you know, look, I hope everything's fine and let me know if you want to talk or something like that. And I offered to give him a forum on the Bulwark. I threw your name in there, but that's the entire text.
- [16:52]
Tim Miller
You are welcome on the Bulwark, John.
- [16:53]
Bill Kristol
Bo.
- [16:53]
Tim Miller
And I mentioned this formal invitation.
- [16:55]
Bill Kristol
I mentioned to someone else who said, look, you know, they're probably tapping. They probably got his phones and they probably were tapping them already. And I don't know, do you want to be asked. Do you want to be called in and asked why were you in touch with him and do you know what? You know, and of course, I don't. I don't know anything. And I haven't been in that much touch with them, and I would have nothing to say if they called me in. And. But it sort of does make you think for a minute. Right. And then. And, you know, maybe you shouldn't. Maybe I shouldn't be talking to John Bolton because he's under FBI investigation. And again, is the most trivial thing, obviously, when I talk to John Bolton, multiply that by many, many fold. And that, as you were saying about the business community and stuff, it really. It is. Yeah, it's bad.
- [17:32]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And JD in his Kristen Welker interview this weekend, which I did a. I did a standalone take on, if people want to do that. I'm not going to make you listen to JD his voice on the podcast today, because he was, you know, as condescending, haughty, and you were excellently I.
- [17:48]
Bill Kristol
Did listen to that last night. You were excellently and indignant, but perceptively so. It's not just that he's a jerk, but he's. Anyway, go ahead and say what you're gonna say.
- [17:55]
Tim Miller
He's clever. He's clever about what he's doing. He doesn't want to defend the worst of their behaviors. So he plays a lot of these tricks where he does, you know, he does condescending lecturing and you know, of the critics and you know, he puts up straw men that he knocks down at the worst, you know, you know, possible interpretation of what they're doing. But on the Bolton thing in particular, a, he kind of slips and says we are investigating him. May have just been a slip of the tongue, but is a, is a bad one. And you know, when you are chief of staff to the vp, if Dan Quayle had said that, you might have said, sir, we're going to use a different. Like you're supposed to say this because this is an important distinction. So that's one. But the other is just that he, he basically lays out this playbook where he, he frames it in an Orwellian way about how this is the non political way to do business. He goes, we're not going to do what the others did. We're not going to politicize the Justice Department and go after people. What we're going to do is we're going to investigate. And if, if we find anything, then he'll be charged and if we don't, then he won't be. And that's the neutral way to do this. And that's like demonstrating like what they're really doing, which is like, we're intimidating people. We're going to intimidate you or investigate you. And, and maybe you won't be charged, maybe you will, but the punishment is the investigation.
- [19:10]
Bill Kristol
Now, you're so right about the we're investigating. I mean, it wouldn't simply be that Vice President Quayle or anyone from any other administration wouldn't have said that. He would have. His only answer would have been, I can't comment. I have. This is being done by the Justice Department. I can't comment on obviously on any kind of criminal investigation. Maybe it had a sentence, I don't know anything about it, but which would have been true, incidentally, you know.
- [19:30]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [19:30]
Bill Kristol
And so it wouldn't. But yes, advance feels entitled to, you know, kind of lay out this fake, you know, explanation, you know, based on his great experience in government and being a Yale Law graduate, I Suppose, you know, this is how the system works and we're just kind of looking into this and. But the Ed Martin thing puts the light of that, right? I mean, they're, you know, funny how they're just looking into Bolton. They're not looking into all the, as you say, Mark Meadows and the, and the Trump defenders who wrote books, gave interviews, said things that probably actually did, you know, compromise national security in certain ways the moment they were out of office, or when they were in office, for that matter, if we can be honest.
- [20:08]
Tim Miller
So anyway, they're not doing a review of the current president's documents that he had in his bathroom. The best I can tell that. I don't think that's happening.
- [20:16]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I believe that case was dropped on January 20th or 21st. Yeah.
- [20:19]
Tim Miller
Okay. I think that's. That tells you what you need to know.
- [20:22]
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- [20:56]
Tim Miller
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- [23:04]
Bill Kristol
This wasn't just like intel is a company that has a lot of dealings with China and I guess controversially exports or doesn't export, I can't remember chips of some sort that are important. It was that the Tom Cotton attacked the head of Intel. Right. Who's Chinese or of Chinese originally. And Trump saw that on tv, immediately echoed the attack. He came in and they cut a deal. So in effect he'd be back in Trump. He and the company would be back in Trump's good graces if he gave 10% of the company to the US government. That's so that makes it even worse. I mean it's not just the generic arguments against the US government owning 10% of random companies or even non random companies. It's that you need to be nice to Trump or he's coming after your company and not in some complicated way that you mentioned even of, you know, going after your customers, cracker barrel type thing. You know, he's coming right at you and he and, and the price will be a fairly substantial chunk of change and obviously total silence and subservience for the next three and a half years. I mean again, what is. I mean, I don't know. I really. The business community has already been pretty abject, but I don't know, it's. The Business Roundtable objected to this, the Chamber of Commerce, all those conservative economists. I mean if you have to be fair, the real.
- [24:21]
Tim Miller
Yeah, sure, but is there a D.C. ad campaign? Again, we've done this once before, but like we were both in this world, like back during the Obama era, you had actual campaigns to push back against what the President was doing. The business community did. If they did not like the policy.
- [24:36]
Bill Kristol
What was the name? Didn't know firm that I believe we people like us made famous. I don't know. It was like some solar energy thing for some reason.
- [24:45]
Tim Miller
Solyndra. You're thinking of Solyndra.
- [24:46]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. The federal government took a stake in it or helped it out. This was going backrupt, I can't remember. And that was like an outrage.
- [24:52]
Tim Miller
No, it was initial. It was one of the stimulus. We'll have our listeners fact check me if this is wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it was part of the stimulus and that it was like a startup money. It was not the government taking a stake in it or bailing it out. But they made these bets in green energy companies. Some of them succeeded, some of them failed badly. So the argument was like taxpayers lost their money, which this is a legit policy argument like whether the government should be doing this or not. But it's not. Wasn't social. Right. It wasn't like the government taking over a company. It was the government was investing in these industries and some of them didn't work and the money was lost. Right.
- [25:28]
Bill Kristol
And Obama didn't call in the president of Solyndra and say, well, if you're nice to me, I'll, you know, give.
- [25:34]
Tim Miller
You more just here Lip Bhutan is the CEO of Intel. To get this. He was born in Malaya but to an ethnic Chinese family in Malaya. So again, this is like the attack on him is that he was some Chinese crypto asset or whatever. Tom Cotton is going after him about this and now we have to take a stake in the company. We're going to take an additional stake in other companies. And now imagine if you're. It's not just a chilling effect on intel and their CEO or their customers, if you are any of the companies that got money from the CHIPS act, from Inflation Reduction act. Now a precedent has been set. It's like oh, if there was a loan provided, a government backing loan provided. Now someone goes on TV and gets grandpa mad, the government might come in and turn that loan into their desire to have a sovereign wealth fund.
- [26:35]
Bill Kristol
You know, when just on the defend the defense sphere, since we're talking about that for a minute. I learned this last week. I don't know this is reported much that I don't believe. It's confidential. Exactly. One of the big defense firms hired a new consulting firm set up by former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Very standard kind of inside the beltway thing for consulting whatever. Presumably Austin has good relations with Senate Democrat, with some Democrats, whatever. He knows a lot. Anyway, anyways, a totally standard thing we can all talk about. Maybe there shouldn't be this stricter rules against people setting up these firms and being hired by Lockheed Martin or Raytheon or whoever it was. But anyway, it was totally conventional. It wasn't a huge amount of money. They have like 30 other firms on retainer. This wasn't. I don't think Trump personally, but someone in Trump in the administration knew about this. Maybe it was Hexath or someone at DOD and apparently made a tiny fuss about it. And the defense firm dropped, canceled the contract. And so again, just at this level, even. Right. I mean, again, it's. Who cares? In a certain way, Lord Austin will do fine. You know, but, I mean, and his colleagues there in that firm. But the degree to which. And that is permeated down, that's not. So people are saying, well, Trump, stay off Trump's radar screen. You're okay. No, there are a lot of people who are a lot of little Ed Martins there trying to effectuate the Trumpist agenda in all these ways.
- [27:53]
Tim Miller
No doubt. I wanna talk about some other news we have this morning regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He went to his ICE Baltimore check in, I guess, backing up this trial. Dismissed. He left, went back home to Maryland. Had to check in with ICE about his status. The Trump administration, during their conversation with his lawyers, were trying to coerce him to come in to plead guilty to the charges he's facing. He would serve, I think, a short prison sentence and then be sent to Costa Rica. That was the deal. The alternative was that he would be sent to Uganda. Obergarce's lawyers rejected the plea deal, filed a new suit this morning attempting to block the White House from immediately shipping him to Uganda. DHS says he's being processed for removal to Uganda. So that's where things stand as we tape this morning. This person, Kilmar Brigo Garcia, has been. Has become kind of this lightning rod. Andrew wrote about this morning in the newsletter that, like Trump has these two kinds of groups that he targets, essentially. One is marginalized people you've never heard of who, you know, don't have any power to push back on him. The other is regime foes that, you know, can be used, you know, as. As a wedge or as, you know, something to push back against that his MAGA people can rally around. Ends up falling in both categories in this case, because he initially is former, then becomes the latter. I don't. You Know the details of this, like, kind of are irrelevant of Garcia's case because they're irrelevant to the government. Right. Like, it's not as if in a different world with a different president or a different dhs, you know, you could at least trust that they were trying to, you know, get justice. And if did not commit any of these crimes and was here and it was fine, then the process would go forth and otherwise he could be deported. That's not what's happening here. They're sending him to a war torn country in Africa where he has no ties, obviously doesn't know the language, won't have any money. Like, I mean, it's an unimaginable way for our country to treat people.
- [30:09]
Bill Kristol
It is. And this is because he won't plead guilty. I don't know that they're so confident if they went to trial that they would be able to convict him of anything. And he hasn't been, to my knowledge, charged in a criminal proceeding with anything at this point. Right. He's been charged in immigration court and then sent to this gulag in El Salvador. I mean, any normal administration would be, have apologized to him and be leaving him alone, whatever the details of his overstaying his visa. Right. But this is, in a way, Trump, this again is very characteristic of, of despotism and dictatorship. You really don't let people get away with winning against you, you know, if you can, if you can stop them.
- [30:47]
Tim Miller
Just, just for like what the facts about what happened. Because I was kind of murky too, on the lead in. So when they brought him back to the U.S. dOJ did indict him in Tennessee for unlawfully transporting illegal immigrants for financial gain. Right. They kept using the word human trafficking because I think it sounds, you know, people in their mind when they hear human trafficking, they hear like young girls or whatever being attracted into sex slavery. But what's really happening, I guess is he was pulled over when he was driving across the country with other people who were here undocumented. And so that was the DOJ charge. And then fast forward a couple of months, his lawyers moves have the case dismissed on the argument that it was selective or vindictive prosecution. And he was released on August 22 and returned to Maryland. And here we are a couple days later where the government's going to send him to Uganda. So another thing, just as like context, this is a massive controversy in Britain a couple years ago now, like where they were trying to deal with the migrant issue there. And like, rather than sending people back to their home country or sending people to some third, I forget if it was Sudan or I think it was Sudan and, and it became like a, for good reason, like a massive humanitarian pushback in the uk. Like this is not the way that you can you treat people, you treat humans and like and the Garcia case. Now maybe this will just be the one that people know and remember. But we've, we're doing this now. Like there are other cases, other examples of people that, that the government has accused of crimes not been able to demonstrate and rather than, you know, going through with the court have now deported the person to somewhere in Africa under.
- [32:33]
Bill Kristol
These non public agreements with the governments of those countries. So we don't know under what conditions he would be there. Would he be, be able to work there, would he be able to save some, get some money from some relative and fly to Costa Rica? I mean normally one can do that I suppose, but not if you don't have papers, I guess or a visa or a passport. And someone I was talking to sort of thinks knows a little bit about this perhaps behind the scenes saying that he thought there were all kinds of conditions. Trump doesn't want to look stupid and have the Ugandan government turn around, let him get a check from his family and catch a flight from Uganda to Costa Rica. So they probably are conditions where they can't just let these people fight a other countries that are willing to take them. So it is obviously very punitive and vindictive to say the least.
- [33:17]
Tim Miller
Yeah. We also don't know the other side of these deals. Like what is Trump getting out of the governments.
- [33:22]
Bill Kristol
I mean tariffs have been explicitly on the table with Uganda. Yeah.
- [33:27]
Tim Miller
In the Uganda case, like a lower, lower tariff rate.
- [33:30]
Bill Kristol
Yeah.
- [33:31]
Tim Miller
Some of these other, I mean who the hell knows. This goes back to like the Trump black box of the of corruption. Right. Like are there investments into the crypto fund? You know, are we buying a stablecoin from Trump? Right. Like, you know, it's not. None of this stuff is being done in a transparent manner. So kind of thrust into now a little bit this Kilmart Garcia fight because it's happening in Maryland. But also we mentioned earlier about the militarization of police. Is that Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Trump has been talking about sending military into Baltimore. Wesmore sent him a letter basically saying things are getting better in Baltimore. Actually why don't you come to Baltimore and walk through the streets with me. He's doing maybe a more kind of a hybrid version between the Gretchen Whitmer and the Gavin. I'm not going to troll you, but I'm not going to submit. But maybe we can do some political gamesmanship here. And then Gavin goes on the Sunday shows, Trump freaks out, starts, you know, sending multiple tweets attacking him, including one where he says, also, I gave Westmore a lot of money to fix his demolished bridge. I will now have to rethink that decision. Something is grotesque on several levels and a lie that the money for the bridge came during the Biden administration. So Trump didn't give them anything. Even if it came during the Trump administration, it wouldn't have been Trump that gave them the money. It would have been, you know, congressionally authorized money. And, you know, you don't get to punish the people of the state because you don't like what the governor said on the Sunday show. That would have been behavior that was resoundingly condemned in any other administration, almost impeachable.
- [35:07]
Bill Kristol
I mean, we're so used to Trump, you know, I gave him the money, that formulation, which Trump uses for everything. My generals and I did this and I did that. But of course, it's deeply undemocratic and contrary to the rule of law. You know, and, and, and I just, no one else would have said that, right? I mean, literally, you know, no matter how much, you know, how high your self esteem was as president or how much you sort of deep down kind of thought that you should have the ability to do that, it didn't occur to anyone that you would publicly say, I gave him the money, so he should stop criticizing me. Leaving aside the fact that it wasn't even appropriated under his administration, as you say, right?
- [35:45]
Tim Miller
I mean, the other thing is just these counterfactuals get tired. But it's like, and if Obama had been like, I'm not going to give money to Louisiana to rebuild after a hurricane because the governor said something mean about me on tv. I mean, why they just, the con, the condom, it just, it's about the asymmetry, right? Like, obviously Fox would still be talking about that two decades later. They'd be bringing that up, you know, and how they don't care about flyover country, they don't care about regular people, and they want the people to not have bridges that work. But like, the main, rightly, like, you know, the mainstream media would have condemned him, but their own party would have condemned him. Right? Like the, you know, pundits, this, you know, balls and strikes, punches would have defensed, would have attacked him. Right? And Trump and like, I, I just, this wasn't even Covered this week. Really? I mean, like, Wes is on the Sunday shows, but. Right. Like, they don't like that particular threat is just lost kind of in the.
- [36:45]
Bill Kristol
Wash. No, terrible, terrible. I mean, I was thinking. You mentioned thinking Maryland Governor of Maryland Larry Hogan, whom we know some. And I don't know, it'd be nice if he said maybe he has. Honestly. So I should be careful about it. I shouldn't assert that he hasn't. But if he hasn't said anything, it would be nice if he said something about how wildly inappropriate this was and how he stands with the governor of Maryland and believing that Trump should not have any control over their, you know, the funds that were appropriated by the United States Congress and a bill signed.
- [37:17]
Tim Miller
By the president would be nice. I'm not seeing anything that he said on a quick glance. So, you know, I don't know. Who knows? Maybe he said something in a private event. I just. On the Westmore thing, do you have any, like, just on the politics of Wes, how he's kind of handling this? I don't know if you saw any of the Sunday shows.
- [37:32]
Bill Kristol
I didn't see much. I think he's doing pretty well. What do you think? I mean, I feel like the center of gravity has moved in a newsome direction from a windshield direction in the last month. So.
- [37:41]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I think so. Look, I don't. I don't know. He has such a positive kind of countenance. You know, he is a smiley, optimistic person, which traditionally in politics is kind of what people said, you know, you want is a happy warrior. Right. Like, that was something that. That's a kind of a common cliche in political commentary. Like, the happy warriors do better, and so maybe that will still remain true. I. I like the fact that he's being more visible on this stuff. Like, he could have not weighed in at all. Right. On the Baltimore, you know, and it wasn't like there's an imminent threat of the troops coming to Baltimore. Said that was coming. Right. So he chose to weigh in. Chose to weigh in. Kind of a clever way. And, you know, he did sort of a more chill Gavin version making fun of Trump for draft dodging after Trump attacked him on Twitter. So, I don't know. I think that there's something to it. I think that, you know, what we're asking for is for people to stand up to him. He's doing that. Like, I think that there's kind of this emotional need for the people have to either make fun of him or to be really, like, visibly angry. And I don't know whether that actually matters politically or whether that's, you know, just kind of satisfying resistance. Liberals, like, need for some emotional gratification. I feel that way. I need some emotional satisfaction at times. I don't know how much that actually matters. Like, he's not really doing that part of it, but. But I don't know. And I think on balance, it's better than we're saying some other people on issues.
- [39:11]
Bill Kristol
And he did punch back on the topic on which Trump attacked him, kind of amazingly, since he has a Bronze Star and so forth, but, you know, for somehow not deserving it. I don't know Trump said that. And I give. I think it was very wise of Moore and I think a very important example. You don't let that sit. You don't dismiss it as he doesn't know anything, what he's talking about. You say he's Mr. Isn't he President? Bone spurs and, you know, whatever. Whatever line Moore used and that. I think it shows you're not intimidated. It shows you're not pulling any punches and you're willing to hit back pretty hard when he hits you unjustly.
- [39:45]
Tim Miller
While we're doing politics, one of our other never Trumpers, Jeff Duncan, was lieutenant governor of Georgia. You might remember, I thought he gave a really great speech at the DNC convention that we're all kind of trying to wash from our memories, to not deal with any trauma. But I thought the Jeff Duncan speech was good. I don't think we can blame the L on that one convention speech. And he did something that I've. Well, we'll see how he actually executes it. But he seems to be doing something that I've been encouraging people to try. I'm not sure if it's going to work or not, but I think it's worth a try, which is to have somebody like a socially conservative, traditional Republican try to run not as an independent and not as a Democrat, where he says, I've changed all my views on everything and now I'm just a generic Democrat, kind of like the Charlie Crisp model, if you will. But saying, I'm gonna run as a Democrat, I still have some views on issue X, Y and Z, and that might be out of step with the progressive base. Here's how I would deal with that. And see, would that work in a Democratic primary? I don't know. Would that work in a general election better than a generic Democrat? I suspect so, but we don't know. So I'm intrigued that he's Thinking about trying. And he hasn't announced he was. He gave an interview this weekend where he said he was looking at it. Running for governor, that is. And Brian Kemp is term limited out. And I don't know what do you make about that possibility.
- [41:12]
Bill Kristol
I also have been my minor way encouraging people to do this or think about doing it. I guess he's thinking about doing it at this point. And I think, look, even if you don't win, it might have a very positive effect. What if you get 20%, what if you get 30% of the vote? Then you're part of the coalition and you bring your voters over to support presumably the Democratic nominee and you have some say perhaps in some of these policies. So this is how a party expands. Right. The, the challenger, the outside element that's being recruited to the party doesn't necessarily win its first race. But so many people have talked themselves out of doing this, it seems to me, because they probably won't win. You know, left's very strong. A Democratic primary and it is. And you probably won't get to 51% and maybe you won't. But I think there's really a case for people doing this at every level of government and in every, you know, both in, in running for office, but also in a point of office and the like.
- [42:05]
Tim Miller
The state level offices I think also provide potentially a little bit more room to have some heterodoxy and opinion. And so it's an interesting way to kind of test that out. Like it becomes challenging if you're, you know, if you're going to be in a 50, 50 Senate and it's like, are you going to be the last vote to do this? Are you going to be the last vote to do that? Right. Like this stuff gets nationalized where I think this kind of model becomes a little tougher on the Senate side than it does on the governor's races. So anyway, I hope he gives it a shot and it would be interesting to see exactly what that campaign looks like. We're seeing it a little bit in other places and David Jolly is doing this, I think, in Florida. And what's the right way to put this? The path of least resistance in these sort of cases is to say scales have fallen from my eyes. I'm switching sides. And here are all the. I'm the Democrats strongest warrior now or the Republican strongest warrior. Jeff Van Drew did this the other way in New Jersey. Jersey. And I think that there is conceivably some room for that. And if that's authentic to what you really believe, then great. But just as a political matter, particularly in these red states, Georgia's kind of a purple state, but particularly in red states, I'm more interested in people trying this if they hold on to some heterodoxy.
- [43:25]
Bill Kristol
And I think it'll be healthy if progressives say, look, we prefer I don't even know who's running, but X who's a more progressive candidate, if that's what they prefer. But of course, we'll support Duncan if he wins. And we would expect him to support our favorite candidate. I mean, it makes the big tent and the coalition a little more real. Maybe going both ways.
- [43:44]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Speaking of which. Yeah, going both ways, exactly. It's like, oh, if Zoran Mandani wins, maybe we should just endorse him as well and just and identify the party has as a broad coalition. Just so we have right. The there are a bunch of other declared candidates in the Democratic race, which maybe helps Duncan, frankly, in a way that you don't have to get to 51. But Keisha Lance Bottoms, the most famous former mayor of Atlanta, who I think probably seems like she would be a very strong candidate, and a bunch of state legislators as well. So anyway, we'll keep an eye on that. Just two other quick things, Bill, that I want to make sure we touch. This morning, reports out of Israel. This is from from Axios. Twenty Palestinians, including four journalists, were killed in an IDF strike at the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. It's the only open hospital, I believe, in Gaza right now. There was one strike and then notably several minutes later, a second strike took place that resulted in the deaths of reporters and some in a rescue team who tried to reach the casualties of the first strike. I'm just curious at this stage. I talked about this a little bit with Tommy on Friday, like, and obviously there's the humanitarian concerns and this appears to be a Reuters reporter. And this is fairly tragic. And that's something that's legitimately concerned about. I'm just scoping out to even the generous view of what Israel is doing now. It's kind of hard to see what the outcome is that's going to be amenable to the region, to them, to the global community. Anyway, I think that this has developed to, you know, to geopolitically something that is like a massive problem for them. I don't know if you, if you updated thoughts on what's been happening.
- [45:33]
Bill Kristol
I mean, I agree it's doing huge damage to support for Israel around the world. And then here in the US and you know, strong supporters are becoming weak supporters and weak supporters are becoming doubters and doubters are becoming hostile and, and it's, you know, that's very important. Israel's a small country and does need some help and support, you know, various kinds of economic trade, but also with the UN and so forth. So just generally no one wants to be isolated. And so it's terrible in that respect. You know, who thinks it's terrible? Hundreds of thousands of Israelis who are demonstrating against the war in Gaza at this point and a huge chunk of the Israeli security establishment very well respected former chiefs of staff and head of the Mossad and head of the Shin Bet, the FBI equivalent. And so, and they're against it and they're against, they're not against doing anything in Gaza necessarily. Some of them probably are, but they're against the way Netanyahu has been conducting and certainly is now conducting that war. So it's not a bunch of doves. And then some of the pro Israel commentary here is very, either foolish or, or disingenuous or offensive. I would almost say, you know, if you're not for this, you're somehow don't care about the interests of Israel or you're some dupe of Hamas and you believed in some photo was not taken where it was taken or whatever. And that's why you're as if one, you know, as if one, as if these people, if the former head of the IDF is making his decisions, his judgments based on that. I saw someone run a kind of very pro Israel militant type, you know, dump. Oh, the IDF's been wrong about everything for 10 or 20 years. Really. I don't know, it seems like a pretty impressive military organization, you know, and so I don't know, it's very, no, the Gaza situation is very bad. I think the other Iran, Hezbollah, you could give Netanyahu credit for doing a lot of things that strengthened Israel and I think were legitimate things to have done and important things maybe to have done. You can give them some credit for all the Abraham Accords and all that stuff, but this Gaza is a real stain and I, I think maybe an indelible one. And of course you don't, people don't separate. He is the government, he is the prime minister of Israel. They don't entirely separate this government from the country.
- [47:38]
Tim Miller
Yeah, we talked to David French about this and one thing that really stuck with me and that I've been feeling since the beginning, even as a non military expert, but as a novice just looking at like you can still assess and say, okay, well, if you have a mission, if you have a war, to even adjust war to respond when you are attacked, like, there has to be a strategy for, for ending it, for like bringing it to a conclusion, for extricating yourself from it. And like, there never really seemed like there was one. Right? I mean, like at various times, it's very. Just different things, you know. And like, in this case, like we're at this point now where that is very murky and it makes the case of, oh, you know, we're doing our best to, you know, to tamp down civilian deaths. Like, we're doing our best to take in humanitarian concerns about we need to achieve this end of X, Y and Z. So we can get that without that. A, I mean, I think people rightly start to. The humanitarian questions take on more weight. But B, it's like, well, what's the point of this now? Where are you going?
- [48:55]
Bill Kristol
I mean, there's some in the government who clearly want to say they want to retake Gaza. That's not even a good. All secret or hidden. And they really want kind of ethnic cleansing of Gaza and to just get them out somewhere to Egypt or Jordan or something. And so that. And I wouldn't say Netanyahu is necessarily of that camp, but he certainly hasn't repudiated it very hard. Now it's his coalition government and all that. But again, the price that's being paid for these people. And there's some justice to say that if you don't have a clear alternate strategy, you tend to default maybe to this in practice, almost to this strategy, which, if it's a strategy, but to this goal which does not have support in Israel or outside.
- [49:39]
Tim Miller
Final topic, you did a Sunday conversation with Brie Farmer about the transgender military ban. I think this is, I just, I like to keep coming back to this issue from time to time. I think it's an important one to bring up in part because it's just such a clear injustice and so despicable that you have this draft dodger kicking people out of the military for no reason, really, just out of bigotry, like there's not even a pretense for another reason. And secondly, because it's both wrong in the merits and I think it's good politics. And I think those are good things for Democrats to talk about. And I think they can be encouraged to talk about them because I think there are parts of the trans debate, sports, et cetera, that are pretty thorny, to say the least. Like, I Don't think this one is. And so, you know, I think it should be made an example of. But anyway, is there anything else that you took away from your conversation?
- [50:24]
Bill Kristol
I mean, I don't really know if from. Well, we've talked a couple times on the phone and, and she agreed to do this. She's really impressive. And her account of why she joined after 9 11, her account of her military career of coming out in 2016 when the transgender ban was lifted, it was finally done away with, and the support she got from her colleagues and superiors in the military and in the Defense Department. She made it through the first Trump term. There was all that back and forth, as you recall. They ended up banning new people from coming in. But she was there. She's a colonel. She's had serious responsibilities. She's an Air Force colonel and now space police command and serious responsibilities in many areas. And it's just, and, and no problem. I mean, all the arguments that were once used that, you know, had some credibility perhaps, or plausibility maybe is a better way of saying it, unit cohesion, women in combat, that's different from, you know, elsewhere in the foxholes, different from sitting around the Pentagon. This is literally, I mean, it's not even plausible that any of these could appear, could, could, could apply in her case or many of the other cases of her, of her colleagues and peers. And so it is pure, I mean, I don't know what it is. I mean, she's an adult. She's transitioned. You know, it's not, we're not talking about complicated issues of 12 year olds whose parents want one thing and the doctors recommend something else, or high school sports. I mean, yeah, there's no reason to do it, except if you want to just eliminate basically transgender people from, I don't know, from public life, from national life. You know, really is kind of a. It is in that respect. The totalitarian side of it is really horrifying, I've got to say.
- [52:04]
Tim Miller
I think 100 agree. Bill, Crystal, appreciate you as always. We'll see you back here next Monday. And everybody else, we're back tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. See you all then. Peace.
- [52:24]
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