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- [00:00]
Tim Miller
Foreign. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It's the fourth week of Trump 2.0. Somehow only the fourth week, and it's Monday. So I'm back with our editor at large, Bill Kristol. How you doing, Bill?
- [00:21]
Bill Kristol
Is it the fourth week? It's unbelievable, actually. Time flies when you're having fun, Tim.
- [00:25]
Tim Miller
You know, no doubt. We need to start with the most important item of the weekend. We're going to get to super bowl stuff at the end. And obviously we have the constitutional crisis to discuss and many other matters. It's tariff week again. It's going to be Infrastructure week throughout the late 2010s and tariff week through the mid-2020s, I think. But the burning subject on the mind of the shadow president Elon Musk over the weekend was whether or not you are white. One of his very fine Twitter reply guys replied to Elon saying that Bill Crystal is Jewish, not white. Correcting a tweet that Elon had sent, Elon replied, this idea that Jewish people are not white is ridiculous. Someone like Crystal is peak white. If anything, that dude barely has any melatonin. Quick aside, melatonin is a hormone that helps regulate your sleep, wake cycle. Heavy MDMA usage creates a depletion of melatonin in the body. So maybe that's why melatonin was on Elon's mind. But melanin, I think is the word he was looking for. So, Bill, do you want to clear things? I mean, obviously very pressing matters for shadow president this weekend, debating with his racist followers over your whiteness. But I wonder if you have any thoughts.
- [01:34]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I've been around Washington for 40 years, almost 40 years now, and I've never really discussed my melanin count or whatever. Melanin? Is there a melanin count? I don't know. Whatever it is, that's what I really focused on for some reason. I don't know. Yeah, it's wonderful that Elon Musk. This was in the course of obviously, remember that white supremacist they fired for like two minutes? And on Friday, that kid who had tweeted that he was a racist before being a racist was cool. And Musk was the first to say he's got to be reinstated. And I said, that makes sense. Musk has no problem with white supremacism. Something like that. And that led to him saying, I'm white and I'm the stupidest person around. I don't care what he said.
- [02:08]
Tim Miller
Something like that you're a Subtard, I think Subtit.
- [02:11]
Bill Kristol
That was nice. That's also. It's good that the way they take to. I mean, I don't even know. That's not a word, I guess, but. But retard is a word and a word that some people find offensive, understandably in discussing people who have various medical issues, they love using. You know, this is an interesting thing about, I think Maga World and Musk World. Right. They love using words that are offensive to offend people. I mean, I guess really, what's the.
- [02:35]
Tim Miller
Well, it's a vice signal. I did a YouTube interview this weekend with my, with my guy, Jeremiah Johnson, who writes a really good newsletter on Substack and he was like, no, it's. It's to signal to the supporters, you know, I'm going to be on your side because I'm willing to say bad things. Right. I'm willing to say really mean things. And like that's a sign of loyalty. Right.
- [02:53]
Bill Kristol
Anyway, so then I, yes, he said, I'm too stupid to be. I prove that whites aren't supreme, but some are stupid. And then. Yes. And then one of his many, many, I gather, I don't really. I never look at the follows but Susan made the mistake of looking at them for five minutes. I mean, a very high percentage, you'd be surprised to hear this, Tim. Very high. Surprisingly high percentage of Elon Musk's followers on Twitter are racists and anti Semites. I don't know how that happened. You know, it's just like weird how they found him.
- [03:18]
Tim Miller
You know, that is surprising. And it's similar to how do all the Doge staffers tend to be racist? Like, you know, it's a mystery. You know, maybe it's just kind of a random dispersion throughout society of racists and it's just kind of bad luck that they all ended up in Doge. That might be one theory. Another theory is that he might be a magnet for those types of, you know, kind of volunteers to come join his merry band. Yeah. For people who missed it that the story is pretty. I mean it's pretty telling that this 25 year old or whatever literally treated I am a racist, I think in addition to a bunch of other heinous stuff. But it's not like woke cancel culture scolds were like looking at his tweets and being like, ooh, that's a little offensive. No, he's like, I am a racist. And it wasn't also like when he was 16, it was like last fall or last winter, even. It was like three months ago that he was tweeting, I am a racist.
- [04:11]
Bill Kristol
I think it was. I was a racist before racism was cool or something like that.
- [04:16]
Tim Miller
So not only am I racist, was.
- [04:18]
Bill Kristol
And is a racist.
- [04:19]
Tim Miller
I think we could say I was and I am a racist, and I think it's cool to be racist. So he gets fired. Unclear who he gets fired by, because the president, the shadow president, and the vice president all were on the side of keeping him. So I don't know who fired him. That's. It's kind of unfortunate. This is where you need our old colleague Mark Caputo to kind of wade through the morass and be like, who did the firing here? Like, who's in charge? You know, they acted like it was like the media that fired him. And it's like, no, you're in charge. You didn't have to fire him in the first place if you didn't want to. But anyway, so they all. Then they go rehire him on the backs of the president, vice president and shadow president's advocacy that people should not be judged for the mistakes of three weeks ago and he should be allowed to stay. So it's most telling just in, like, that they have inserted thinking about all of this into the top levels of our government, into our society. Right. I mean, usually it was like people on random message boards and in basements, places that were obsessed with cranium size and physiognomy and melanin levels. And Elon has inserted that right into the center of our politics, which seems like it'll probably have some negative downstream consequences.
- [05:34]
Bill Kristol
I don't think that's a good thing. I'll go out on a limb and say that. And also, I hadn't really thought through your point about. Thought about your point about. Well, who did fire him, I suppose maybe Susie Wiles, or who we both knew back in the day, I guess, is a nominal chief of staff. Not to be offensive, but, I mean, I think it's fair to say nominal chief of staff at the White House spent, you know, fired. Thought it was a bad idea to have that guy prominently on staff there for Doge and her dikta. Lasted about 10 minutes, right?
- [06:00]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Well, they're mad at the media, but they should probably be mad at the person that works for them that fired him in the first place. So maybe we can find that out. Maybe we can smoke that out and figure out who was the responsible person inside the White House so they can make sure to hold that person accountable. For their cancel culture. We have some more serious matters, unfortunately, to get to with these clowns. Now that we've cleared this up, did we actually clear it up? Do you identify as white Only peak.
- [06:25]
Bill Kristol
I identify as peak. Okay, peak person. That's kind of how I identify.
- [06:30]
Tim Miller
All right, now that we figured that out, we have a constitutional crisis coming. Many judges have been blocking the illegal actions of DOGE and the Treasury Department and elsewhere throughout the government. And J.D. vance is unhappy with this. He posted on X. If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. Trump, a little less clear than that about what he intends to do. But he told reporters on Sunday during a gaggle, forget if it was on the way to the super bowl, on the way home, no judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of decision. It's a disgrace. So anybody who is paying attention can see where this is heading, which is that these guys at some point are going to challenge legal rulings. They've been following them to date. We should say, for example, there was the USAID freeze that was enjoined by a judge. There was a memo that went out that said that people that work for USAID or whatever still have access to their email, et cetera, et cetera. Sam Stein reported that for us. So they've been following judge's orders to date, but it seems like there's a time clock on that.
- [07:48]
Bill Kristol
JT Vance is such a disingenuous creep. You know, I mean, he, I guess he went to Yale Law School where maybe he learned a certain amount of this pseudo sophisticated disingenuity, if that's a word. But, you know, of course, the issue in all these cases is whether it is a legitimate exercise of executive power or not, whether it does follow the law, whether it does violate constitutional rights. JD Vance is very well aware of this. He has supported, I mean, supported in what he has said and has talked a lot about it, actually, the merits of lawsuits challenging the government's efforts to regulate Christian bakers in Colorado or allegedly deprive anti abortion protesters of free speech when there have been issues of maybe excessive, I don't even know, curtailing of their shouting right near abortion clinics or whatever. So JD Bass is well aware that judges can step in and to vindicate constitutional rights and also to ensure that the executive is actually following the law. And he's been for doing that when it's his favorite groups that are disadvantaged by a perhaps hostile executive or one who doesn't care much about those groups. And now he's pretending that this is just judges acting illegitimately or arbitrarily. I mean, they can appeal. They are appealing, incidentally, up to appellate courts. And they have a pretty friendly Supreme Court up there. If that Supreme Court doesn't think these things are legal or constitutional, that's probably a bit of a, bit of a tell. But I agree they're laying the predicate for challenging the courts when they want to. I think I've been in some conversations about that over the weekend. People kind of expect that to be a huge dramatic we are taking on the court's moment. Andrew Jackson, they've made their decision. Let them enforce it. I actually suspect they'll find an unpopular or left wing, maybe DEI Obama appointed federal district judge who hands down a pretty liberal opinion, let's just say anti Trump opinion. And that's the one they'll say with a temporary restraining order maybe. And that's the one they'll say, this is unacceptable. It goes too far. It threatens our security and safety. We're not obeying it. Or we're asking the Supreme Court expedited review. You've got to strike this down this week because America, you know, lives are at stake. If USAID goes on doing what it's doing for another 30 or 60 or days or six months, you know, or.
- [09:55]
Tim Miller
Deportations would probably be a place for this.
- [09:58]
Bill Kristol
Yes. Something where they've got the popular side. They think the crisis might show up, therefore, not quite as explicit denial of the course, but an appeal to the chief justice, to the Supreme Court to in effect go along with them rather than with some federal district judge or maybe even a circuit panel. And I think it'll be interesting. Roberts has always been very concerned about taking on, I think, the executive too directly, especially if it's a Republican executive. Anyway, it's going to be an ongoing crisis. I mean, there may be, of course, a very dramatic moment of a showdown, but people have to be ready for many angles of this crisis. I would say they're taking on the courts as they're taking on the rule of law more generally. And if I could just say on the NIH thing, which I wrote about in Warning, which is important substantively, it's also the case that in its appropriations bills passed in a bipartisan way by Congress for the last 70 years, Congress explicitly says you can't change the reimbursement rates for indirect costs for these NIH grants because Trump tried to do it in 2017. There was a big bipartisan rebellion against that. And they put this in the appropriations bills. Those are laws. I think there'll be a lawsuit filed later today, presumably by hospitals and medical schools and so forth against Trump. But they are just routinely breaking the law. You know, I mean, testing, in a sense, whether the courts will let them get away with it or whether there are just so many instances that all the groups that might wish to try to stop them won't, and certainly testing whether Congress, which the members of whom voted for these appropriations bills last year, I believe there tend to be bipartisan, those kinds of bills. Are they going to do anything about this?
- [11:30]
Tim Miller
I want to get into NIH next, but you make a good point about kind of how I do think there's this expectation that there's this big showdown coming, rather than the frog boiling side of it. And maybe there will be a showdown eventually if they decide to not follow a Supreme Court ruling. But judges are not infallible. There are going to be judges that overstep or make bad decisions or whatever, make decisions that whatever side you are on of it are obviously going to be in conflict with what this Supreme Court would think. And so they could pick those fights in the interim. But to me, the most alarming part of all this is, and I think a signal to where we're going is that there doesn't seem to be any internal Dispute on the JD point of view here in 17, there were institutionalists, there were constitutional lawyers that were in the White House, and you would hear this would leak out to Maggie Haverman or whatever. It'd be like, well, Don McGahn is worried about this and so and so is worried about. About that. And they're going back and forth. That has been missing from the first three weeks of this administration. Like there is no, you know, and there are leaks from within the civil service, but, like, there are no leaks from the top level. That's like, so and so is trying to talk Trump off the ledge, you know, and, and make sure that he abides by court orders. It seems like those people have been snuffed out basically of the administration and that the administration itself is pretty aligned, that they're just going to go do what they need to do, law be damned.
- [13:05]
Bill Kristol
I mean, of course, the Justice Department is actually representing the administration in all these cases before. Course, I guess they've got people in there who are willing to, you know, make some of these arguments are colorable. So maybe it's, you know, it's okay to. I'm not criticizing career people necessarily for making an argument against the temporary restraining order. Maybe there are some plausible arguments on their side. But at some point, I do think people in justice are going to start refusing to make some of these arguments, sign some of these briefs. I think in the past there's been a bit of a waiver for people who didn't feel they could in good conscience signed a brief, and they haven't. I've read somewhere that the Trump administration may just regard that as grounds for firing. So I think the degree to which precisely what you're saying, this legal strategy they're following is going to make, I don't know, make it easier, I guess you could say, to purge the Justice Department. Because who's going to want to work there, especially in any area in which any of this sort of impinges on and put your name and go, you know, on briefs that you think are not right or really wrong and almost knowingly wrong, you might say. So, yeah, the general crisis of the rule of is very great.
- [14:07]
Tim Miller
Just while we're at doj, really quick, one more thing because I barely had time to get to it, but some of the executive orders and policies that have been put out by Bondi since she's been named Attorney General, pretty alarming. And we'll see how it actually all shakes out, but has gotten, I think, overshadowed by everything that's happening with Musk. I mean, they've basically said they're not going to enforce Farah, which is a foreign agents act. They said they're not really going to look into foreign interference in elections because of, you know, Trump was mad about the Russia investigation and essentially indicated that they are going to de emphasize all white collar crime prosecutions. Right. I mean, I think that the DOJ is going to completely turn towards immigration enforcement, other crimes they should be, you know, focusing on maybe fake election fraud stuff, I don't know. But like, it was pretty noteworthy because Bondi isn't as much of a firebrand as Musk or Gates. I feel like it's been overlooked. But some pretty stark policy changes coming out of DOJ.
- [15:16]
Bill Kristol
Absolutely. Just one other note on that. The acting U.S. attorney for D.C. which is an important job because so much obviously a lot of these cases, Steagall, Ed Martin, I think you've discussed him on this show. He's way beyond, I think, going in the direction you're describing. Then Bondi, I don't even Think they'll nominate him to be confirmed because he wouldn't be, I suspect. But there he is, acting, you know, U.S. attorney and firing people and putting out memos and with the ability to order prosecution of people. That's the actual line prosecuting office. Right.
- [15:46]
Tim Miller
How long can you be an acting U.S. attorney?
- [15:49]
Bill Kristol
I don't know. There's complicated vacancies, act rules, maybe 120 days, I don't know.
- [15:53]
Tim Miller
Interesting.
- [15:53]
Bill Kristol
There are ways to jiggle the rules that he or people like him could be in there for a long time.
- [16:01]
Tim Miller
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- [18:09]
Bill Kristol
I mean the real ramifications I think lots of scientists are talking about and they have a certain self interest. Sure. But at the end of the day you need buildings and electricity and support staff to run a lab and that's what the overhead goes to. Now, maybe it doesn't need to be 50% or 60% as it is in some cases. Fine. You know what? Go to Congress which has this bar and which said we want to make this decision and say let's go to 40% or let's go to 40% for universities that have massive endowments and 50% for everyone else or whatever. You know, they don't do that. They cut everything to 15%. And every. I've talked actually to happen to know a few people in this field and these are people who aren't that political and they think this will just cut nih. Were supported biomedical research by a lot. Jeffrey Flyer, who's the dean of Harvard, was former dean of Harvard Medical School, might know very slightly, but is a pretty moderate conservative type in the Harvard context. He's been sort of a critic of excessive DEI and so forth and of what's happened on campus in the last year and a half since October 7th. Very well respected. I wouldn't be surprised if he's voted Republican half the time in elections too. Says this is insane. Basically no sane government would do this. NIH's budget has gone up and down a bit over the years, but basically it's what it was 20 years ago. There's no evidence that it's like there wasn't massive amounts of money shoveled to it and God knows what they're spending it on. Do they have one or two stupid, foolish or allegedly foolish DEI ish programs? Maybe, but most of it is going to pretty hardworking researchers who are trying to solve diseases. So I think the actual substantive effect of these cuts is going to be very, very real. A and B, politically I think there will be a big backlash. And you know, a lot of people work in these Supported by these grants. Not just the top tier, doctors and researchers, a lot of lab techs and as I say, support staff and keep the buildings going and so forth. So, and they're all over the country and most of the grants don't go to Harvard and Yale and so forth. And Katie Britt, the Republican senator from Alabama, particularly close friend of yours, I believe. Haven't you been on her case a few times? I don't know. She used to be a normal Republican when she worked for Rick Shelby.
- [20:15]
Tim Miller
Yeah, let's just talk about the Alabama thing. Let me just interrupt you for a second because I had a reader that was flagging this for me earlier in the week. Last week he wrote that the Ivy Leagues and a lot of these colleges in blue states have massive endowments so they will weather the storm, but research intensive university in red states don't. And he mentioned uab, which is a University of Alabama, Birmingham. They said that UAB employs about 20% of the state of Alabama. And the local economy depends on UAB to stay in business. UAB needs the indirect cost funding that is associated with this. And lo and behold, like a day or two later, just yesterday, Katie Britt was talking to the local paper and saying that while the administration works to achieve this goal at nih, that needs a smart, targeted approach to not hinder life saving groundbreaking research at high achieving institutions like those in Alabama. I mean, there you go. Will they be able to, you know, kind of intervene in this sort of situation? But it's, it's really challenging when you have, when you have Elon Musk running around with a sledgehammer, you know, to come in and be like, well, we need to do this in a way that doesn't hurt uab. I don't know how you do that.
- [21:23]
Bill Kristol
I mean, what I do know is that liberals who've been, you know, somewhat wringing their hands somewhat understandably about what can we do and our issues, our messages aren't popular. I'm on so many of these, too many of these text groups, honestly, it's driving me a little crazy. But anyway, you know, especially with lawyers, they're all trying to be PR exper and so forth. But you know what, this is a pretty easy message. They are cutting biomedical research in the US which is done all across the country and is saving a lot of lives, has led to a lot of medical progress. And you remember Congress has to stand up and stop it and stop it now. Maybe the courts will slow it down also. That includes your Republican members of Congress. I Think it's a very easy issue for liberals, for Democrats, and it's one of several like this where they just need to overcome a little bit of overthinking. And in this case they also have to overcome. I talk about this a bit in the morning shots. They're like, oh my God, the government's unpopular. Well, is it really that unpopular? First of all, there are plenty of polls showing people want government to do all kinds of things like NIH or like bargaining to get the price of prescription drugs down. And this cuts a little bit against our past. But I think it's also worth saying, but you and I know this from our past where this was always a tough sell. Cutting government isn't that popular. I mean, government may not be popular, but taking a sledgehammer to government is even less popular. No one has won a presidential campaign really running against government. Since Reagan, I would say in 1980. There have been people who said we have to reform government, of course, we have to do this and that.
- [22:46]
Tim Miller
But basically the, in Clinton, the era of big government is over.
- [22:49]
Bill Kristol
Right?
- [22:49]
Tim Miller
There's always like targeted, you know, you know, picking on like the low hanging fruit, but massive cuts, like across the.
- [22:56]
Bill Kristol
Board cuts and sledgehammer cuts carried out by an unpopular unelected billionaire. I mean, Trump understood this, he understood this as a candidate, as you said earlier. But also he didn't do any of this in 2017-20. He tried like for two minutes in 2017. He realized, oh, this is going nowhere. And he never said a word about this for the next three years that I can recall. And that's true of a lot of parts of government. He presided over aid, he presided over nih, you know, and that was actually pretty smart of him. And it kept his numbers at a reasonable, you know, people could tell themselves he's not really damaging much out there. Right. I can vote for him because of immigration or the border or wokeness or something. So this is a very dangerous path for them politically and a very promising, I believe, opportunity for Democrats and liberals.
- [23:41]
Tim Miller
He didn't run as libertarian, right. He run as an anti libertarian, as like an illiberal big government Republican. So the polls this weekend, we're showing that generally people think that he's following through on what he ran on in his campaign. But that's like this stuff takes time to sink in. There has to be patience. People have to see the real impact, you know, and then if the courts intervene, that's going to delay the stuff at some level, which is good substantively, maybe delays the political benefit for the Democrats a little bit, but that's fine. There's a long time till there's more elections. I think that the idea that there's going to be drastic cuts to all of these like universities and communities, I just, I don't think that people really recognize the kind of indirect impact that is going to have already seen a little bit with community health centers, etc. Related to that. So if you're thinking about a state like Alabama, a lot of money in the health care system, a lot of jobs in the health care system, a lot of jobs. Still not as many as there used to be in farming and agriculture. And it's not just the medical systems that are feeling the squeeze. Here is a viral video our friends at the Tennessee Holler posted from a farmer who is feeling the squeeze right now.
- [24:51]
C
I wanted to start off by saying I did vote for Donald Trump. We are possibly going to lose our farm if NRCS doesn't hold up their contract with us on the equip program. So the reason that they're not able to hold up the contract is, is our equip program, which is cost sharing on fences, waters, a well and some seedings, was funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. Because of the executive orders, there's a pause or a freeze on the funding through the Inflation Reduction act and they're not able to pay out on the stuff that we completed or anything going forward. I'm not the only one this is affecting. So there are other farmers in the comments saying that they're in the same boat that I'm in because they sign these contracts.
- [25:32]
Tim Miller
I mean, again, the equip program I don't know a lot about. That's my husband about it this morning. Seems like there's a lot of stuff that's actually not really even related directly to climate there. It's, you know, it's directly related to you need to move tree lines and, you know, need to do various things for conservation of the land. To me, the biggest thing that that is pointed out here is that like, this guy had a contract. And again, there's negative downstream consequences of the US Government saying, well, you can't really trust us. Actually, you might be able to plan to do this or that because we started this program, but we might just yank the program and good luck, you can take us to court if you want. The ramifications of that and the ripple effects, I think could go out a lot farther than people realize.
- [26:17]
Bill Kristol
That's a good point. Just like when Trump jokes about those treasury bills. There's something wrong with someone. Didn't you see that over the weekend or something? We're discovering some fraud there, too. Oh, great. Let's just call it a question then, whether there's fraud in U.S. treasuries, which will totally destroy the world financial system and our ability to be the backbone of it and benefit a ton from the fact that people hold trillions of Treasuries all over the world with a lot of confidence now. I mean, there is a kind of recklessness here that has real effects. Just one last point on the spending itself. So they're cutting discretionary spending with a hacksaw. That's the minority of total federal spending. About half its defense and half non defense, I think it's about. Right. And they're not touching so far entitlements, which I mean, if you were a serious person about this, like Paul Ryan was, you would actually try to figure out how to save money on Medicare, Social Security. Like that's the front of Trump's mind, that that's a mistake. So Musk isn't going after that and we'll see if they go after it in their budget. And Sally, one thing that's going to make this there will be a lot of court cases, which I agree with you politically might damper it a little, you know, take the edge off because they'll be delayed. On the other hand, it'll keep in the news quite a lot. And so these cases will be scattered all over the country, I think. I mean, if you're in Tennessee, you might want to bring a case.
- [27:28]
Tim Miller
Sure.
- [27:28]
Bill Kristol
You know, Tennessee farmers might want to bring a case at a district court there and so forth. So that I think keeps it alive politically. And there will be a budget, I guess, unless we totally, you know, OMB will present a budget in the next month or so. Let's have down in black and white. This will be Trump, not Elon Musk's Doge guys. How many spending cuts Trump thinks are necessary and reasonable in all these different programs? Right.
- [27:50]
Tim Miller
There are also real tough budget questions coming up that are going to impact Trump voters. And this one voter, you know, who is concerned about maintaining their farm person who voted for Trump. There are going to be a lot of Trump voters in rural America that are going to need the government to intervene on their behalf. Tom Malinowski, who we're hoping to have on later this week on the pod, wrote a really great article about how the Democrats should deal with Trump politically. A former congressman from New Jersey, he posted this he pointed out over the weekend because of the tariffs in the first Trump administration, Trump needed to bail out the farmers to offset the costs of the tariffs. Right. There was a $28 billion aid package that went to farmers in the last administration. 26.3 billion is the entire budget of the US Department of State. So when you're talking about getting rid of waste and fraud in our foreign affairs, they bailed out farmers and it costs more than the Department of State costs in a single year. So okay, more tariffs are coming, these other cuts are coming. Is that going to happen again? Are they going to bail out one of the core demos of Trump supporters? Are they going to be able to find the money for that or are they not going to do it this time? They have a lot of challenging questions ahead on these budget matters.
- [29:08]
Bill Kristol
And the next election's not for Trump himself who might be able to overcome all these problems because he can do his magic with cultural issues and all that. But it's going to be for various Republican members of Congress. And there is still an I know everything's so polarized these days and every local elections and national election, I think people still expect in Tennessee that their senator or member of Congress will watch out for their the well being of the farmers. And if they really don't or can't or don't choose to, they control both houses of Congress after all. I think you do get some, some percent of the 2, 3, 6, 7, 8% decide you know what, maybe it's better have a Democrat there who will take, who will keep an eye out for me. I mean Democrats can run a very old fashioned in a way easy campaign if they can just like stop overthinking everything and get themselves energized on kind of a classic democr protecting the people against these billionaires who want to take away all these programs that help you.
- [30:00]
Tim Miller
It'll be intriguing to watch. I think it's going to get a lot dicier. Musk has this idea that he went into Twitter and he just mass fired people and is like whatever, who cares? It's a pretty basic system. We'll get efficiencies in. I'll find some 22 year old groipers who work the amount of hours that three old engineers used to work and we'll offset it with that, et cetera, et cetera. And the search function won't work quite as well as it used to. And there'll be these little things that power users on Twitter will notice. But for most people the service will be the same. That's not the government. That is not the government. There are certainly people within the government who you could fire and there would not be impact to regular people. But you can't just put freezes on every program and expect there's not going to be real ramifications, including to people like at uab, like this farmer in red America. So we'll keep watching that. On the tariffs, I'm going to keep banging this drum because there is a conventional wisdom that is out there right now that like the tariff thing is all fake and that Trump is just going to wave his hands and it's all just press conferences and you know, it's like what we saw with Canada and Mexico and he's going to back off. Well, like the China tariffs, the additional 10% on China State, like all the coverage was about how he backed off of Canada and Mexico. But the China tariff state, China imposed retaliatory tariffs over the weekend of 14 billion in US goods. So that's a news item that's happening. We have an announcement later today, 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum which does affect Canada disproportionately. And then Trump also said that he wants to impose reciprocal trade taxes on all countries that have tariffs on us. Kevin Hassett, his economic adviser, was on CNBC this morning talking about India's tariffs and how it is out of whack the balance there. Bernie Moreno, the senator from Ohio, talked about how there's a distinction between the structural long term tariffs the president is preparing this week and the quote, punitive tariffs or what I'd call the WWE tariffs that he uses to threaten countries that he doesn't like. I think that we're going to see here real actual tariffs that impact certain industries going into effect even if the biggest ticket items aren't happening. I don't know what you think about that.
- [32:26]
Bill Kristol
No, I think you said it all. Well, I don't have any disagreement. Again, for me, the question is politically Democrats are a little mixed on some of these questions. They don't mind some tariffs. They have old labor hostility to free trade. But there are some of them that are pretty unambiguously. I think it'll just damage not just consumers incidentally, but other businesses depend on steel and aluminum, for example, to make things here in the US or to make things partly here in the US and partly in Mexico and Canada, which is the case with a lot of things these days. So I think you have a lot of small businesses affected, maybe some big businesses and very important. I Think for Democrats, they just need to get out there and show up at these places. I really don't understand what they're doing. I mean, they seem to be having Chuck Schumer's doing idiotic demonstrations before some government agency flapping his arms up, down. They should just be traveling all around the country, each to their own district constantly and just showing up at every. With that farmer in Tennessee, I guess there's a Democratic representative there, but they can go across the border if they want, you know, or some challenger.
- [33:23]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I mean, my most generous interpretation of this is again, I know it feels like it's been years, but we're in week four, so it takes time. JBL made this argument about there's a great newsletter. I'll put it in the show Notes for People. Didn't read it. In his triad about how Democrats should fight on the USAID issue, that puts it on their turf. And his point is like, like there are earnest Christian evangelical Americans that are conservative who dedicated their life to serving the global poor, who work for USAID or work for a program that's funded by usaid, that it is not some deep state conspiracy. It's not a woke thing. It's like a white evangelical Christian who actually wants to follow Jesus teaching, not the fake Jesus teaching that JD Vance has been promoting. So find those people and make them the center of this debate rather than sort of the amorphous blob. I think some of that stuff is coming.
- [34:17]
Bill Kristol
No, I think it's coming. I mean, the three weeks is a very important point and we should nudge them to do more of it. But they are, I think, moving in that direction. And also it doesn't have to be Democratic members of Congress. It can be. I mean, some of the more attractive spokespeople would be the leaders of various, you know, all kinds of people from civil society and from business and from not for profits and so forth. And they could also make the point directly.
- [34:40]
Tim Miller
One other thing that just struck me from Kevin Hassett's CNBC interview this morning, just to reiterate the point, Trump is announcing this next round of tariffs today and Hassett, who is a more traditional Republican in his past, was out there defending it on cnbc. So to me, again, that signals that they're doing this right, that it isn't just Trump waving his hands. He scheduled an interview with CNBC to give a rationale for this next round of tariffs. Also in that interview, he says that he wants to fight inflation by increasing labor supply and lowering aggregate demand. That Struck me because we're going to be doing mass deportations. So I don't know how we're going to increase labor supply. You might ask how we're going to increase labor supply. Kevin Hassett has an answer for that. We're going to encourage Social Security recipients to work more by getting rid of taxes on Social Security. So there you go. We're going to increase the labor supply in the country by having more seniors who are receiving Social Security who had gotten out of the workforce incentivize them to get back in.
- [35:45]
Bill Kristol
So how does removing taxes on Social Security instead of asking to get back in, are you still going to get. I get Social Security now, so I know a tiny bit about the program. I guess if I get it and don't have to pay taxes on it, that's nice. It doesn't have in fact, it gives me more income without having to work now. So. Yeah, but it's very popular to say let's send a lot of 70 year olds out into the workforce but let's not let any hard. We got to deport 400,000 hardworking Venezuelans who fled socialist tyranny who are working hard and have a very low crime rate and et cetera. We have to deport them because why? Right.
- [36:16]
Tim Miller
So yeah, I'm telling you the Kevin assets of the world are going to be a problem for Trump. The best thing that Trump could do for Trump Trump is just have his press conference call people idiots and not really do anything. That's the best thing that he could do. Unfortunately, he's got Elon and Kevin Hasset of the world who are out there actually trying to do things and I think that's going to eventually work to his disfavor. Couple other random firings, not probably critical political, not very effective political cudgels for the Democrats. Talking about the archivist and the head of the Kennedy center, but worth noting at least that Trump has gotten rid of the archivist. JV also wrote about this and why this is relevant for the Triad last week and is putting himself in charge of the Kennedy center because, you know, he is a Broadway queen and enjoys shows and doesn't want any woke shows. He wants to go back to the classics. Big fan of Phantom of the Opera and Cats, very masculine interest for our president. You're more of a Kennedy center man than me, so I don't know if you have any thoughts on on either of those firings.
- [37:24]
Bill Kristol
I sort of disinclined to go to the Kennedy senator for the next four years. If Trump is chairman. And I know it's just, it's just the vanity and there's, I mean, it's, of course, idiotic and silly, except there's something slightly North Korean about it, don't you think? I'm, you know, the, the Supreme Leader is also going to be supreme leader of the cultural institutions.
- [37:41]
Tim Miller
Well, it's very China. Right? It's like China. It's like we're not going to have. We're not going to have feminine men anymore in our movies and TV shows. It's very similar to something that she did. Did a couple years ago. And I guess it's not similar in the sense that he's not banning TV shows from doing it, but from this cultural institution.
- [37:59]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, banning the TV shows for about six months from that. That'll be the next thing he and J.D. vance decide is very important to do for the sake of America's youth. I mean, I really, incidentally, on the transgender issue, for example, they're very close to just banning any representation of such a human, I think, in American public life. I mean, it's really grotesque what they're doing there. And again, Democrats don't want to talk. Some, some aspects of that issue are more complicated, I think, with sports and with medical care, maybe for young people. But the actual attempt at just, I mean, you talk about cancel culture. They are literally trying to cancel from American public life a bunch of Americans. And it's really grotesque. And again, I gotta think all this stuff adds up at some point, and people do not want to live in that kind of country.
- [38:45]
Tim Miller
Well, I don't know if it adds up, but it is true that it's grotesque. I agree on that. That the archivist. One interesting thing, particularly for more center. Center right constitutional listeners and viewers, is that the archivist actually did something pretty bold at the end of the Biden administration, which was when Biden tried to wave his hands and say that the Equal Rights Amendment is now in the Constitution, and he put out a press release about that. The archivist stood up to him and said, no, that's not how the process works. I'm not going to include this. You can imagine her name is Colleen Shogun. You can imagine her having whatever sympathies towards the ERA and towards the Biden administration, and Trump's coming in and saying, okay, well, I'll just go ahead and do this and let the chips fall. But she said, no, that was not my job. That is not in line with the way that this job is supposed to be done. And so I'm not going to do it. So you had this person that did what you want a civil servant to do, which is follow the rules, follow the rule of law, do their job, and in this case, stand up to a Democratic president's effort to kind of undermine, you know, how the process is supposed to work. And three weeks later she gets fired by some mid level staffer, Sergio Gore, via social media. It is outrageous the way that they treated her. And it's all because Trump is mad that the archives were in the classified documents case. You know, were working with Jack Smith and you know, talking to the other parts of the government as they should have been about which documents were missing. So, I mean, it's really, again, it's not a political issue, but it is fucking outrageous. And anybody that actually cares about the Constitution and the system and the, and the rule of law should be really outraged on behalf of Colleen Shogun.
- [40:35]
Bill Kristol
There are some people, you know, vaguely and tangentials of that world, you might say, historian types and all this, and scholars, and they all respect her a lot, partly because she actually knows what she's doing in terms of running the archives, which is not trivial and partly for the reasons you said. She stood up to Biden. But she also alerted, I think the Justice Department when there were not documents, classified documents that should have been there in the archives from Trump. That's why Trump hates her. I mean, Gore, who is a very, I think, bad figure, I think he's had a presidential personnel and is very much of a maga, you know, leave no prisoners and obey no laws type notified her. But I'm not mistaken in his statement. He said at the direction of President Trump is he doesn't have the right to fire. She is too higher level. And so that's actually interesting, right, Trump, you know, there'll be a certain amount of, well, Trump didn't know that these lower level types are doing this, but they, he wants her gone. Who knows, incidentally, maybe it's more just revenge, but also he probably does want to control what in those archives is used over the next four years. There's stuff in those archives from the Biden administration. There's stuff in the previous Trump administration and you know, he made, he may have an interest in putting some stuff out and putting some of it out in partial form and misleading form anyway, who knows? But just a minor example, but a good one, of the utter politicization of everything.
- [41:52]
Tim Miller
All right, you have any final thoughts before we get to the Super Bowl?
- [41:55]
Bill Kristol
No, it's kind of a boring Game. It seemed to me it was a.
- [41:58]
Tim Miller
Boring game, as I'm sure you noticed. We're happy for jbl. Eagles fan. Eagles fans in my life, I have several. But I wanted to say something about Jalen Hurts, because we don't have a lot of. At the moment, I. I do feel like we're desperate for people that are. That are good role models that, like. That you can point to, like, this is somebody that is acting with integrity throughout our public life. And I don't know if you remember this, but Jaylen her. I think it was the 2018 college football championship. He was on Alabama. And the fact that I'm about to praise Jalen Hurts tells you a lot, because I don't like anybody from Alabama. And so Jalen Hurts is my one exception from Alabama. He's a starting quarterback. They're losing a halftime to Georgia. He gets benched, which is very rare, like, for a starting quarterback to get benched in the middle of the national championship game. His backup, Tua Tagliavoa, comes in, wins the game. Alabama ends up winning the national championship. I mean, it would have been very easy to mope or to sulk at that point, but Hertz was. I just remember noticing this, like, he was right there celebrating with his teammate in all the interviews. He said all the right things the next year to start. So he transfers, he goes to Oklahoma. He ends up getting his ass beat by LSU in the national semifinals A couple years later, tough break. And then goes to pros, goes to the super bowl the first time two years ago for the Eagles, has an amazing game. It's really the rest of his team that lets him down, still says the right thing. He gets really, I mean, kind of attacked a lot in sports media as being overrated or whatever, et cetera. Comes back, they win this massive blowout last night, and it's just. You'd love to see that, right? It is contrary to a lot of what we're seeing in public life right now. Like, somebody that, you know, is willing to take a hit, does not get overwhelmed with personal grievance, you know, does not have temper tantrums, whatever. Does not, like, worry about his image in one moment and just, like, played the long game, got back there, failed two more times, gets the win last night. Philly fans are obnoxious, but I was pretty happy for Jalen Hurts. So that's. That's my earnest takeaway from last night's Super Bowl. I don't know if you had any other thoughts.
- [44:03]
Bill Kristol
Happy for Jonathan. Jonathan B. Last. Even Though he is a. An Eagles fan. You know, just one last. This is a tiny tidbit to add to your point. Someone made this point on Twitter. I think. I think other quarterbacks might have wanted to go out there on the field to take the last snap so they can be in the center of the celebration. He, presumably the coach made this decision. Presumably he was fine with it. They sent the backup quarterback, who I think has played not at all this season, basically, or almost not at all. Right. Whose name I don't remember, out there to take this. Not just that snap, but, you know, to run the last series of downs when it didn't matter anymore as a nice gesture. He gets to play in a Super Bowl. Right. And, you know, not everyone would have done that. I think that was maybe also a bit of a tribute to her. It seems like a pretty classy team altogether, actually. Both teams seem pretty, you know, the chiefs of somebody. The people have irrational dislike for the teams, but it seems like both teams are pretty impressive. A lot better than the football teams we have are a lot better than the government we have, you know.
- [44:56]
Tim Miller
Yeah, Chiefs are fine. All right, I need one more clarification before I let you go. When I asked you at the beginning if you identify as white, you said you identify as peaked, and I guess I did have to follow up. Did you meant like as in peak, P, I, Q, U, E or P E, A K? E, D? Peaked.
- [45:12]
Bill Kristol
I just peaked. P, E, a K. You know, Elon said I was peak white, so I'm just saying you're just.
- [45:17]
Tim Miller
Oh, you're peaked.
- [45:18]
Bill Kristol
I'm peak. Yeah. No, not peaked. I'm not peaked. I'm a. I'm a cheerful guy, you know.
- [45:22]
Tim Miller
Okay. Neither peak nor any peek. Just peek. Okay, I got it. Bill, Crystal, you'll be back here next Monday, and everybody else, we'll see you tomorrow for another edition of the work podcast. Peace.
- [45:42]
D
Time keeps on slipping, slipping and think of future. I want to fly like an eagle to the sea Fly like an eagle let my spirit carry me. I want to fly like an eagle till I'm free. Oh, till the revolution See the baby who don't have enough to eat to the children with no shoes on their feet. You are the house of people that's living out in the street. Well, I know there's a solution. I want to fly like an eagle to the sea Fly like an eagle for letting my spirit carry me. I want to fly my life an ego Till I'm free or till the revolution time keeps on slipping, slipping slipping into the future all time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future.
- [47:09]
C
I.
- [47:09]
D
Want to fly like an eagle to the sea Fly like an eagle Letting my spirit carry me I want to fly like an eagle Till I'm free or till the revolution.
- [47:36]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.