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- [00:00]
Bill Kristol
Foreign.
- [00:12]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. It is Groundhog Day. It doesn't feel like Groundhog Day with Bill Kristol. You know Bill, Crystal's always keeping me fresh. I'm sad to report that Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow. So we will have six more weeks of winter, which the people of the south, we know that already. And I think it's an underappreciated abdication of this administration right now that like red state Republicans don't have heat and electricity and their schools aren't open for weeks. And like Mississippi and Tennessee and Texas and the administration and DHS is, you know, they're focused on other matters. I don't know, not really constituent service oriented.
- [00:51]
Bill Kristol
We blue state Virginians don't have. Our Fairfax county schools are staying closed again today. But I don't blame them. I mean, honestly, it's not safe. I mean, the kids have no place to wait on the sidewalk for the buses and stuff because it's like piles of ice everywhere. But somehow Fairfax county should have like. Is it impossible for them to have icebreakers as well as normal snowplows? I don't know. I guess it's very unusual though, to get. Honestly a week of freezing temperature and stuff. Anyway, it's been cold.
- [01:15]
Tim Miller
Yeah, some local government failures, but I will say just in a normal administration, right, you know, you would see DHS and FEMA and the president and vice president even and the National Guard troops surging towards the places where they've been weather related deaths and people are out of their home that they don't even talk about.
- [01:33]
Bill Kristol
It's not even a thought, right. In the old days it would be like, well, maybe they could deploy some National Guard to help out with some of the tasks to free up more of the SOPLOW operators. Zero. No, they're busy. They're arresting the worst of the worst, Tim, and deporting him to El Salvador and stuff. It's really making us safer as a country and better off, I think.
- [01:49]
Tim Miller
You know, and Christy had another nip tuck appointment last week, so she couldn't be focused on this. All right, well, we have much bad news to discuss and a little bit of good news too. We have a little bit of good. Some political good news which we'll get to, but I want to start with Minnesota. ProPublica got the names of the agents who shot Alex Preddy. It should be worth saying that the government still has not confirmed this at the Time of this taping. You know, the Minnesota governor walls office, the mayor's office can't confirm this. This is, I guess from a leak to ProPublica. But the agents in question are Border Patrol agents Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez, and both are CBP. CBs is not releasing any additional information about the deadly incident. I think worth noting that they joined CBP respectively in 2018 and 2014. So this is not really a training story of, you know, somebody that just joined. Any thoughts on. On the drip drip of information about this killing?
- [02:45]
Bill Kristol
I think we've all learned a little more about Border Patrol on the one hand and ICE on the other than at least I have than I knew before. I obviously had a sense of what they were up to. Border Patrol really turns out to be a. I mean, a problematic agency. Maybe you have to be problematic if you're roaming the border and dealing with gangs of coyotes, as they call them, and, you know, human traffickers. I mean, I don't, you know, it's a tough job. They were never meant to be deployed into cities. They were never meant to be dealing with peaceful demonstrators. They were never meant to be dealing with people who are, you know, harassing them a little bit in the way demonstrators do, but within their constitutional rights, they're supposed to be dealing with people or arrest them if they're breaking the law. I mean, I would say they are not the people you want policing the streets of major cities. And we've seen that now. And I do think there it's not a recruiting thing. It is the nature of every agency. And a little more so in the last 10, 15 years, as the border stuff has heated up obviously than before, ICE was more of a. Not a big, you know, contact with the people agency. ICE picked up the people in jails who were undocumented immigrants who finished serving their term perhaps in some local prison or whatever, drove them to the airport and put them on the planes out there. I'm being a little too glib, but it's sort of basically what they did. And of course there, there's been massive recruiting. We know the nature of that recruitment. Very white nationalist and, you know, ridiculous macho kind of stuff. And so the combination of the two is really bad. I mean, in this case, it is, as you say, it's not new Border Patrol agents. It's. It's. People have been around for a decade. I think ice, if I've seen the numbers correctly, like half their agents will have been hired in the last year. Who's Volunteering for ICE now. I mean, so the combination is very bad. These are not people who are into disciplined law enforcement on the streets of our cities and being respectful of both citizens rights and immigrants rights. It puts the lie, as Andrew Egger argued in this morning's warning shots. I mean, I think even if Trump was sort of sincere about the de escalation thing, which I don't think he is, these agencies have a momentum of their own now.
- [04:39]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And Edgar was really good on that. Folks should check that out in the newsletter. But he just flags one story. This is from Saturday in St. Peter, Minnesota. It's about an hour south of the Twin Cities. Legal observer driving behind an ICE vehicle, recording them with their dash cam. ICE vehicles box her in. Agents pile out of the car, they draw weapons, they scream at her, get out of the car. Get out of the car. That just doesn't sound like the type of behavior of a group of people that have been told, you know, that they need to de escalate, calm down. And so, you know, we haven't had any killings over the last week, of course, but there isn't a ton of evidence that things are meaningfully different in Twin Cities or in the other places where these agencies are deployed, for that matter.
- [05:25]
Bill Kristol
That's an important point to make, too. It's not as if they're not doing stuff elsewhere. And we've seen stuff on videos online that are pretty horrifying. The thing for me that really finds striking to me is they love breaking windows. Their first reaction seems to be if someone's in a car is a little confused about whether he or she is being asked to get out or whether maybe she should pull over first or whether she doesn't have to get out. They bash in the passenger side or the driver's side window. And this is true not just in cars, but it seems to be true in houses. And now, wasn't there a car dealership or some kind of dealership in Utah of all places, where they, they just, they love breaking glass. That has not historically been a good predictor of like, lawful and respectful and behavior that's respectful to, to citizens. It's only to minorities. Right.
- [06:09]
Tim Miller
The other part about this, and there'll be kind of more conversations with this over the next couple weeks as we get to funding, is I think that is like the key fact. What you mentioned, what I wrote about, just about how these agencies have a momentum of their own. They have rules, their own. Like, you know, Donald Trump isn't overseeing every action that they take. Right. And so if you have this huge surge in funding to the orgs and they're hiring these, these people and you're putting border patrol in a place where they shouldn't be and you have all these new ICE agents, right. Like this stuff is going to naturally happen even if they do try to rein it in a little bit. And so I think as these negotiations go and the Senate like to me it would be great to get some wins on demasking them and to change some of their policies and that I think those negotiations are happening. But if they still have this level of funding that's greater than the U.S. marine Corps, this stuff is going to continue to happen. And I think that's the key point of the funding debate and why it has to be defunded, clawed back. I think that coming to some sort of deal that doesn't claw back the funding in some ways I think it's going to be pretty misguided.
- [07:15]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I agree. And they just need to fight the funding thing throughout the year too. Whatever deal happens in the next two weeks or doesn't happen, there's still all that money they got in the bill and reconciliation bill a year. But that money, people talk about it as if it's. Well, that money is just obligated. It's not obligated, it's authorized. But it can be unappropriated for next year. And this happens all the time. Weapons get multi year appropriations because of course you can't build a jet plane in one year. So they have a five year schedule. But then they sometimes change their mind to cancel the jet plane and so they kill the last three years. That should happen. It really needs to happen. They need to defund and also de Deploy, if that's a word. I mean they need to sort of. It's not just a matter of the masks, which is important and all that other stuff. They just need to get them out of the streets of the cities basically. Now does no ICE agent ever set foot in some street somewhere if he's doing something? Sure. But the notion of these roving patrols, huge numbers of them all geared up in the kit, they are eager to break the glass and to push the people down to the cement and to get the handcuffs on and to hold them for several hours without explaining what they're doing or send them. 100 of them were sent from Minneapolis to Texas to be processed and examined and then they're released in Texas and told them to make their own way back. I Mean, it's just cruelty is the.
- [08:33]
Tim Miller
Point in some respects on that point about the cruelty being the point. You can't let yourself get too upset about what a few random assholes say on social media. But the degree to which the MAGA ghouls were like kind of delighting and the fact that it was two Hispanic officers that killed a white liberal, you know, the right has really, you know, taken on the worst elements of identitarianism and identity politics as well. And you know, I hate to like even think about it in that frame, but it was pretty crazy. Like the number of people who were basically like trying to rub it like own lives, rub it in their faces, be like, see it's Ochoa and Gutierrez. That's pretty bleak I guess is my only thing to say.
- [09:10]
Bill Kristol
You follow the MAGA ghouls more than I do. Yeah, I get myself annoyed by reading occasionally the Trump acquiescent types and the anti antis and all this. They have been amazingly unconcerned about this, these sort of high toned intellectuals. Very civility is very important to him and all constitutional government. And this is really what the Republican Party stands for against those mobs on the left. And here we have.
- [09:31]
Tim Miller
I see you saw the Rich Lowry interview soon, Richard.
- [09:33]
Bill Kristol
I didn't actually, but I just, I'm just. Is it going to confirm my point of view?
- [09:38]
Tim Miller
He was doing a high minded defense. He's like, it's getting a little ugly out there. You know, some of this is impractical, you know, some of this is impractical was his concern.
- [09:45]
Bill Kristol
The Wall Street Journal's more like it might hurt them in 2026. So they probably should cut it out. But I mean if you actually want to be restrictionist on immigration, which I don't, but I mean you need to be very tough on this if this is the price to be paid. And there are scholars who've written about one of the cases against the kind of mass deportation type efforts is that inevitably it begins, it brings these civil liberties abuses. You can't do mass deportation without it. Various scholars, these points based on studies in a whole bunch of different countries. But if you want to claim that you can do it, you've got to be tough on these abuses. Right. It's sort of like when we defended, when I was a defender of the Vietnam War even I'm not that old, of the Iraq war. Of the Iraq War, you know, I was appalled by Abu Ghraib and all these things. I was genuinely appalled. It wasn't like a matter of Tactics, but also, if you wanted to be a defender of the war, you couldn't be acquiescent in the excesses and the war crimes that happened. You had to be tough on it. And to be fair, the Bush administration was. Once they found out about these things, mostly, I think military itself was. The military understood this. There's zero of that. I mean, zero of that in ICE and Border Patrol. Right? I mean, think of the military. Think what the military did when they found out about things. Removing people, trials, court martials people. Trump, of course, later pardoned Twitter now have high positions in excess Defense Department. But still, they did their best to discipline these people. There's not even a pretense of any of that now with Border Patrol and ice. So it's really, it's really bad. It's bad for civil liberties, as I've been obsessing about for the last week or so. It's very bad for 2026 and the threats it poses to free and fair elections. So very bad.
- [11:14]
Tim Miller
We talked about that.
- [11:15]
Bill Kristol
They need to be tough on the Hill. They need to not obsess about every detail, as you were saying, you know, about what? The masks this and the body cameras that. Look, they should fight all those fights, but they need to basically curb ICE and Border Patrol as much and as thoroughly as possible.
- [11:30]
Tim Miller
What are your midterm concerns at this point? You're on more of the lawyer texts than I am.
- [11:34]
Bill Kristol
Mine is simple, that if you step back and say, if Trump's not going to do well in the midterms, which I don't think he is, the Republicans aren't, what can they do? Well, they can put their thumb in the scale. What's the best institution to put the thumb in the scale? They have a bunch of things they can try, obviously, but they've got this paramilitary force roving around that can be deployed to cities, to blue cities, including blue cities in red states, which are particularly important places for some House elections and for some key Senate elections. If the Democrats are going to pick up Senate seats and it can be deployed, the governor won't resist the deployment. And they can do a lot to make the playing field unequal in the month or two before the election.
- [12:10]
Tim Miller
Speaking of which, there's some limits to that. Here's the positive side of the coin, which is voters will have their own say in this in some level. And how about not talking about a blue city and a red state? How about a red city and a red state, Fort Worth and Tarrant county over the weekend? Taylor remitt is an Air Force veteran and union guy, won a special state Senate seat, would've been a Trump +17 seat in the last election. Obviously this is a off off year, special election on a Saturday, cold weather. Right. The turnout is very low. That said, Tarrant County, Texas is not exactly a hotbed of liberal thought. And for him to win that seat, it's pretty meaningful, I think.
- [12:57]
Bill Kristol
I think it was a big deal. And incidentally, it is precisely because the electorate is going so much against Trump that I worry the most about them trying to overcome the wishes of the electorate in November. So these are big districts, I can quite realize. There are 31 members of the Texas State Senate, so there are 35, I think Texas members of Congress. So these state districts are each as large, literally, I mean, the same size as a congressional district. They don't always coincide with the congressional, but they're the same size. Now it's a special election on Saturday, so they got to turn out of just under 100,000. They'll get 250 or something in November. But 100,000, it's not one of these special elections. That's 7,242 to 6,109. I mean, you know, we're talking, we're talking 100,000 voters. This particular district is red, as you said. It's a huge swing from 17 +17 Trump to +14 for the Democrat. This time it was held by a Republican who had resigned, I think, to run for some other office. Tarrant county as a whole is a swingish, reddish, swingish district. I think Biden carried it very narrowly in 2020 and then Trump in 24. It's suburban, exurban Fort Worth, Dallas, a couple detailed things. I got too much in the weeds on this. People who tried to see what was really happening. It wasn't. It doesn't seem to have been particularly a differential turnout. It wasn't that Republicans were bored and were busy watching college basketball or something, and the Democrats all knew they were supposed to get out. The electorate seems to have been Republican ish, as you would expect in that district. But a lot of, some Republicans had, a lot of independents voted Democratic and there was a good Democratic candidate, a young guy, a veteran, kind of ran a centrist campaign. He was outspent by a lot. So it does seem to have been de facto referendum on Trump, Trumpism and the Republican Party. And certainly the Texas Republican Party is a very Trumpy Republican Party. So I think it's pretty meaningful. And again, it's meaningful because it fits into a pattern now, special elections. And of the Virginia, New Jersey elections.
- [14:44]
Tim Miller
Possibly the only district with low oil prices is hurting Trump in the country. Maybe that one in Midland. But some oil folks down there going, what is happening? Why are we going to Venezuela? Price of barrel is already too low. But it is absolutely meaningful. It's another meaningful thing for me. And folks are oftentimes reaching out, being like, where, like, you know, do you have advice like what races matter? Where, where should you help? I'm getting texts from Democrats all the time. And that district, you know, to me speaks to what you're writing with this a little bit in the newsletter you mentioned it like the House, like the Democrats are going in the House, barring some crazy thing happening at this point. Right. And some crazy thing might happen, whether that's election interference or the hell knows, some like outside force that and changes the dynamics. The Senate is a much different animal. The places where the Democrats had to compete are very tough. We talked about this a bunch. But you look at some of these stretch states now that you mentioned, Iowa, Kansas, Alaska, Tala, Ohio, maybe also Texas, depending on Texas, how that primary shakes out. But those states are not any less red than this district was. Again, this is not an apples to apples comparison. But you know, since it's a special election on a Saturday. But it does mean that, you know, if the political environment keeps getting worse and worse for Trump and the Republicans, that one or two of those might be winnable for the Democrats. And to me, you know, that is where there's going to be less resources. And you know, there'll be plenty of resources in the North Carolina and Maine Senate races. Right. And these big House races. But some of those guys might not have as much. And so I look to that. Just one other thing. We're, we're doing a live show in Texas in Dallas March 18th and Austin March 19th. And the tickets go on sale this week and people need to jump on them because the Minnesota event sold out in one day. It was unbelievable. We had no idea. Big, huge venue. So we appreciate everybody. We're looking into other ways that people can be involved in Minnesota because we are caught off guard by how excited you guys were to come support Minneapolis. We appreciate everybody. Anything else in Texas before we talk about Little St. Jeff island, the only.
- [16:55]
Bill Kristol
Thing I would say is that it is, you know, it is suburban Fort Worth, mostly suburban, sub exurban. It's not that different from the suburbs of Wichita or of Des Moines. I mean, it's Texas a little Further south, but maybe a little more Republican. But anything close to this degree of movement going, you put a lot of Senate seats in play. Winning the Senate as well as the House would be so much bigger than just winning the House. I mean, just a practical matter, what you could do with control of both bodies in 2027 and 2028.
- [17:25]
Tim Miller
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- [20:21]
Bill Kristol
I'm not sure either. I mean, I very much agree with you on let's call it the sociological, cultural side of things. And I do think, look, all elites have corruptions and problems and you know, if you pick up the rock, it's not quite what it looks like on the outside. And I'm sure it was true at first sight. It was true. God knows it's true of the Gilded Age. But it's bad. And I do think, yes, I think it tells us something about our country and our society that's not good. Didn't have to be this bad, right? And this permeating everything. And after he's convicted, I mean, this isn't one thing where people kind of knew in 2002, we're talking 2017 and people hanging out with him cheerfully and stuff. So that part's creepy. And I do think it'll politically have some effect of pushing people in a, I don't know, left wing or social democratic or anti rich elite, not just living in bubbles, but being protected from the law. I mean, which gets to the second point. I mean, so the second point is the administration's behavior and I do think some of the critics are missing the point. Six million pages, three Million pages. Look, they have done nothing to clarify what actually happened. They have not released the documents that everyone agreed would be the most helpful ones. The 2007, 2008 draft indictments, the charging documents for 2019, the 302s, the FBI inquiries. They have not released what the survivors order released. They have purposely gone out of their way to not really comply, but sort of comply with the law in the most unhelpful way possible. The administration, any normal administration, you have to release a bunch of documents. You release them in some order with an index, with some explanation. Maybe you have the experts who worked on them, not Todd Blanche, but some, you know, worker be say, here's what we found about A, B and C.
- [22:03]
Tim Miller
A lawyer who has experience dealing with sex crimes and sex trafficking. You know, the type of people that they fired, like Jim Comey's daughter, right. Would like put out a memo.
- [22:12]
Bill Kristol
They've got out of their way not to cooperate with or coordinate with the survivors. Survivors had no idea this thing was coming on Friday. So they're, you know, so the whole administration strategy is catch them off guard. Maybe we confuse everything in the first 72 hours. Maybe the story goes away. So in that respect, the bad faith of the administration is really striking. I mean, they have bad faith about everything, so maybe that's just the way they operate. But generally, generally it is striking how much they don't want people to see what some of the obvious questions are. And I guess they want to stick with their original assertion that basically no one should have been charged without anything. All those people we see on the emails arranging the flights and arranging the meetings, and then the people about whom the victims testified in the 302s and who were in the original 2007, 2008 draft indictment, I guess they just walk free. So I find that both disheartening and kind of repulsive. It's important that the administration not get away with this, I guess, is what I would say. It needs to be made clear that they are not cooperating in good faith. They do not want to get to the bottom of this. They want this to go away.
- [23:09]
Tim Miller
I think that is important and clarifying. You know, you just point my arrow the right direction on this because I said this at the start of that. I was like, look, this will be all sounded fury, signifying nothing if there aren't co conspirators that are charged or you know, that are brought to the forefront even if they don't have enough information to charge them. Right. Because it's like it's implausible and impossible to imagine that that was just formerly Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine that were involved in, you know, illicit sexual behavior with. With young women and girls. Right. Like it's impossible to imagine that. And given all of the circumstantial evidence we have pointing to other people being involved and if the and Cash Patel testified that there weren't any others, these emails do not do anything to support that narrative. And so we'll continue to, you know, kind of play that out. But if they don't. Right, then there is really no other way to look at this but kind of like a big cover up in their, in their haphazard way also, you know, dealing with, you know, the minor amount of pressure they have on their right flank. Just the only other thing I should be mentioning that leaked out with this with Epstein is the Bannon interview of him interview, quote unquote. It was a media training where Bannon pretended like he was 60 minutes and he was interviewing Jeff Epstein for an alleged effort to do a 60 Minutes interview. This is like before he gets rearrested the second time. I tried to watch some of it. It is really, it's a really tough watch because Bannon is very like almost smitten with Epstein, you would say, and like asking Epstein to explain to him all of his brilliant insights and why he has these math symposiums with Stephen Hawking and all these brilliant people and how he gets around the tax code. And the only thing that is potentially relevant to that is just any potential notion that the MAGA guys were not just totally mobbed up with him and are totally interested in protecting him is completely revealed to be false by this. I mean, just given all of the Trump administration officials in there and like Bannon's just obsequious treatment of him, their preferred narrative of oh, this was all Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, I think has been pretty fully eviscerated. I wouldn't recommend watching it.
- [25:26]
Bill Kristol
No, you handled the bad end the band and beat excellently. So you don't need any help on that. But you know, is there a single actual authentic populist like Trump supporter? I mean, I suppose there are a few out there in the country that we've never heard of. I mean, is there anyone who actually believes any of that stuff or is it just a whole bunch of corrupt elites who just wanted to, you know, get rid of the current, the centrist liberal establishment or the centrist Republican establishment? I suppose so they could get their hands on everything Bannon Tucker, all these.
- [25:58]
Tim Miller
People, I mean, no, this is one of my favorite hobby horses. Thank you, Bill. Let me go off on it. Good faith nationalist populism has never been tried. It's like the communism thing where it's like there's some real communists out there, there's some good communists just waiting around the corner. And it's like supposedly there are good faith nationalist populist people that just have conservative social values and you know, want the government to be more responsive to the economic needs of the Volk and you know, want to go after the corporate elites that are preventing people from being able to achieve their hopes and aspirations. And like they all turn out to be frauds. All of them either a want to be elites or are really more excited about doing right wing conspiracy mongering. There's no across the board like this happens time and again where you would imagine that in theory, maybe that you know what a authentic right wing populist policy platform would look like. But none of the leaders of the movement actually care about any of that stuff. And by the way, and most of the voters don't want it like Israeli when it comes down to, I mean.
- [27:07]
Bill Kristol
I guess the two leaders that we've seen who do care about it, I guess would be Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene and their post out of favor with the movement because they took some part of it seriously, you know, and I suppose in economics there might be one or two people who took seriously the notion that he cared about the working class and was going to bring manufacturing jobs back.
- [27:24]
Tim Miller
And all this I think about like there's that guy, the commentator Oren Cass, he does kind of the white papers, the Winnie the Pooh and the Tuxedo Maga stuff. But it's like there's a reason why he is doing that. Like and having symposiums and Russ Vogt and Stephen Miller and Scott Besant are running the government and why J.D. vance is the person, I think who most encapsulates this like you could have imagined after Hillbill Elegy decided he saw something about the white working class and working class broadly and how they're being left behind. And he thought that the old free market fundamentalism was wrong and he wants to pivot to focus on them. And it's like he never talks about any of that stuff. All he does is lie and like make up stories and do right wing culture war nonsense. Like that's, that is what is actually animating him and it's what animates the voters. Like really all of them Being JD Vance and all these guys just fundamentally wish that they were the like elites in charge and that they were the gatekeepers and that they could hang out with fancy elites.
- [28:25]
Bill Kristol
Vance literally becomes well known by writing a book called Hillbilly Elegy, you know, and it's about this. And now there's not a trace of it left, really. I mean, occasional tiny rhetorical traces, but very, very few. And now he's hanging out with Peter Thiel, Stephen Miller, who becomes famous as the super militant. They're taking the immigrants, are taking jobs of all these hard working native Americans again, he and his wife there. Are they even pretending to be interested in, I mean they're interested in being brutal authoritarians, I suppose, but again with them, they're enjoying the, the high life so far as what can tell here in Washington and at Mar a Lago and stuff. I think it's such a fraud, such a con.
- [29:05]
Tim Miller
Okay, that was a good four.
- [29:06]
Bill Kristol
Kind of an obvious point.
- [29:08]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I know it is an obvious point, but I'm going to do it once a week.
- [29:10]
Bill Kristol
Vance is a good exemplar of that.
- [29:12]
Tim Miller
Really, because they're going to try to like do this. Like they're going to try to turn Vance into the authentic nationalist, populist, economic populist, cares about the working man thing. And I just, I refuse to let it happen. Like, you cannot, you know, shit on my head and tell me that it's a hat, okay? Like I know it's. I know what's happening. Tulsi Gabbard. It is Groundhog Day. Actually, I lied at the top where I said it's not Groundhog Day with Bill Crystal right now. It is Groundhog Day in our society because once again we have a whistleblower complaint. This was apparently against Tulsi in late May of last year. This is a Wall Street Journal report. This complaint is so highly classified and sensitive that it's currently locked in a safe. There have been months of wrangling on how and whether to present it to Congress. I guess the whistleblower and their attorneys just kind of reading between the lines, got sick of the stall and decided to alert the reporter. I don't know that, but that seems like the most likely way that this got out. It is obviously extremely reminiscent of the Christopher Steele dossier, which turned out to be a lot of bullshit, and the, you know, report from the Ukraine call, which turned out to be extremely legit. And so here we are again. I don't know who knows if this is related to Russia or otherwise. It's a decent place to suspect with Tulsi. I guess my other, other observation is that Tulsi did seem to go very quiet for a while.
- [30:39]
Bill Kristol
Yeah.
- [30:39]
Tim Miller
And like, we didn't hear a lot about from Tulsi. And then she showed up in Georgia last week, you know, looking into the ballots from 2020 and now we have this report. So that's eyebrow raising and maybe conceivably eyebrow raising and potentially related to the thing you were talking about earlier about. Yeah.
- [30:56]
Bill Kristol
My only comment on Tulsi, which is really courtesy of our friend Tom Joslin, who noticed this Trump, when he says it was fine for Tulsi, it was important that Tulsi be there in Georgia, he said, because she's got to make sure the elections are legit or not rigged or something going forward. I mean, too much of the media coverage in the way of all this is Trump's revenge. Trump's obsession about 2020. He hates the people in Fulton county, which he does, and he's a racist. And so he hates Fulton county. And so he hated what happened in 2020. So he wants revenge for that. I take all those points. But he is thinking a lot about 20 in 2028 and the fact that Tulsi, who's DNI director of national Intelligence, is there in Georgia and is sort of part of the team working to prevent election interference and make sure we have unrigged elections. Put that together with the ICE stuff we were discussing earlier and her being able, hey, there's foreign interference here. We need to send a lot of federal troops into Georgia because they're busy doing God knows what. They're on the ground, these people who want to defeat Trump. I mean, Tom Johnson made this point on the Twitter, I think on Blue Sky. It's ominous the way Trump put that as a forward looking thing for Tulsi.
- [31:59]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I mean, Tulsi wants election interference. I think you can just say bluntly that's pretty alarming to have somebody that wants foreign election interference being a point person looking into these absurd 2020 claims. We'll see. Anything more we learned about this whistleblower complaint? Obviously, we'll be following it. This is probably unrelated, but again, it's hard to keep track of all the different corruptions and ways that there's foreign influence in our politics right now? Another Wall Street Journal story. They're doing a great job over on the news side at the Wall Street Journal. Worth pointing that out. Not as high marks on the opinion side, but the news side. They're doing real Reporting over there. Sheikh Tanoon, the Spy Sheikh, they call him. He bought a secret stake in Trump's crypto company. It was a $500 million investment for 49% of it, World Liberty Financial. That came a few months before UAE won access to American AI chips. These tightly guarded AI chips who weren't selling to foreign governments. This is so unprecedented and crazy. This is something that would be, in another time, wall to wall, the only thing that any news organization would be covering. The sitting president of the United States sold a secret stake in his company to a United Arab Emirates spy. And now we're doing a bunch, simultaneously doing a bunch of deals that matter to our national security, matter to our economic security. Trump and his family is literally in financial bed with the UAE's spy sheik.
- [33:38]
Bill Kristol
And the deals, I guess, benefit China, right? These AI deals through the uae, they also benefit China. Yeah. It's become so routine. Of course, we barely. I gotta admit, I barely read the story because it's like, oh, my God, another tens, hundreds of billions of dollars from one of these governments for Trump, you know, but it's amazing.
- [33:53]
Tim Miller
And should the United States president really be for sale to, like, a bunch of Arab mullahs? Shouldn't the Christian conservatives be concerned about this? We have a bunch of guys that are doing Sharia law, countries that have various backend deals with terror organizations as well as, like, are we not financially secure enough as a country? We need to accept bribes from Arab sheikhs? It's totally insane. I mean, it's turning me into Rand Paul and Thomas Massie. Like, it's making me want to be a fucking libertarian. Like, what? Like, how is that acceptable? Or like, in any way something that, you know, kind of serious folks on the right who are concerned about national security don't have problems with, with. Can you imagine the Tom Cotton press release of Hunter Biden did a $500 million investment with the UAE and we sold them AI chips that also went to China. Then, like, I mean, there would be total hair on fire, and rightly, by the way, it should be.
- [34:54]
Bill Kristol
And I haven't noticed a lot of press releases from hawkish Republican senators and members of Congress or hawkish editorial boards, hawkish think tanks, fdd and all our friends there. Very upset, I'm sure, by all this. So, so stupid to even say it. It's so obvious. But the degree to which they haven't been able to, they've just totally capitulated. I mean, there was a while there. Maybe this is more the first term, I guess I Have to go back and think about this. They were able to hold sort of for a while. The. I don't really approve of A, B or C, but I think he's doing a good job on D, E and F. And he's better than those horrible liberals. And then Hillary Clinton or Biden, that was like a tenable position for a while, I guess. It is utterly and completely vanished. Right.
- [35:35]
Tim Miller
And the Hillary Clinton thing is a good example. Right. Like just, just for context. So there's a big, I think, legit scandal related to the Clintons and the Clinton Global Initiative. This happens like, well, actually when she's in secretary of State kind of. And then after she leaves, right, where Bill and Hillary and their staffs are flying around the world. You know, they're having these conferences and they're taking money from foreign interests right? Now that money wasn't going to them, wasn't going in their pocket. And a lot of it ended up doing some good work. Like they were buying mosquito nets for Africa and stuff like this. Right. But just like the notion of having your nonprofit be funded by all these foreign interests was something that. It's a bad look, if you want to be the president, if you want to be the secretary of state, you can't have this kind of influence ability. You don't want to kind of tilt the scales a little bit because somebody has been a big donor to your nonprofit. Separation from this, that's part of public service. The amount of ink that was spilled going back to our friends at the Wall Street Journal, on the Wall Street Journal ed board over this or at Fox, the amount of talking head times like talking about this horrible corruption and here's Trump taking money for himself from UAE spies. It's not going into a nonprofit that's going to mosquito nets in Africa. It's going to Don Jr's you know, new club in Washington, D.C. and like their new hunting ranch that they're buying or the new, you know, whatever, the new golf course that they're building somewhere, like they're pocketing it, like they are pocketing money from foreign interests. It is a totally different category from what Hillary was, was doing. And you know, anyway, well, you know how the story ends. Nobody even pretends to be upset about it. It's fucking outrageous. Let's talk about the arts.
- [37:26]
Bill Kristol
That was a good segue there.
- [37:27]
Tim Miller
It just makes me so fucking mad. Mostly makes me mad that nobody else is mad about it. And then that just makes you wonder, I guess people are just basically happy. It's fine. There is like a trains run on time element to this. Like, would you want to become a banana republic? Like, am I supposed to be upset that my leaders are doing backroom deals with foreign Shakespeare? You know, I guess, I guess most people don't care. They're happy to live in a band or republic until they start getting gunned down in the street. Until the economy takes a turn, our inflation gets a little too high. Back to the arts. The Kennedy center is going on a two year hiatus. Our friend Rick Grinnell, your friend and mine, was given this important role, something he'd always dreamed of his whole life as Trump's top gay. He was going to be in charge of the Kennedy center and sergeant, the arts portfolio. You know, they were going to do all of these non woke events and, you know, bring back traditional values to the sound and stage. And nobody actually wants to go to the Trump Kennedy center when he puts his name on the fucking building, it turns out. And Rick Grinnell is not capable of managing a theater, it turns out. And so rather than just continuing to have like half empty events and like random balls on behalf of Trump family members, they've decided to solve this problem by taking it on a two year hiatus. They're shutting down the Kennedy center for two years. It's really kind of a piece of Trump's life. I mean, Trump puts his name on something and then it fails. It's like it's something that's been a lot of buildings with Trump's name on them that have ended up failing, casinos, et cetera. So he puts his name on the building, it immediately fails. Two year hiatus, he says they're gonna renovate it. You're more of a Kennedy center man than me, so I'll just kind of let you take it from here.
- [39:09]
Bill Kristol
I mean, we went to the opera. It's one of the few places you can go to the opera in D.C. and they have don't have that many. They reviewed the Washington National Opera for good in November, saw Figaro and Aida, and then didn't really like going there because Trump already had taken it over, head of the board. But it wasn't. His name wasn't on it yet. So I thought, look, well, you're not going to penalize the hard working people there at the opera and the orchestra and the ticket takers and so forth. So we went, but then he put his name on. And so we decided we wouldn't go to the two or three things we have tickets for in the spring. But so, yeah, I guess we're one of those who contributed to the fact that maybe it's not going to be doing too well with Trump's name on it. And so now they're closing it for two years. Allegedly, though, he's redoing it all. It's going to be grand. It's going to be the best ever. It's going to be a monument to America and stuff. It's also grotesque. You know, someone made a good point over there because I hadn't really focused on which. It's also disgusting. It's hard to know which part of it, which disgusting part to be most obsessed with. I mean, the Kennedy said it was a tribute to Kennedy. There's that big statue of him when you come in to the lobby. I mean, it's not the Lincoln Memorial, it's not the Washington Monument, but it was a tribute to John Kennedy. The putting his name on it is much more grotesque in a way than, I mean, it was grotesque always, but the supplanting Kennedy, putting his name over Kennedy. It's the John F. Kennedy Memorial, if I'm not sure, you know, center for the Arts or something. Right? I mean, and Kennedy was assassinated and so forth, and Trump just sticks his name on it because it's a big thing in Washington that he wants to have his name on. As you say, he sticks his name on everything. And then half of these, more than half, fail Trump University. You and I were obsessed about that in 2016, I remember.
- [40:37]
Tim Miller
Yes, dripping off for good reason because he fucked over regular people. Again. That's a long story of him and.
- [40:43]
Bill Kristol
You know, which he paid no price.
- [40:45]
Tim Miller
I guess what you're trying to say is there's something meaningfully different about the grotesquery of like the Arc de Trump that he wants to build. What about building a new thing and putting his name on it versus, like co opting the legacy of John F. Kennedy for himself.
- [40:58]
Bill Kristol
They do redo parts of the Kennedy Center. I think the opera was closed 10, 15 years ago. We wired for a year at a Constitutional hall or something to watch it because, you know, they were redoing the stage or something, or the sounds, the acoustics or whatever. That's not why he's doing it. That's not why he's doing it. But if he is going to build this unbelievably massive or he wants to build it, I hope they can stop that vulgar triumphal arch. I mean, I don't know, the whole thing, the fact that he gets to ruin Washington as well as ruin the country, it's More important that he's ruining the country than ruining Washington. I agree. And that those of us who shouldn't be pampered feel, you know, it's a rich person problems feel. Sid live here in the Washington Star and think, oh, I don't like the look of that or something, or I can't go to the Kennedy Center. Having said that, it is somehow indicative of just the utter disregard he has for anything beyond his own personal vanity and well being.
- [41:45]
Tim Miller
It's also un American. It's just un American. It's just not what any other president has done. Nobody else has done this for good reason, because it's vulgar and gross. Here's a thought. I can't tell if this is a dark thought or a funny thought. Maybe a little both. So he makes this announcement. He says in two years there's gonna be a grand reopening. Cause he'll still be president in two years. Is that right?
- [42:06]
Bill Kristol
Yeah.
- [42:06]
Tim Miller
Let me just look at my calendar here. Yeah, great. He'll still be president in two years. I'll fucking gray hair and a stroke by then, but he'll still be president. Imagine how fucked the country is going to be in two years. And just like you just think about the damage that has done in the last year and think about this notion that two years forward, think about all of the other additional damage that he'll done, all the other wreckage that he will have wrought, and the notion that then In February of 2028, he will reopen the Kennedy center to some like, grand celebration of, you know, the Trump redecoration of the building. Get really quick into, you know, kind of Hunger Games esque imagery there when you project out two years. So that's a little nice thought for people on a Monday morning. I want to talk about the Grammys also a little bit too. I kind of hate the Grammys, so I don't want to talk about it too much. But a couple things happen there of interest. One is that Trevor Noah told like a kind of that funny joke about how Trump wants Greenland because he can't go to Little St. Jeff's island anymore. It's a fine joke. It was nothing, you know, nothing special that's not going to be in the joke books for history, but wasn't horrible, wasn't great. Trump lost his mind though, over, over it because despite the fact that he'd been on Epstein's plane many, many, many more times than he said, and including a time when he was on with just Maxwell and a victim of Max Wells and fact that him and Epstein were very, very good pals for a long time. It does seem like he never did go to the island. And so he posts that. Trevor Noah, total loser. Looks like I'll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless dope. I'm suing him for plenty of money. Ask George Sloppadopoulos. This is the fucking President of the United States and others how all that worked out. Get ready, Noah. I'm going to have some fun with you. Yeah. My two initial thoughts are that is a totally deranged thing for any human to write for that to be the President of the United States is pretty concerning. The other thought is like, there is a whole category of comedians of like podcaster, comedian, bro, comedians who were unhappy that they were canceled. None of them actually got canceled, as best I could tell, but that they were criticized and that free speech was in threat because they were criticized. And I guess it feels like they missed the mark. I guess if their real concern was that the free speech rights of comedians were in threat. Getting on board with Donald Trump, who is trying to sue and bully a comedian from the White House because he didn't like the joke. It's the second time they're trying to punish a comedian because they didn't like their jokes. Obviously he did it with Jimmy Kimmel and kind of failed to successfully bully him. But it would seem like those free speech absolutists, First Amendment absolutists, people who care about legalizing comedy would be upset about this. I'm not holding my breath.
- [45:06]
Bill Kristol
I'll go look at X and see if Elon Musk and all of his minions are really defending free speech. Also, it's a free press, I assume. I don't look at the free press usually, but I assume the homepage is just four or five articles defending free speech against Donald Trump's attacks on it.
- [45:19]
Tim Miller
Nothing yet. And CBS News, their main story is about a 16 year old who got a mastectomy. So anyway, you know, that's what's happening for now. We'll see. We'll keep. Well, you never know, maybe something will pop up this afternoon. So that is Trevor, Noah, the other thing that happened that was good at the Grammys. Let's leave people with something good. I know you're a huge Bad bunny man. Big fan. Which of his records would you say is your favorite?
- [45:44]
Bill Kristol
Adrian? I defer all Bad Bunny matters to our colleague Adrian Carrasquillo. He's much more up on Bad Bunny, I've noticed. And you, you, of course, because of.
- [45:51]
Tim Miller
Your deep connection I see as kind of an un verano sinti man. But, you know, we'll see. He's gonna be the super bowl next week and people are mad. MAGA folks are mad. HE SINGS IN SPANISH and so they added an English speaking act, Green Day, which has like multiple songs dedicated to, you know, right wing Americans essentially, and they changed one of their old songs that was like a Bush protest to make it a Trump protest. So I'm not sure that that's really gonna achieve what the MAGA folks, Green Day to it. But Bad Bunny will be at the super bowl next week. And so it's pretty notable that a week out or a week before that, he won a Grammy last night and this was his message.
- [46:31]
Bill Kristol
I'm gonna say eyes out. We're not savage, we're not animals, we're not aliens, we are humans and we are Americans.
- [46:54]
Tim Miller
Went on for a little while longer, but that was the gist of it. You know, pretty powerful, pretty clear. Not ducking it, you know, leaning straight in right before a Super bowl performance. Hard to know exactly what the potential impact of that will be. But not nothing, better than nothing.
- [47:09]
Bill Kristol
I should bring him to the Hill and have him talk to the Democratic senators and House members about how to deliver an effective message. You know, I thought that was, that was powerful. The voters of Tarrant county understand this. I've got to say, incidentally, more than, you know, all these elites in Washington who are still cowering before Trump, they do not like what's happening and Bad Bunny doesn't like what's happening. And if only. It'd be good if some of the business leaders and corporate types and big shots caught up with them, but maybe they will. Maybe they are gradually. What do you think?
- [47:36]
Tim Miller
We're a little.
- [47:36]
Bill Kristol
I'm a little hopeful. I'm a little hopeful.
- [47:39]
Tim Miller
Are you not too.
- [47:41]
Bill Kristol
Not too much.
- [47:43]
Tim Miller
I gotta tell you, I was pretty surprised. I was talking to some folks over the weekend who are not nearly as Trump TDS riddled as us, right? Like, not happy about it. Not happy about it. But like, in general, you know, just a little bit more at remove, more, more familiar with kind of business world types. And I was struck by the fact that they also were kind of surprised by just like how, how wimpy the CEOs have been. You know, the CEO class has been. And I do think that it's starting to crack a little bit. And the fact that a number of them put out statements after the Preddy killing, none of the statements were up to my standards. But the fact that they were put out at all was pretty noteworthy. And so hopefully that there's a little crack. And that's the thing with Bad Bunny. Look, I saw some right wingers saying, like, oh, it's so brave to go in front of a room of liberals and say, ice out. It's like Trump is actually threatening people. Like Trump is like, real. They are threatening, using the government power to go after people. They jailed Don Lemon last week. Don Lemon was in jail overnight. That it is still extremely meaningful for people to be speaking out in this moment. And hopefully there'll be more. And hopefully Bad Bunny will do some stuff next Sunday, too, that makes people upset. So it makes the right people upset.
- [49:03]
Bill Kristol
I never ever watched the Super Bowl. I will say halftime shows. Well, never ever. But I don't go out of my way to watch the super bowl halftime shows. I guess if it's on, it's on in the background. It's on in the background. But I don't really care about the super bowl, honestly. But I am going to watch Bad Bunny. One of the biggest excuses people use not to speak out. This is true of many of our friends from the Bush administration, Republican foreign policy world, and from Democratic administrations, too, is that, well, they'll discount. It won't matter because, you know, they just. They know what I think and they know I'm just speaking to a friendly audience. They'll just say, I'm speaking to my own little liberal bubble, blah, blah, blah. You know what? Conservators aren't going to speak out if liberals don't speak out. And other entertainers aren't going to speak out if entertainers like this gentleman who seems to sincerely care a lot about it, doesn't speak out first. And then the ones who are a little more just go along, get along, speak out. I also found the Bruce. I'm gonna say the Bruce Springsteen. Getting back to my generation here for a second.
- [49:51]
Tim Miller
Yeah, sure.
- [49:52]
Bill Kristol
I found the Bruce Springsteen song kind of moving. I mean, I don't know if it's his best song ever or whatever. It's great music. But I give him credit for going out of his way to do it. He didn't have to do it. He's sitting around wherever he is, in some very nice house somewhere and doesn't need to do this in his mid-70s and he went out of his way to do it. So I give him. You do have to give him credit, actually. And same with Bad Bunny, I think I agree.
- [50:14]
Tim Miller
We'll leave people with little Bruce. We'll be playing bad Bunny later in the week, so we'll leave people with that Bruce song. It was nice. And, Bill, Crystal, Happy Groundhog Day. It's gonna be Groundhog Day all over again next Monday. So we'll see you there.
- [50:26]
Bill Kristol
See you then.
- [50:27]
Tim Miller
Everybody else will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. Peace.
- [50:30]
Bill Kristol
Remember the names of those who died on the streets of the of Minneapolis. Will remember the names of those who died on the streets of Minneapolis.