← The Bulwark Podcast
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- [00:00]
Aisha
How do you make an Airbnb a vrbo? Imagine trying to get your four best friends to agree on the perfect vacation house. Aisha wants spacious, Abby wants a cowboy tub, and Sophia keeps sharing one that's not available that weekend. Now imagine you have a property comparison tool that makes it easy to compare different houses. Suddenly, four friends who can't agree on an appetizer quickly agree on the perfect house for their trip because now it's a vrbo. Wish it was simpler to plan a vacation. Make it a vrbo. How do you make an Airbnb a vrbo? Picture a vacation rental with a host. The host is dragging your family on a tour of the kitchen, the bathroom, the upstairs bathroom, the downstairs bedroom, and the TV room, which, surprise, is where you can watch tv. Now imagine there's no host giving you a tour because there's never any hosts at all, ever. Voila. You've got yourself a vrbo. Want a vacation that's completely and totally host free? Make it a vrbox.
- [01:00]
Tim Miller
All right. Hey, guys, a few programming notes on this January 6th anniversary before we get to Bill the First. We are launching a newsletter this week focused on the Trump immigration regime. It's going to be led by Adrian Carrasquillo. Love Adrian. Been working with him for a long time. He's a great reporter and he's great for this. He knows the immigration beat. He's been doing this for a while and just glad to have somebody of his caliber on one of what might be the most important or maybe top two or three most important issues of the Trump administration. The newsletter is going to be called Huddled Masses. It'll be out twice a week. You can sign up@thebullork.com subscribe if you haven't. Former congressional candidate John Avlon, who's been in the extended Bullor fam for a while, now has a new POD series we're hosting called how to Fix It. The first episode of this season is out on civics education. Some folks have given us feedback they're looking for more often news, kind of solutions oriented content. I totally get that and I'm glad John is going to be taking that on and providing it. So the first episode of that is already out, how to Fix it with John Avalon, number three. We're leaning into YouTube this year. We've been leaning into it, but me and Sam and others are going to be doing some interviews and hot takes that don't fit the daily POD schedule. And a lot of you guys are kind of in a. Yeah, you're in a routine. I've got this routine with other pods where, you know, you got your afternoon, it's a daily. And so when there are other things that don't really fit that schedule, either because of breaking news or because it's kind of a niche topic or somebody wrote an interesting article I want to go a little deeper on, we're going to be popping those up on YouTube. So if you want more, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page. We'll also have a salutary announcement for somebody in the fam at the end of the pod. So please stick around for that. All right. Up next, it's Monday, so it's Bill Kristol.
- [02:56]
Bill Kristol
Now we gather. Due to a selfish man's injured pride and the outrage of supporters who he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning, what happened here today was an insurrection incited by the president of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. Fairly or not, they'll be remembered for their role in the shameful episode in American history that will be their legacy.
- [03:40]
Tim Miller
That was Mitt Romney four years ago today. It certainly raises some questions about how the participants of that insurrection will now be remembered. And it's Monday, so I've got Bill Kristol here to discuss. Bill, what you think? Is that going to be their legacy? We're on the four year anniversary here of the January 6th insurrection.
- [04:00]
Bill Kristol
You know, I hope it's their Legacy on the eight year anniversary or 9th or 10th or 11th. But right now, the leader of that insurrection, the inspirer of it, is kind of the organizer, really. Donald J. Trump is going to be inaugurated in two weeks as president of the United States. His administration will be stuffed full of defenders, excusers, defenders, now cheerleaders for the January 6th insurrection and for the attempted coup that kind of preceded it for a couple of months within the government. And they're going to pardon Romney. Trump will pardon a lot of the January 6th.
- [04:31]
Tim Miller
Romney might need a pardon in the next two weeks.
- [04:33]
Bill Kristol
Well, that's right. He'll prosecute Romney and Liz Cheney, who told the truth about January 6th, and, and will pardon the January 6th rioters. So four years ago and the day after, among conservatives, not just Mitt Romney, but among all kinds of people, this was the, you know, the one thing that everyone repudiated. This was shameful for the people who like Trump, they were telling him, this is going to ruin your reputation. And everyone was walking away from it. And here we are four months later, and it's a. You have to be an excuser slash defender of J6 of the insurrection to have a future in the Trump administration, pretty much. Or in Republican politics. And they're running the country.
- [05:13]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And you get mocked for acting like it's a big deal. And it's like, oh, you guys are not over that now. That was four years ago. That's ancient history. You guys are still talking about that. We just have a ton of coverage on January 6th because we're not going to be cowed by their jeers. And I want to get through a couple of the different pieces because there's some interesting news as well. But you led your morning newsletter with George Orwell saying, restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. It is important to restate the obvious, I think, especially as memories start to fade. One of the guys we have writing on the site this morning is Sergeant Ganell, who's the Capitol Police officer who was defending the Capitol that day against the mob. He writes this. This is the fourth anniversary of January 6th. This one hits harder than the other three and makes the moral injury far greater. What took place was an unforgivable cardinal sin. But clearly much of the country, including one of our political parties, has chosen to reward those who committed it. I do think it's valuable to spend time discussing the obvious about why that was bad.
- [06:19]
Bill Kristol
That's a very moving piece by Saju Kunel, which people should read, and I found it moving and depressing. Of course, you know, your friend Steve Bannon, who's smart and often, you know, actually sees around the corner a little more than some of his MAGA buddies. Two days, I think, after the insurrection on January 8, 2021, he was already understanding that fighting for the interpretation of January 6th would be extremely important. He wanted to do some stuff in the last two weeks of the Trump presidency that didn't work out. Further demonstrations and showing they weren't embarrassed by it. But he understood from the beginning that the definition of January 5th, 6th, looking back, would be a defining thing going forward. And I think Trump had an instinct to that, too, obviously pretty early on, and worked pretty hard on that for the last three or four years. And then so many just capitulated and went along. And it is just extraordinary that when you do read the what people said, when it was fresh in people's minds and when they knew enough to know what had happened. And incidentally, it's not as if we've learned new things that have made it less horrible, less contemptible, less damaging. What happened on January 6, quite the opposite. We have the January 6 committee report, which Trump's people hate, but which is none of its factual conclusions have really been challenged, which shows how much more was going on behind the scenes that we didn't quite know about at the Justice Department and elsewhere. So people should be more upset by what Trump tried to do and instead they've managed to really reverse the narrative.
- [07:47]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And to your point, Trump's instinct to defend himself was self preservation. Right. It was ego versus what Bannon and others were doing were recognizing the potential death of the movement, which should have been the death of the movement. Right. That day you could do this for a million people. So I almost hate to pick on Erik Erickson, but his post that day was so jarring, to your point, about where people's minds were in the moment. To remind people of that, here's Eric Erickson At 3:02 on January 6, shoot the protesters, waive the rules, impeach, wave the rules, convict, wave the rules, deny the ability to run for election again. It's just worth stating that because it's just so plainly stated, right, that it was not, this was not like, oh, only the never Trumpers, only MSNBC thought he should convict. Right. It was people that were actively supporting Donald Trump, active members of the conservative movement, people that host conservative gatherings, MAGA gatherings, saying that the protesters should be punished by, should be shot by police and that Donald Trump should be denied the ability to run again. And what we have today is a report from Bloomberg which says Trump is expected to grant clemency to over 1,000 people tied to January 6th. That was a report out this morning. And going from shoot the protesters to clemency for the 1,000 people involved is a pretty dramatic switch.
- [09:13]
Bill Kristol
The Times had a pretty good piece this weekend walking through how this happened. So a little bit of the frog in boiling water over the last four years. First, well, it wasn't as bad. There was antifa people and then a little there were some misled people. And Pelosi should have taken more responsibility for security. But within about a couple of years, it just became pro January 6th. And that's certainly where it's been, that Trump has not hidden his views on that. Quite the contrary. He started playing, I remember writing something six, nine months, eight months ago maybe when he started playing that January 6th quote anthem at the rally and how appalling that was. And now, as you say, he's going to pardon them. Various Republican members of Congress are inviting some of these felons. I don't know if, I guess they're out of jail by now, those ones, to be there at the inauguration. And this is what authoritarian movements do. I mean, two things, I guess I would say. This is if other people who studied this stuff say the authoritarian movements take a defeat and have to turn it into a victory. Now, there may be a short term defeat, they get people put in jail, but it has to become a martyrology, you know, not something wrong. Right. And they've done that all in. And the other thing I'd say about authoritarian movements is they radicalize. I think we've, we've seen that so much over the years and things that were at the fringe of the movement, you know, six months after January 6th, Julie Kelly and sort of Bannon's people and the kind of, we need to stand up for these people now. Totally mainstream now. The Wall Street Journal having been very nice to Trump for the last year, basically a little upset about the pardons. You know, I mean, these, somebody, they actually, someone, they actually looked at what some of these people did. I guess maybe someone there on the page, saw some of the videos, was reminded of what happened to Sergeant Goodell and others of the Capitol Police. And so they kind of refer to Trump, not pardon all the ones, especially the ones who committed anything in violence. Doesn't make them rethink any of their endorsement of this man to be basically endorsement. I guess they don't formally endorse endorsement of this man to be President of the United States, though, you know, even there, the kind of establishment Republicans are, they're not going to be cheering the pardons, but they've done their little wish that it wouldn't happen. And they're, it's not going to stop them from being all in on a million different things Trump is doing or it's not going to stop them from totally refusing to reflect more broadly on what it means that Trump is the next president and what kind of administration he's going to be running if It's a pro. January 6th, pro insurrection, pro authoritarian, pro violence, pro political violence administration. Just one more point. This is, I think In March of 2023, a law was passed saying the House should put up a plaque honoring the police officers who fought so bravely on that day. Capitol police who work for the Congress, you know, protect those members of the House and the Senate and The Republican House has done that, has not done that. I guess Mike Johnson just can't thinks it's just to be bridged too far to actually say anything nice about these police officers may well have saved the lives of some of these members of Congress.
- [12:02]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I just kind of want to sit with that for a second because I just don't like. What can you even say? Right. And that is that House Republicans specifically stating that they are on the side of the perpetrators, not of the defenders of the Capitol, and that the people that risked their lives that day don't deserve to be honored at all. It does make hollow a lot of their comments about Abby Gate and such. It feels like we should be able to to honor the people that defended the country, no matter the circumstance, the political circumstance. Your point, though, about the Wall Street Journal's tepid editorial on these pardons and really the silence from Republican elected officials. There's been this conventional wisdom congealed that it's like, well, Trump won and he won the popular vote. So what are you going to expect? Everybody just like, you just got to go along now. And there's no actually actual reason for that. Right. I mean, all of these people that were elected to the Senate and the House could choose to reflect their own values or views of their state or district and say, you know, we'll try to advance the parts of the agenda I agree with and speak out against those who opposed. That was like the standard in 2017. Right. Like they didn't end up acting on it in a lot of cases. But that's how Marco Rubio said he was going to act. Remember running, that he was a check on Trump in 17. It's how the speaker at the time, Paul Ryan, said he was planning on acting during this period in 2017. You wrote for the newsletter last week about this within the context of Trumpism being fully triumphant. And you're right that we're in this unprecedented moment where an utterly shameless demagogue at the head of authoritarian movement is in control of the executive branch and to a considerable degree, Congress, with a massive media infrastructure behind him, oligarchs supporting him, and with a demoralized opposition trying to prop up unsteady guardrails. And how different that is from 2017, when there was still kind of even within the Republican Party, these forces that were feeling him out, trying to call balls and strikes and all of this. And you would think that this moment, on this anniversary, these pardons, this would be a time to call. I never know how that metaphor Works. Do you call a ball or do you call a strike? When you do something bad to call a ball, I guess you don't see it at all.
- [14:19]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, it's not as if they don't have access to putting out press releases or making statements or giving interviews. Today is January 6th, to my knowledge. I haven't exhaustively looked at what's happening at every cable network, obviously, or what's being put out by every Senate or House office. Is any Republican noticing that fact? Is anyone saying, four years ago we had this terrible moment, even Mitch McConnell, people who spoke eloquently at the time, I don't know, maybe one or two of them as Republicans are saying things, I think Democrats are saying a fair amount. But the ones who don't want to address it are memory holding it and the others are excusing it and then sort of getting pretty close to celebrating it. And they're the ones who are making all, all the noise. And the most notable event, an event that was unprecedented in, I'd say, modern American history, but maybe in American history, let's pretend it didn't happen. Very depressing. And incidentally, I mentioned that piece, I guess to demoralize opposition. President Biden had a little op ed in the Washington Post this morning, which the spirit of it was good in the sense that he said we can't forget it, we can't memory hole it. You know, we need to call what happened. But he wrote it in a polite way. He's sort of tough on the people who attacked the Capitol, but he doesn't mention the name of the person who was behind the attack on the Capitol. Donald Trump's name is nowhere in that. Now, I suppose from his point of view, he's two weeks from now, Donald Trump becomes president, he doesn't want to have a, he wants to have a polite transition. He'll attend the inauguration. It's more effective perhaps not to make it look like he's taking a shot at Trump. I'm sure that's what he tells. They tell themselves there in the White House. But I mean, really, it reads weirdly. You read it, right? I mean, when you read it, it's like, well, there was this assault on the Capitol, very bad, really terrible thing. We can't memory hole it. Like, why did this assault happen? I mean, you know, I mean the.
- [16:00]
Tim Miller
Problem here is the man that sent them there and then the man that is planning to pardon them for their actions, actually. And so like that is the person worth focusing on the forward looking side of this I think is also important. And we have Tom Joslin, who worked on the January 6th committee, and Norm Eisen in the board this morning analyzing Cash Patel's interviews. And he had a very active podcasting career between his attempt to overthrow the government and now being nominated to run the FBI. Cash had a segment called Cash's Corner on the Epoch Times. Just a conspiracy rag. And I just. I just want to play one clip from it.
- [16:40]
Bill Kristol
How do we have eight people there.
- [16:43]
Tim Miller
And Christopher Wray, we'll get to him in a second.
- [16:45]
Bill Kristol
Refuse to answer questions about it. You have to ask yourself, okay, well, that was in planning for at least a year.
- [16:51]
Tim Miller
What was the FBI doing planning January.
- [16:54]
Bill Kristol
6Th for a year?
- [16:56]
Tim Miller
So the incoming nominated FBI director seems to either believe or want to perpetrate a lie that the FBI was planning January 6, that the institution that he wants to lead was part of an effort to plan the attack on the Capitol. It's unclear how that is possible given that they didn't know that Donald Trump was going to lose for a year. Among the million reasons that that wasn't possible, you didn't know that Donald Trump was going to challenge the election. Does the FBI have people from the future that flew back to let them know that there was going to be a large stop the steal effort following Donald Trump's clear loss in the 2020 election? It's unclear how this would work, but it is pretty relevant. I believe that this person that is coming in claims that the FBI was involved and has said so repeatedly. That was not just one clip. In an interview with Tim Pool, who's another conspiracy guy, kind of a horseshoe maga, far lefty turned MAGA guy, Poole said that while he could not prove it definitively, it looks like you have a preponderance of evidence suggesting there may have been federal law enforcement involved in making January 6 happen. Patel eagerly went further. I'll get you beyond a reasonable doubt. So, again, he is very clear that he believes that the people that he is set to be in charge of instigated organized, thought up the attack on the Capitol. How does that work? How are these people supposed to report to him? Is he gonna have an internal investigation when he starts to figure out who is behind this? Are we just going to pretend like he doesn't think this or didn't say this? Do you have any thoughts?
- [18:32]
Bill Kristol
Well, actually, he will do internal investigations and firings, and they're certainly already preparing to do that in the Justice Department as a whole. And the FBI has been usually separated out from a lot of that, except for the director himself. Trump fired Comey, but I think Patel would love nothing better than to have 30 loyalists at top levels of the FBI instead of career people. As you say, the quotes are amazing, and it's really worth looking at it and really worth then saying, okay, this is not a case of a guy who, you know, wasn't really involved but was on some show and didn't quarrel when some host said something. He was spending a lot of time pushing these conspiracies.
- [19:07]
Tim Miller
Yes.
- [19:07]
Bill Kristol
I mean, he had some credibility in MAGA World, as he had served in the Trump administration in various national security kind of related positions.
- [19:16]
Tim Miller
Intelligence related.
- [19:17]
Bill Kristol
Intelligence related. Right. He had dealt with the FBI. He, before that had been in the Justice Department, I think, at the end of the Obama administration, actually. And so he was a major figure in pushing this sort of stuff, much more than, I don't know, other people who are just sort of reading talking points, you might say, from. From MAGA World. Not that they should be excused either. Yeah. It's just unbelievable to nominate him as head of the FBI. I mean, unsuited for so many other reasons as well, but the willingness to indulge in conspiracy theories and ones that are derogatory as in the world we're trying to say, you know, really libelous in effect. I mean, to sort of to the people in the institution you're taking over. I mean, he seems to want to say that Chris Wray, who was Trump appointed head of the FBI in 2017 and who has been serving for seven years, what can criticize decisions Chris Ray made, work from both sides, probably. Is he really saying that Chris Wray, this was an FBI disinformation deep state campaign launched by Chris Wray. That seems to be what he wants to say. Might be nice if Chris Wray, who I think has already announced he's quitting before Bazelle takes over, would say, I don't know, maybe it wouldn't help, but after he quits, at least that this man should not be the next FBI director. Trump's entitled. Chris Wray might say, to have someone who didn't get in fights with Trump and who's sort of a fresh face and all this. Not someone who's indulged in and propagated these kinds of really dangerous conspiracy theories.
- [20:38]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Or offer to testify against him or say that he lied or go. Go in front of the committee and, you know, provide information. Because sometimes it's just worth just stating clearly what the conspiracy that Cash Patel is saying the FBI was involved with is because it just shows the preposterousness of it when you state it out loud. And I hope that there will be Democratic senators during these confirmation hearings that take this process very seriously and walk it through with him. Because the theory that he's promoting is that the FBI knew that Donald Trump would attempt to roll back his loss in the election, right? Like that the FBI knew that Donald Trump was going to try to stop the steal, so to speak. And so in order to undermine that effort, they concocted this notion that they were going to put FBI agents among the MAGA masses and encourage them to storm the Capitol to undermine maga. That's the theory that the FBI was able to recognize that if they just put 8 or 20 whatever undercover maga folks in red hats amidst a crowd on the Mall, that they could convince the crowd to storm the Capitol, attack police officers, shit on the Capitol, like, raise Trump and Confederate flags, do all of these things that would then undermine the movement. Like, that's the theory. And it's like, it's nonsensical. It makes no sense. There's no. There are all these things that you would have to know, you know, in advance. Like for starters, that the people would go along with this, right? Like, imagine yourself being at a protest and having a person on your side being like, Tim, you know, I'm trying to think of the last protest I was at. I was at some gay rights protests around the, you know, Supreme Court rulings. And it's like, you know, you had some people in rainbow hats that are like, tim, what we really should do is storm the Capitol and storm the offices of the anti gay marriage officials. I'd be like, what are you talking about? So the idea that this plot would actually work even if they had conceived of it, is preposterous. And now that the man that is perpetrating this is set to lead the FBI leads to all these questions. And you have John Thune on the Sunday shows this weekend talking about how, well, yeah, the FBI could use some reform. And so I'm actually, I'm pretty confident that you're going to have cash in there. I would like to know from John Thune, is this the kind of reform that you think it is needed? You want somebody that, that perpetrated a lie about the FBI officials and said that they were part of a anti American insurrection effort like you want. That's the type of reform you're looking for. You want somebody that is going to try to target political foes, that's going to make up things about people like Ray Epps, like, frame random Americans. You want someone that's going to try to frame random Americans and publicly accuse them of being part of a plot with no evidence? That's the person that you wanted. The charge of the FBI, John Thune. The whole thing is just ridiculous on its face. And I do feel like it's almost so ridiculous that people don't know how to deal. Like journalists don't know how to deal with it. And Republicans are getting away with excusing it in a way that I really hope does not happen over the next few weeks. Sorry for my rant there.
- [24:08]
Bill Kristol
No, that was very good. And I. John, wasn't John Thune the guy who people sort of. Sort of happy to see when the majority leadership, because he was the least Trumpy of the three candidates? He's not exactly. Let's see if he stands up at all. I mean, Democratic senators, I hope, do a serious job on the question. I hope a few Republicans think maybe they should think of themselves as United States senators and not simply Republican Party apparatchiks loyal to Trump and especially in these national security and law enforcement jobs, if they want to give Trump some, you know, ridiculous. Education Secretary, what's her name, Linda McMahon. Okay. You know, out of Willie. I'm not going to fall my sword on that. But, though, if you actually were, like, on the Education Committee, you might care a little bit about the Education bill and prefer to have someone more competent in there, but. Or more who knows something about education. But leave that aside. These are serious national security and law enforcement positions. Justice Department, FBI, Intelligence. National Intelligence, Defense Department. Surely some Republican senators think it matters who runs those departments.
- [25:08]
Tim Miller
Surely.
- [25:11]
Bill Kristol
Well, no. I mean, yes, that surely was a question.
- [25:14]
Tim Miller
I'm sorry, I just had to sit on that for a second because I don't know. Yeah, maybe not actually. Probably not, I would say. But we will see as the hearings will begin maybe at the end of.
- [25:25]
Bill Kristol
This week, early next week, I think next week, mostly. And then Patel is apparently. Might be a couple more weeks off because they'll do the attorney general, maybe the deputy AG first. I think Patel. I mean, it'll be interesting to see. I intend to try to keep writing about Patel. And I know Tom Joslin has done a ton of research, and he's a very, very good researcher. Spent most of his career researching Islamist extremist groups and many of them overseas. And what he's been so struck by is how much. And this gets to your other point, I mean, how much the media in general just underestimates the network of extremism on the right. The FBI was right to try to have informers in the Proud Boys. The Proud Boys were violent, you know, and they proved it on January 6th.
- [26:04]
Tim Miller
They did it.
- [26:05]
Bill Kristol
And if only honestly, if the FBI had maybe been taken some of the informers a little more seriously and been able to do a little more, but they were constrained in other ways, you know, to stop them from organizing the insurrection and having the weapons they had and so forth, it would have been a good thing, not a bad thing. And God knows we've seen enough instances of right wing extremist violence here in the US and the last many years that the FBI needs to worry about it. And they have to some degree. But Cash Patel is not going to be very interested. I don't believe in stopping any of that.
- [26:36]
Tim Miller
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- [29:37]
Bill Kristol
It was also at the end of last week a couple of resignations that weren't widely reported. I think they were reported a little bit this weekend from the Justice Department, quite senior levels, career people who had been in the national security side of things and including the person who ended whose name I'm now blanking on. But he wasn't that well known, honestly, beyond legal worlds, I think very well respected who led the investigation of Trump's taking all the documents to Mar a Lago, which is a cut and dry investigation. They seem to have done a competent job of discovering which documents were there and securing them and so forth, and then indicting Trump on a very good case, which of course Judge Cannon has totally delayed and now is presumably going to make moot when Trump orders the Justice Department to dismiss it. So he retired. And I think a deputy perhaps who had also worked with the special counsel, retired. I don't blame them for retiring. People have their own reasons, their own, you know, their considerations. I don't want to second guess someone saying I'm not going to hang around and possibly get fired and try to take away my retirement benefits. I mean, who knows what it is? Or it's just, it's hopeless anyway to fight that. So why not just leave a week earlier, but the degree to which you're going to have, whether they get fired or people resign early and without being judgy about that, the degree to which you'll have a lot of chances for Bondi as AG and Patel at the FBI and others to put their own people in. And then, of course, the Schedule F reform, we can have a federal government six months from now that really does not look recognizable in some ways. And this could be especially true in key agencies. That's what's so worrisome about Patel and about the Justice Department stuff.
- [31:14]
Tim Miller
Jay Brott, that's the name of the person you're referencing in this specific instance. I'm not going to use the word judge people, but I think that people that are in these agencies that are responsible public servants that do not have, you know, what's the word? Exposure. With regards to Trump, I think it is kind of incumbent upon them to stay. Obviously, personal issues, et cetera, accepted somebody like this, something like brought, they're going after him, you know, I mean, Trump has talked about how like this, you know, the raiding of my home, you know, was the most outrageous thing that's ever happened in the history of the country. And so for somebody like that, I think a, they're on the top of the potential lists of folks that Patel is going to come in and try to root out internally and potentially externally. I have no judgment for people that were involved in those investigations that did the responsible thing and are now going to find themselves, you know, on the other end of the barrel of the government. Right. We are kicking off the New Year and we are back with our friends at Oneskin. I was in, I was in Colorado over the holidays. I was up in the mountains and man, my skin was chapped. That dry skin. I'm a Colorado boy and the dry weather didn't used to get to my skin like it does now. I don't know if it's something about aging or the fact that I'm a Louisiana humidity man now and my skin just hasn't adjusted. But for whatever reason, I was piling on the one skin to keep myself feeling refreshed. Only one skin has the OS 1 peptide, the first ingredient to target cellular cell senescence, a root cause of aging responsible for lines, wrinkles and crepey skin. 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But for me, I'm always adding skin moisturizing to the men in Colorado because you can hydrate. That might help your chapped lips a little bit, might help you feel a little bit more energized when you're up there at altitude, when you're 52, 80 in Denver or even higher up there in the mountains. But it's just not enough. It's not enough. And if you're going to a dry location, you gotta moisturize. You gotta get your One Skin. Founded and led by an all woman team of skin longevity scientists, One Skin is redefining the aging process with their proprietary OS1 peptide, the first ingredient proven to help skin look, feel and behave like its younger self. Get 15% off with code bulwark at OneSkin Co. That's 15% off OneSkin Co with code Bulwark. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Invest in the health and longevity of your skin. With One Skin, your future self will thank you. I want to do a couple of other closing items about Trump, but there is one other news related. I try to stay away from media news on this and being too navel gazy, it's like media people love talking about media news. I don't know if regular people love talking about it as much, but it's gotten to a point where it is a real news item. I think what is happening at the Washington Post that is relevant to kind of our broader discussion about pre surrender to the Trump administration and how our institutions are going to handle it. I mean, this is the institution that had, you know, democracy dies and darkness as their kind of cringy slogan, you know, in the early Trump 1.0 years. Now you have Jeff Bezos Amazon agreeing to do a documentary, a flattering documentary of Melania with somebody that had some serious me too accusations against him being the director. So Amazon has picked that up right at a moment where, where everybody, all the people I know in Hollywood world and streaming world who are trying to pitch shows or pitch political related things, everybody's like, no, no, we're too scared of politics right now. Politics is too risky. We're not going to do any politics shows. We're not going to do any documentary shows. Well, we'll do one exception, Trump's wife, we'll do a suck up documentary to her. Bezos doing that. And at the same time you have just a mass exodus from the Washington Post. Just Josh Dawsey today going to Wall Street Journal, Leon Caldwell leaving, going to Puck. Others are coming, there may be some firings coming. It sounds like there's some reporting today. There's been a long list of people leaving the Post. It's pretty astonishing what's happening over there. I'm wondering what your thoughts are.
- [36:25]
Bill Kristol
It is now if they end up at other places and continue to do good reporting. Maybe we're just watching a transition where the Post is no longer a major figure, major player in American journalism and Puck and Politico and the bull work are, you know, and I do think there's some truth to that, obviously. Right.
- [36:41]
Tim Miller
And, and I don't know about Politico, but.
- [36:43]
Bill Kristol
Well, I know, okay, your point is, I'm being nice to them. I don't know, Axios, whatever, any of these places, you know, like smart brevity anyway. But yes, whatever happens. But you know, the Post is sort of. So I came to Washington 85, went to the Education Department. The Post had one reporter, younger reporter, it wasn't a prestigious assignment, but a good reporter assigned to education and labor, I think it was. And she covered us and she covered policy initiatives and the usual kinds of things. Secretary Bennett testified to Congress and so forth, but she also dug and found things that had gone wrong and controversies and cases where we were fighting the career bureaucracy. And the Post actually did more of that than the Times. The Post was really the Washington kind of inside baseball paper. There were trade journals that did the real detailed stuff to some degree, and a couple of the places like the National Journal, which barely exists anymore, but the Post was kind of the place that kept an eye on what's happening at these agencies to the degree that that's already been collapsing for a couple of decades, I bet. The Post now has one reporter assigned to nine domestic Policy agencies, not two, you know, but nonetheless, they keep some eye on these things. And the idea that Trump's just going to be running an administration here, putting God knows who in key political positions, doing God knows what to drive out bureaucrats who are on some heritage list of someone who honestly tried to implement a law correctly five years ago and ignored some conserv is doing all these kinds of things, money going again, God knows where from grants and so forth and contracts and who's going to keep an eye on this? So in that respect, I mean, again, it was never great. I don't exaggerate. And the Post wasn't, you know, plenty of stuff happened in government that shouldn't have happened when the Washington Post was much bigger. But I do think it's bad for this to be happening at the same time of Trump taking over with a genuine authoritarian playbook and surrounded by grifters and people happy to take advantage of the federal government.
- [38:36]
Tim Miller
I think it's a real problem, actually, the decline of the Post in this moment because to exactly your point. And look, there are going to be other people doing investigative work. It's good ProPublica piece over the weekend. They're independent groups such as that. We're moving more into reporting. As I mentioned in the top. The Times is a bmf. They'll still exist. But you know, like the amount of crap that is going to be coming down the pike from this administration, the fire hose of shit beginning day one and to have the paper record in the city be just totally collapsing like this and making strong signals towards capitulation even frankly in certain cases when it comes to Bezos and having a moment. Sam Stein has reported on this for us that a lot of the also traditional outside watchdog groups that just kind of behind the curtain here a little bit on how Washington works, a lot of these groups that are in the nonprofit watchdog groups that are doing these investigations and then feeding stuff into the main outlets, right? Like they're doing investigations and then working with reporters with information they found to try to uncover more. A lot of those are collapsing kind of the good government, you know, the crews and things of this nature are not getting funding, you know, because the donors don't want the exposure. I presume all of that happening simultaneously. It's not like there's going to be no scrutiny on this administration. There will still be people doing good work, but it isn't going to be as robust, I don't think, as it was in 2017.
- [40:07]
Bill Kristol
And I think to take the piece we had from Tom Joslin and Norm Eisen this morning. It's getting retweeted and people are going to, obviously we'll get to Democratic and hopefully Republican senators and their staffs to use for questioning for Patel and others can follow up on some of the investigative stuff. But I was told this morning someone who said called and said a great piece, but he had been trying separately just to push it. He's more of an activist of the beast and was trying to push it to activist groups to get them to promote, vote it and make a little deal of it and get it out more into the country so people could call from, you know, in the state of North Carolina, called Thom Tillis. So I'm making that up, you know what I mean? And get to say, hey, what about this? You can't confirm this guy. He said a lot of these groups did not want to really take it on. And these are left wing. These are basically left wing groups. I mean, these are liberal groups. These are not Trump supporters because they're.
- [40:53]
Tim Miller
Worried about what Patel's going to do. Right.
- [40:55]
Bill Kristol
And why, you know, probably won't work. We'll keep our powder dry. We're going to have to defend a million other things we care about. I don't begrudge them that. And we're going to have to defend civil rights programs we care about and other government programs we care about. And we don't need to have this some nomination fight that may not succeed. There is a kind of self, I don't know, what's the word? What does Tim Snyder call it? You know, pre capitulation.
- [41:15]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Pre submission. Pre capitulation.
- [41:17]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. Kind of going on now. If it's really keeping their powder dry. So they'll be even more effective when Trump announces the deportations on January 21st. Okay, maybe I take that point, but generally that's not how politics works. If you fight the first fight, you build up steam. If you win one, you really build up momentum, then you're better off when you fight the second or third fight, even if you lost the first fight, incidentally, I would say often give in on the first fight to hold the powder, keep the powder dry for the second fight. It's often a good reason to keep the powder dry for the second fight. For the third fight, then there'll be a fourth fight is when the deportations will start off probably pretty small with just some real criminals. So let's not make too big a deal of that. We'll get to the new newsletter, can report on all this, of course, very intelligently and with much more detail than I have. But I just worry that there's a ton of rationalization going on. Leading people, again, not out of bad motives, really, and not out of personal cowardice or anything like that, but as leading people to accommodate much more than they should.
- [42:15]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Well, you got your homework assignment then. People go hassle your senator with Tom Joslin's article about Cash Patel's conspiracy mongering. If you got a minute today. Coming up on the inauguration, there's one item of news related to Jimmy Carter. We discussed Jimmy Carter's death last week on the pod, but wanted to give you one update here, Bill. Donald Trump's not happy about something related to Carter's death. Traditionally after and honestly, maybe this is the moment to get rid of this tradition because I'm not going to want to do this when Donald Trump dies. But traditionally after a president dies, the flags are at half, half staff for 30 days. I think whatever it is, there's a traditional period and that period will overlap with the inauguration. And this upsets Donald Trump. He writes this. The Democrats are all giddy about our magnificent American flag potentially being at half mast. I don't think he knows the difference. During my inauguration, they think it's so great and are so happy about it because they don't love our country. They only think about themselves. In any event, because of the death of Jimmy Carter, the flag may for the first time ever during inauguration of a future president be at half mast. Nobody wants to see this and no American can be happy about it. Let's see how this plays out. It's kind of like when you head the USS John McCain when he's going to Japan.
- [43:35]
Bill Kristol
Totally. No American could be happy about it, Tim, though I think 30 days honestly is a little excessive. But it's in some regulation or something. It's not. Biden didn't invent this. I mean, I think it's been done for the last X number of presidents. So he just did what has been done in appropriate respect. And kind of weird to change it now suddenly.
- [43:53]
Tim Miller
Maybe they could just turn the flag upside down instead. You know, kind of a. Martha and.
- [43:57]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, that would be maybe in front of the Supreme Court in honor of just Salita, you know. Right. Suddenly Trump's so concerned about proper flying of the flag when all of it. When has there been any movement in American history that has abused the American flag more than maga? I mean, you know, it's upside down, backwards on every piece of clothing, every Thing. Right.
- [44:17]
Tim Miller
That they putting blue lines on it. We're putting 1776 on it. There was more heartwarming January 6th anniversary piece out that I wanted to close on, and that was Michael Cruz wrote with us for Politico. I love him. I took a shot of Politico earlier, but Michael Cruz is maybe the best profile writer out there right now, certainly in the top tier. And he wrote about an exchange between Al Gore and Mike Pence at Joe Lieberman's memorial. Al Gore thanked Pence for his actions on January 6, and Pence said something surprising in response. Cruise writes, he suggested to Gore he had done redone that day in part because of what he had seen as a newly sworn in member of Congress. On January 6, 2001, he had witnessed a vice president stand up to pressure from his own party to defy the Constitution, even though doing so by definition meant personal defeat. I never forgot it. Pence said to Gore. You don't know how much that means coming from you. Gore said back, that was very nice.
- [45:17]
Bill Kristol
It is nice. Yeah. Yeah.
- [45:19]
Tim Miller
We have a lot of horrors on this anniversary, so I thought people might want to.
- [45:23]
Bill Kristol
Well, it is worth. Yes, remembering that Pence did the right thing and other people weighed in and did the right thing and the guardrails did pretty much hold from November 3rd through January 6th through January 20th of 2020, 2021. Which makes it all the more tragic, really. Right. That, I mean, it wasn't as if everything came crashing down and it was a free fall afterwards. And so you got to expect, in a sense, that the center would not hold, that the principles of peaceful transfer of power and no storming of the Capitol and no political violence and no to violence. It wasn't crazy to think that those principles could and should hold. It had been a little too close for comfort on January 6, but now they could. Biden was in charge. What's really terrible is that, you know, the Biden administration kind of went out of its way to respect a lot of those principles. And nonetheless, Trump wins the nomination and the whole Republican Party's with him.
- [46:15]
Tim Miller
I was trying to end on a.
- [46:16]
Bill Kristol
Positive bill, and he explicitly does it with this repudiation or endorsement, I guess.
- [46:21]
Tim Miller
All right, let's go back to Gore.
- [46:22]
Bill Kristol
Sorry to ruin your.
- [46:23]
Tim Miller
Cut that out.
- [46:25]
Bill Kristol
Have our crack producers take that out.
- [46:27]
Tim Miller
Back to you on Gore. This will give people a little something. We've got to update our priors on Gore a little bit. I mean, you know, I just, I think back, I was a child during this time, but like the Sore loser man stickers, you know, that were around in the early 2000s. Pretty astonishing what Al Gore did. It was nice that Mike Pence mentioned that to him. In retrospect, very much so.
- [46:49]
Bill Kristol
I agree.
- [46:50]
Tim Miller
All right, one last thing. Our good friend AB Stoddard is going to be stepping back for the bulwark. This is a stressful life. We're not coal mining out here. We're not looking for anybody's sympathy. But having to care about this every day is a burden. And AB has been caring about it for about a decade. And I just appreciate her so much. I didn't know AB that well. I knew her a little bit from work fishing stories or whatever back when I was with Flack, but before Trump had even won the nomination. So this is very early in 2015. I saw her in a green room at MSNBC and she pulled me aside and we started kind of in whispered voice, started talking about how bad it was and what was coming. And she started sharing with me her apocalyptic views about what was ahead of us. And I knew that I had a soul sister in that moment, somebody that I was aligned with. I felt like very early on, as you as well, we were among the people that were sounding the alarm that this is actually worse than people think. And this is potentially, you know, going to go to the depths of hell in a way that a lot of the conventional wisdom did not anticipate. And so I'm sad that we were both proven out on that point, even if maybe, you know, we don't have T shirts about how AB and Tim are always right. But, you know, we were proven out on this one point. And so, you know, I do feel a kind of cosmic connection with her that dates back that about a diagnosis decade now, she's still going to be around. We're gonna have her on the POD from time to time when, you know, she can, after she can have a few breaths from looking at the fucking Twitter, which she well deserves. And so I just wanted to give her a little shout out on that point. Bill, I don't know if you have anything to add.
- [48:40]
Bill Kristol
No, that's great. She's one of my favorite people, really. And I've known her pretty well for quite a while. And, you know, we broke with the Republican Party and people say that was the right thing to do. I hope they have to say that. And some people excessively say it was courageous and all, but AB's world was very much the centrist, sort of establishment world. I'm going to say this in A good sense. In Washington, she worked for Mainstream Journal. She covered the hills. She was friendlier, I think it's safe to say, with the moderate Republicans and the moderate Democrats. That's their own personal disposition. A lot of them, though, did not go into the let's confront as we were discussing earlier. In a sense, the less confront Trump camp. They went into the, they weren't Trumpy, but they, they went into the let's not overreact camp. But I think she, she was courageous and she really felt so strongly about this. She wanted to join the Bulwark. We were thrilled to have her. Obviously sorry that she feels she has to take a little time. Certainly understandable, though, to just get away from it for a bit. But she's really a terrific person and I also look forward to seeing her around socially. But also she'll do a few podcasts, write a few pieces, and she'll certainly be part of the extended family.
- [49:47]
Tim Miller
Yeah, always part of the family. We love A.B. she'll be back around and we've got a lot coming. As I mentioned in the, in the intro, there'll be even more than the folks that we have already announced to come. So the opinions will be plentiful, the outrage will be plentiful here. Maybe the darkness not quite as dark without AB Every week. I appreciate her very much. Appreciate all of you for tuning in. We'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace.
- [50:20]
Bill Kristol
Lying on its side the ruins of the day painted with the sky and the more I straighten out the less it wants to try.
- [50:47]
Tim Miller
The feelings.
- [50:48]
Bill Kristol
Start to rot One week at a.
- [50:51]
Tim Miller
Time.
- [50:56]
Bill Kristol
Police can swear to God I.
- [51:01]
Tim Miller
Know my friends and I would probably.
- [51:04]
Bill Kristol
Turn if you get out of bed come find us Any bridge, bring a stone all arrange My little dark age I greeted stereo the stereo sounds strange I know that if you hide it doesn't go away if you get out of bed and find me standing all alone Open I burn the page My.
- [51:33]
Tim Miller
Little Dark Age The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
- [51:59]
Aisha
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