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Tim Miller
The.
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Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday, so we're here with editor at large Bill Kristol. Bill, it's good to see you and everybody in person. Last week in D.C. we all got together what things are bad for the country but doing pretty good in Bulwark Land, you know, which is a tension internally.
Bill Kristol
It is a problem. It is a problem. We have to be proud of what we're doing and cheerful to see new friends and colleagues and such a nice group of people, honestly. So on the one hand one's cheerful, on the other hand, one doesn't want to be too cheerful, if you know what I mean.
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, I returned to New Orleans to some less cheerful updates. And in the meantime, while we were on DC last week, the little fella, Greg Vivino, had invaded the city. He did this kind of like frog marching tour around the French Quarter and, but has spent most of the time up in Canner, which is the area up by the airport. Basically. If you've ever flown into New Orleans, you know, it's kind of like not the near suburb, but the next kind of suburb out and it's a big immigrant community and, and yesterday there was a protest out in the kind of parking lot where they'd been staging stuff and it's just, it's brutal. But I don't know, Bill, what have you been kind of seeing from afar on the immigration stuff? And I'll tell folks about New Orleans.
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I'd like to hear what it's like on the ground because, yeah, I'VE seen a few clips and they seem relentless and just going to city after city. They started in cities, I just point out, where I guess there was some plausible local grounds for complaint. Well, there weren't really, because they were. No one in LA wanted them in and no one in Chicago wanted them in. So at least conceivable that things are out of control. We need these federal troops in or federal. We need more ICE and Border Patrol people. Is that at all been the case in New Orleans? Is anyone?
Tim Miller
No.
Bill Kristol
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Tim Miller
They don't even have a rationale. And the only rationale that they have put forth that I have seen for coming to New Orleans, beyond just like the fact that the governor asked them to come because little, you know, Vivino and Landry, about the same height, little mini guys. Besides that, the only rationale I've seen came actually over the weekend. It was after they'd already started from the vice president who tweeted this TikTok of a guy, it's a white guy in Louisiana in a truck. Should the vice president be tweeting out random videos of people that they haven't feted? Probably not. Right. But just let's even take it at face value. It's a guy that does construction down here. He's a contractor. Talking about how what we've seen the last week with the ICE and CBP coming to New Orleans is that it is true that a lot of Americans are being displaced from jobs because a lot of folks aren't showing up to job sites. And he has had more calls in the last week for work than he has in years, is what he's saying in this thing. And he's like. And said one day I had like 20, 20 calls. And so like, that is I guess, their rationale, right? Which is changing. You know, sometimes it's their violent criminals, sometimes it's. They're dangerous. It's an emergency. And now, you know, the vice president saying, well, look, it's these. Through mass migration, you know, they're displacing Americans. Like this gentleman who need work. Looking at it going, well, the guy doesn't seem to be able to handle all the work that he's getting. They're calling him. And he said, I've gotten 20 calls in a day. I don't think he's doing all those construction projects. I have a friend who's a contractor in town, you know, who's like, they can't finish projects. And like, some of the people that aren't showing up actually are citizens, but they are scared or they don't want to be harassed. They have family members that have mixed status. Right. Like, it's complicated. And a lot of those businesses are run by, are you ready to. Americans, Americans and even Trump voters. A lot of those businesses that are. That aren't getting their, you know, work, that aren't having their employees show up and aren't able to finish the projects at the end of the year where they can get money, you know, ahead of the holidays. So, I mean, like, that is essentially their rationale at this point. It's completely dubious. And even taking at face value, it's like, well, does that explain them, you know, having masked guys show up to apartments and just start harassing people that don't look American, you know, ridiculous.
Bill Kristol
I mean, certainly here in Northern Virginia, it's unequivocally the opposite. The crackdown in immigrants, or even there's that much crackdown here locally. But the fear of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants. But of course, it spills over to documented immigrants and it spills over to citizens who don't want to be harassed or who are related, as you say, to others and so forth, and is unequivocally made labor scarce and made it harder for contractors, for the bosses, so to speak, to get the people they need to do the jobs they promised to do. I don't even believe. I mean, with all due respect to whoever this guy is on the video, I'm deeply dubious about this. What is the unemployment rate among American citizen construction workers in New Orleans?
Tim Miller
I think it's probably true.
Bill Kristol
Plumbers, craftsmen, repairmen, whatever version you want. I would guess it is close to zero.
Tim Miller
Of those who want to work pretty low. I definitely think the demand is higher than the supply on that front for the most part. So anyway, the other thing I got talking to folks there. Well, a. Just this is obvious, but it's just worth stating. Yeah, they're masked guys. They're going out and menacing people, just solely based on racial profiling. So thanks to Brett Kavanaugh for deciding that that is legal. Because there's the one video I got which I put up on my bulwark takes feed about this, which people should watch if they want. You can scroll to the end. Is this guy who's Filipino friend sent it to me who's getting, you know, getting his ass for I.D. you know, getting a papers please treatment in a parking lot. And he's a citizen and he just starts going off on these guys like, suck my brown dick. Like, show me your papers. Let me see your papers. Show me your face. You know, and so, like, is that what kind of country we want to live in? You know, where people are being harassed, who are citizens, and they. They're having confrontations in a parking lot. That's what you want, I guess, to answer around a rhetorical question? The answer is yes for the administration. And this is one little item that I wanted to add, which I hadn't had until the time I taped yesterday, which is this image of Bevino texting. Like, one of the activists took a picture of his phone and he's texting and he's saying, I can't understand why DHS is hiding us. We're handing them a strategy on a silver platter. We're a massive wrecking crew. The idiots can't do anything to us. This is Bavino texting people, basically saying, I want attention. The DHS should be focusing us and centering us. And that's what this is. When I talk to the activists of that protest, like, that's what they all were like. It's crazy. They'll follow around the ICE guys and like, Bevino was supposedly in charge. Looks like the little Nazi from Inglourious Basters jumps out of the black SUV at the end to get himself in front of the camera as they go and hassle, like, two random people at Home Depot. It's the only rationale for that is if you look at his text, it's like, these guys just want attention. They want to menace people. They want to harass people. You know, they want people to be scared, and they want. And they think that it's a PR win for them, I guess. I disagree on the last point, but I think the rest of it's working.
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I mean, the scaring part is worrisome. People will. Some people will leave, I suppose, self support. Others will not show up at work, and that's not good for anyone. And. Or worry about suddenly having their kids go to school or picking up their kids at school or. I mean, the degree to which they're going after people in sort of vulnerable situations like that is also disgusting. You know, one thing you mentioned just in passing, these masked ICE or I guess Border Patrol agents I'd seen like three, four months ago when they were wearing the masks, people like us were complaining and screaming about it, debating it. I think I was on TV with some Trump Defender show I've not gone on since actually, because so annoying. And, you know, oh, no, they're under great threat, these People, they have to be masked because, you know, otherwise they'll be doxed or something. First of all, the political guys at the top want the publicity. Secondly, of course, no policeman. Do not wear masks. It's all ridiculous, and they're not under any threat. At the time, I thought, well, maybe they'll back off that. It's so un American. It's so creepy, and people really don't like it, I think. And all the gear and the kit and the whole, you know, military aspect of it here. Yeah. At home. At Home Depot parking lots. But they haven't backed off that at all. It's just they're so all in on every aspect of the militarization, the nativism, the bigotry. And they've not back. You know, they're paying some price politically, I think. I don't know. But they haven't backed off.
Tim Miller
I agree with that. Two other sides, just really quick. The other just practical problem, you know, which is why federal agents shouldn't be masked and should be identifying themselves. The other viral video going around from New Orleans was of a young woman, she's like 23, coming up from the grocery store, and she literally. She thinks she's been kidnapped. She's like. Starts running, right? Because it's like these guys in masks jump out of her car and go after her, and she hasn't done anything. There's no, you know, due process. There's no like, ma', am, like, we're here, you know, like, none of that. She just starts, like, running to her house because she thinks she's been kidnapped. I mean, this is. It's East Germany. I guess. The one thing I want to say that's positive, and we'll give this a little bit into the gnome, which I was trying to communicate to a couple people I was talking to that were protesting, is I do think a lot of folks are beaten down by this for good reason. And I think there's legitimate fear, particularly in certain communities, like out in Kenner, that are being targeted, that this is not going how these guys want it. The pushback to the ICE stuff has been maybe, and you listen in your newsletter this morning, all of the successful over the past two months, all the ways that the Democrats have successfully pushed back on them. This is one thing that wasn't mentioned because it's been kind of happening gradually. There hasn't really been an inflection point. But they wanted this to go differently, and they got run out of Chicago, and now they're down trying to find cities where the Local politicians are going to be more welcoming. There's not been as many as the criminals as they expected. It's not been as easy. They're losing in courts. The El Salvador plan has been thrown in the trash. And I think that that's at least worth noting.
Bill Kristol
No, totally. Just two quick footnotes, actually, on the public reaction. It's the public that gets credit for this. They have been very. I'm impressed by this regular. They're not getting that much encouragement, honestly, from Democratic officeholders who remain pretty nervous about this issue. They're certainly not getting the kind of support they should be getting from prominent local business types. I don't know if in New Orleans, the Chamber of Commerce is weighed in or those types I get in most cities, not much, right? Little bit.
Tim Miller
There's some exception. I think local politicians have been pretty good. Pritzker was good.
Bill Kristol
Chicago, like our local New Orleans, is organizing itself. You see these people, the whistles and the. And the attempts to just show up and make life difficult for them in a good way difficult. And to also offer support and help for people who are under threat. Someone told me this morning that somewhere else in the country they did a little know your rights program. And it wasn't just that 400 people who wanted to know their rights showed up to be tutored on what you do and don't have to do when you're accosted by some masked men, but also that the number of volunteers of, you know, people who weren't personally a threat to help, teach them to help be available, to be happy on their speed dial if something starts to happen, you know, has really been a impressive. And I do think it's, in a way a civic reaction against what's happening as much as a political one. The other thing is someone said to me, well, Bill, you don't like this, but Bloomberg, you praise Bloomberg as mayor. And he did these stops of people.
Tim Miller
That were stop and frisk.
Bill Kristol
They stopped people who were black basically in black neighborhoods where they thought there was a lot of black crime. But that was bad. And the court actually ended up throwing that out. But whatever that was, it was racially motivated to stop. The police didn't wear masks, right? Police said, you know, sir, we're stopping you. We want to see your ID and so forth and check who you are. Okay, that's bad. If it's done racially, I would say. But still, there's still due process. There's still a Fourth Amendment. There's still a policeman who's got a name tag and there's recourse if something goes wrong. So this is so much worse. I guess I come back to that. This is so much worse than stuff we have seen in the last 20, 30, 40 years. I mean, it is more like, I guess, the south of 70 years ago or something.
Tim Miller
Yeah, for sure. No, I mean, again, like the Bloomberg. This is not to defend it. I was not a big stop and frisk guy. But, like, it's a municipal decision. Like, it's one thing if, like, you have a mayor that's like, in our city, crime is out of control in certain neighborhoods. We're trying to deal with this. It's not to excuse it, but, like, that still is a very different prospect than the feds saying we're going to send people into a city over the objections of the local politicians, not coordinate with them. Like the local city councilman I heard from over the weekend, like, said that we're not. We haven't heard anything. We don't know where they're going. They're not telling us, they're not coordinating with us. This is supposedly an effort to support our law enforcement efforts. You'd think that they want to coordinate better with our law enforcement. They're not doing it on the national politics side of this. Our colleague Adrian Casquillo had a little scoop over the weekend in his newsletter that said that there's a lot of scuttlebutt among the career types at DHS that Nome is on the way out. The feeling is that the White House, Stephen Miller, Homan, et cetera, are not happy with NOAM and her shadow secretary and maybe a little more than that, Corey Lewandowski. And with a story like this, it's always kind of like the Trump world is, you know, it's not a traditional HR process. Over at the Trump world, it's like kind of who knows whether, like, this is the type of thing that blows over or that, you know, really, you know, she has gotten on the wrong side of the, you know, powerful people in the White House, and it's inevitable. But I do think that would be a noteworthy move to get rid of Noem. There's been no sign, like, on some of the other issues, which we'll get to, economy, et cetera. We've seen them kind of acknowledge a little bit some political weakness. We haven't seen that at all on this stuff. And I think that'd be interesting if that comes to pass as Adrian is reporting.
Bill Kristol
Yeah. And one couldn't help but be cheered up to get back to Our original discussion for at least for half a day at her departure. I mean she's been so repulsive in.
Tim Miller
So many ways and doing the pinup shot at sea cot in El Salvador in front of the prisoners and just disgusting. Disgusting.
Bill Kristol
But I mean Steve Miller, I do think they're all in on this policy for sure. Not because of. No, she's in effect not a cause of this policy or byproduct or whatever you want to say cheerleader. And therefore one shouldn't relax, you know after the few hours of, of cheerfulness we're entitled to if she gets dumped.
Tim Miller
Someone that's being floated is Youngkin. I just can't imagine that that's gonna happen.
Bill Kristol
No, that would be crazy. Yeah. He would never do that. I think that's not the image he wants.
Tim Miller
Right. If he would do it, that would be certainly a sign. And we're get to this a little bit. I told Sam last week I'm only allowing myself 15 minutes of 2028 hot stove a week. We don't want to do too much. I might waste a couple minutes at the end but if he wasn't even consider that, I think that would be a signal about how he's trying to butch himself up for a potential 2028 run. But anyway TBD we'll get to that more at the end.
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The farmer bailout is the big news of today. I want to get to this afternoon, the White House is going to unveil a farm aid package which is going to be $12 billion in assistance for farmers. 11 billion will be one time payments. So just straight welfare one time payments. We're not like creating a program that will serve farmers in the future. No, we're just gonna hand out 11 billion in cash. And Trump is gonna announce the package during an event with corn, cotton, soybean, rice, cattle, wheat and potato farmers at the White House alongside Scott Besant and Brooke Rollins, these fucking welfare queens. Have some dignity. The farmers showing up to this White House to take yet another welfare check from the President, it's hard to in like another situation. And they've taken so much money. These guys that did the doged and have cut programs, have cut health care for poor people. I saw there was a viral picture going around of the food bank line in Kentucky, like cutting funding for food banks, you know, obviously cutting usad, like across the board, vulnerable people are cutting, the farmers are getting, they're getting a handout, they're getting their personal EBT cards which is going to allow them to, you know, live very comfortably in farm country. And they're going to the White House to get their big check from the President. It's crazy to me that this has, this is now the second time this has happened that Trump has totally screwed over these people who are part of his core base with his stupid tariff policy. And in order to deal with it, all the rest of them are paying to bail him out again.
Bill Kristol
Right. Of course, we're not helping people with the Obamacare subsidies, which the Democrats, you know, are going to propose extension of this week. And I guess the Republicans in the Senate and presumably the House are going to, if they got to the House, are going to vote down and Trump's not going to do anything to try to help make happen. So, yeah, I mean, farmers are hurting because of Trump's tariffs and there are individual ones who might be hurting a lot and facing real danger of bankruptcy or something. A lot of them are, on the other hand, are probably pretty well off people who, you know, I'm not for them being hurt by the terrorists. That's idiotic. But yeah, I mean, it would be worth someone doing a little reporting on who exactly These people at the White House are what their total income and net worth is compared to the people who work in some small business, have to purchase the Obamacare subsidies on the exchange and are seeing a 60% hike in the price of that, and they're making $42,000 a year or something like that.
Tim Miller
So, yeah, well, compared to the people in the food bank line, again, it's like your quid pro quo. I mean, it's very. It's borderline sex work. I mean, like, you have to show up to the White house to say, Mr. Trump, you're so great. Thank you. In order to get money. You would think that people like the old conservative tradition of appreciating hard work, that you would want to say, hey, you know, I'd rather just do the farming and sell my products to our customers overseas rather than you screwing us with your stupid policy and me having to now come to the White House to beg and compliment you and rub your belly and tell you how beautiful and orange you look in order to get my check. And it's pretty. It's pretty sick stuff.
Bill Kristol
Well, they make them. Do you think, actually obsequiously praised Trump as opposed to just standing there as props? Will it be like a Cabinet, one of the Cabinet meetings?
Tim Miller
You know, I will see. We'll see. Maybe they will just stand there at props with, like, a piece of wheat in their mouth. That's a stereotypical farmer picture, you know, farmer hat. Anyway, the good news is.
The Treasury Secretary's got this under control because he understands the business better than any of us do. And he was. He was on the Sunday shows over the weekend. I want to play a little bit of him talking about this. Margaret, I'm involved in the agricultural industry. I run a soybean farm. And I can tell you, you invest in it.
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Tim Miller
And people in my family go out and work on it. I actually just divested it this week as part of my ethics agreement, so I'm out of that business. But I probably know more about any Treasury Secretary.
About agriculture since the 1800s. And I can tell you that what farmers need is certainty. I'm sure the Besant kids are out there detasseling. They're walking the rows, they're getting their hands dirty. Why does he keep doing this to himself? It's like masochism. He's going to keep going on and trying to claim that he's a farmer.
Bill Kristol
So I like the fact that he's divesting because the ethics people told him to. Ten Months into his tenure. First of all, it seems like when.
Tim Miller
I was in government, I'm going to bail out.
Bill Kristol
When I was in government, it seems to me you sort of had to like you had a week or two to get, get I. Almost nothing. So it was like transferring my $8,000 from stocks to a mutual fund. Yeah. So I'm glad the Besson has taken 10 months to do this to comply with the ethics rules. But yeah, I don't. I'm mostly for leaving people's families alone. But since he raised it, I would actually like some investigative reporting. Who in the Besson family is out there on a soybean farm doing whatever you do? And I'm not going to present to have a foggiest idea what you do to a soybean. You know, what's the verb? Do you pick a soybean? Do you, you do something to a soybean?
Tim Miller
I don't know. Anyway, I'm going to get in trouble with my hus. I don't know. I don't know. Who knows?
Bill Kristol
And also, is Bessant the most oleaginous of them all? I mean, he's not the most dangerous or damaging of the cabinet secretaries. I, I don't think compared to Hagseth or. No, he's not, you know, doing quite as much damage to the country, but he's, I, I find his manners so off putting. Maybe that's just my new Social Democrat, anti New York wealthy people mode. But, but then, but as you say, if he just said, look, you know, we, whatever. I'm defending the policies of the Trump administration. Fine. But yes, the, the need to pretend that he's in touch with the soybean farmers of America is so laughable. You know, maybe there's one soybean farm out in the Hamptons. Do you think? I don't know, near his house out there.
Tim Miller
You know, even spit it out. It's like you're paying people to work the land. I do, I hate to be like this, but I was curious, in addition to fact checking, whether Besant is actually a soybean farmer and whether his family's working the land and getting up at dawn to, you know, get out there. Also, the claim that he knows more about agriculture than any Secretary of the treasury since the 1800s, that sounded dubious to me as well. And so I did pull up Wikipedia, our friend at Wikipedia. And we had. John Connolly was Secretary of the treasury under Richard Nixon. He was born to a dairy and tenant farmer in Texas. So my guess is that he's actually done a little bit more farm work than Scott Besant in his Barbie house. That's just me. I'm just guessing that John Connolly probably knew a little bit more than Scott Besant. Fortunately, I think John Connolly is dead. So we can't have a quiz, but I would like to challenge Scott Bessant to a quiz. You mentioned the health care subsidies a minute ago, but also in your newsletter talking about the opportunities that Democrats have in the next couple of weeks to kind of continue to damage Trump's political standing. This is one of them. On Thursday, the Senate is set to vote on the Democratic proposal to extend the enhanced subsidies for three years. Wondering what you think about that and kind of just the other point you're making in the newsletter.
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I mean, the government shutdown which the Democrats went along with or caused, you could say to be honest, they didn't like that term because they were the Republicans fault. They wouldn't extend subsidies. But the Democrats could have accepted the Republican cr. They didn't. It was a gamble. It worked out well politically, I think, and they probably worked out pretty well that they ended it when they did, too. And the one thing they got out of it was this commitment to a vote on the Obamacare subsidies. And I think, you know, it's helped them politically. I mean, they did get the health care issue front and center. So they should spend all week screaming and yelling about it and then scream and yell when the Republicans stop people from getting the help they deserve. They can use Trump's farm subsidies, which are necessary because of the tariffs, as an example of, you know, why he won't help actual people who deserve help in this case and have been getting it for two or three years and with no ill effect that I know of. I mean, they're getting health insurance, which is a good thing, so they should emphasize that. And then I do think the week after, there's quite a lot of economic data that comes out that kind of last full week before Christmas could well show that inflation isn't going down as Trump promised. And so it's not just health costs that are going up, it's a lot of other costs. And following the economy may be slowing. And I think they have a good two week window here to do health care and the economy together. And I do think just December is a good time to make some points, you know, and people do have a sort of end of the year attitude. They go on vacation maybe the week of Christmas itself. They chat with their friends and families and so forth. What do you Think that first year of the Trump presidency pretty crazy, huh? Pretty good. If the Democrats can get people also to say pretty crazy. And also, you know, my people's health insurance is going up and the prices haven't come down. There are a couple other issues they can. Epstein comes up at the end of that second week too. Then there's the drug boats and stuff. So I think it's a pretty good moment for these next two weeks. They really should try to bring home the fact that the first year of Trump's presidency has not done what he said it would do on the economy and in other areas.
Tim Miller
The enhanced Obamacare health care subsidies from the COVID era is like not the way long term to deal with our health care unaffordability crisis. We should just say, but this is a bed of their own banking. Right? They came in, said that they were going to deal with costs. That was what was the Trump priority and what they stated both during the campaign and during the transition. And a lot of people receiving those subsidies are their own voters. And we're in month 11 now getting to it of the administration. Plenty of time to have come up with an alternative. They haven't. And I really think that they have made this their mess. And I think that it's perfectly fine for the Democrats to rail on it. And not only perfectly fine, they absolutely should rail on it, despite the fact that maybe if you brought in the healthcare policy wonks, the center right and left, this might not be the proposed policy. It's just like, okay, well whatever. Republicans want everything upon them to deal with this. They haven't. Their own people are going to suffer. It's going to be something very tangible that people notice on top of the fact that the tariff news and we'll see if they back off on that in the next couple weeks. You're hearing already from a lot of companies that they've, you know, who have been eating some of the additional costs of the tariffs, that they're not going to do that next year if they continue.
Bill Kristol
No, I like that. I hadn't really quite thought about the way you just pairing the tariffs and the healthy. I mean, he's had plenty of time. I think that's another thing people need to say these next two, three weeks. He's been president for almost a year. The idea that, well, we can get around to health. They're thinking hard. A lot of Republican senators are consulting and they have a couple of ideas, concepts of how they might begin to fix health care. They're cutting out the insurance Companies, allegedly and all nonsense, but I mean, really, it's 11 months. You know what they meant now on tariffs, something he believes in, apparently. They've done a lot. It's been destructive, but it's not like they can't put into practice policies. It's not like they can't propose things to Congress. They got that stupid reconciliation bill through Congress. They could have done stuff. They chose not to do anything on health care. They chose to impose tariffs. I think they need to really pair those two in a way.
Tim Miller
You know, I agree. They found the time to cut taxes for the richest people, found time to start a war with Venezuela. They found time to end usaid. Like they could have found time to come up with a plan to deal with people's rising health care premiums. They did.
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On the foreign policy side as well. You had Mark Warner, senator from Virginia, on the Sunday bulwark once. You're laboring on every Sunday. And we appreciate, you know, while the rest of us are sleeping in at the very end, you kind of got into some interesting stuff on the national security strategy that I want to talk to you about. But just before that, he was in the briefing on the bombings in the Caribbean and our double tap strike that killed the two people who had survived the initial strike and were swimming around the Caribbean. And Tom Cotton says that they were trying to roll the boat over and get back on and come attack us again. Warner has seen the video. We talked about this a little bit on Friday. I'm just wondering if from your conversation, anything struck you from what he had observed.
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I think I mean, I hadn't really focused on the fact that I think six or seven members of Congress have seen the video, the ranking and chairs of these key committees, Intelligence, Armed Services, but that's it. There are many people in Congress who deserve to see that, I hope, I assume, insist this week that it be shown more made available to all members. I'd like to, you know, Jason Crow and Seth Moulton and a lot of veterans and people who've served in the Navy and others who know quite a lot, Special operations, know quite a lot about this. To see this video and and I gather it's pretty shattering. Mark Warner is a very judicious, moderate guy, really values and I don't I say this respectfully. I mean, his reputation is as having run the Intelligence Committee in the Senate and now he's vice chair in a very bipartisan way. He is not a showboat on this stuff. And he genuinely was appalled. I mean, I think both talking a little off air and then on air about what he saw and also appalled by the changing stories of the administration. He didn't want to criticize the military directly, but I think he feels like they've been put in just an impossible position and haven't been candid from the beginning, all of them. And I was struck by how alarmed he is by both the particular incident and then by the whole strain of things that's happening and how much. He is vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He's one of this group of eight that's supposed to get all the briefings. They don't know anything. They don't know. They've given one document, finally the legal Office of Legal Counsel opinion justifying allegedly these Strikes, but all the normal stuff, they get the kind of briefings on what happened, access to documentation, access to the other. Incidentally, they should make this video public, but the other videos, they've released 20 seconds of them as a snuff film. But we don't get to see. They don't get to see the whole account of, you know, what, what happened, who these people are. In this case, it's come out now, only now that the boat was not heading to the US this boat was heading to maybe meet up with another boat that was going to Suriname to go to Europe, apparently to deliver cocaine there. So. But Trump said definitively coming to the US the day of the hit, and they never walked that back until a week or two ago. The whole thing has been covered up. I mean, I guess I come. I guess I was struck talking to Mark Warner, how much? He is one of the six, seven, eight people in the United States Congress who should, who in the normal procedure of things, would know a lot about what has happened. And he knows, as he was the first to say, he knows very little. And this is not democratic government. I mean, this is the President of the United States just doing things as he wishes and then not briefing, not telling us about it, the public, but not telling the United States Congress about it.
Tim Miller
The other thing that was noted is that this was a prior. I didn't really catch this. I thought they all were briefed together. I didn't realize until I watched your interview.
Bill Kristol
No, there was a sequence and there was a scheduling issue, and he happened to be the last, last one. So he got quite a lot of time with General Kane and Admiral Bradley in private.
Tim Miller
To me, that's the other element of this, which is like, it doesn't seem like he feels at all compelled that we can be certain that we're even killing the people that they say we're killing.
Bill Kristol
I don't know. They floated so many different excuses. One excuse over the weekend was, well, everyone who was killed was on a list of people who were okay to be killed. But as Brian Goodman, our friend teaches, works on this stuff full time at NYU Law School and said, what is that? You can't just make up lists of people who deserve to be killed. Where's the list?
Tim Miller
Yeah, where's the list?
Bill Kristol
What are the criteria for putting people. They were obviously.
Tim Miller
Can Mark Warner see it, at least.
Bill Kristol
Iraq, when we were fighting ISIS, let's just say in 2015, 16, in Syria and Iraq, there were lists of people. We went through a lot of trouble to try to make sure they were accurate. I'm sure there were one or two mistakes, but of genuine ISIS operatives who they Special operations forces, they went out and tried to either seize or, if need be, killed. That's not a bunch of mules who were paid $20 to go take a boat somewhere to bring some cocaine. They were not, first of all, the equivalent of those people were not on the list, typically, unless they directly killed Americans or something. Yeah. So saying they're on a list gets you nowhere in terms of international law or American law, incidentally, to justify what had happened.
Tim Miller
Yeah. One other interesting thing here, convo, because just like a lot of times, I just feel like it's useful when they are making these ridiculous rationalizations to just actually take what they're saying at face value and walk through it. How that would work, because it reveals other absurdities. One of those, in your conversation was this claim that Cotton said that, A, they're trying to turn over the boat, and B, that there's another boat that was coming to pick them up that was also maybe coming to target Americans. And it's like, well, okay, you and Senator Warner were discussing, if that's true, wouldn't the right strategic move have been to wait for the boat? Right. Like, this is stupid. This is not a war. We shouldn't be bombing people at all. But if you're taking their argument at face value, which is that this is a grave threat to the country, why would you want to kill the two people swimming around in the water? Wouldn't you want to see who's on the boat coming to get them? Wouldn't you want to interdict those people or bomb those? The whole rationale is just stupid and.
Bill Kristol
You'D want to interdict them. And we do have Coast Guard, Navy ships that can go do that. Someone did it just off the coast of Florida, didn't they, Thursday or Friday. They took a zillion pounds of cocaine or whatever off some ship and captured the people. And you'd want to take the people and then see what information you could get from them if you were serious about narco terrorists. And we need to get up the chain to the really big shots, like the president of Honduras, whom Trump just pardoned. But anyway, right isn't. I mean, we did do that a lot with the terrorists. Again, we got into big fights about proper interrogation techniques, God knows. But, I mean, it wasn't crazy to think we need to interrogate these people to see what the rest of the organization is up to and who the big shots are. That's what's so infuriating. There's not even a pretense that this is a serious war on terrorism, that this is a serious effort to deal with dangerous narco terrorists who have this huge organization that we need to penetrate. We know how we try to penetrate terrorist organizations and we do it sometimes well, sometimes not so well. But this is a shooting gallery and for. Shooting gallery for snuff films, I guess I came out of the Warner conversation. He was very sober and he's not. Doesn't get as excited as I do, I guess. But it's disgusting, really. We're shooting up these things and putting it up on social media. That's it. There's no serious effort to curb the flow of drugs or to find out what the real relationships within Trende Ragua are or anything like that.
Tim Miller
And they've put out all the snuff videos except for the one where they killed the two people apparently swimming around in the water with a boat on fire next to them. Just one other thing on the war coming at the very end. And you maybe might have some longer conversations later this week with foreign policy folks on this. But it is interesting. They have this national security strategy that the administration's put out and it's noteworthy that this administration.
Barely talks about China at all. They've got some China hawks allegedly like Waltz and such in the administration, but they don't talk about that at all. For years we talked about that on the right. It was that Obama and Biden didn't care about this. They were too soft. There's this great threat of China and we had cotton speaking of Cotton and Gallagher and all these people like it's, you know, these Democrats are too weak. We need to be tougher on China and decouple. There's nothing about China in any of this, but there's significant amount about, like whether the Europeans are, you know, cracking down too hard on speech like that is the real threat facing the country to our national security. When you kind of put it like that, it is pretty crazy.
Bill Kristol
Yeah, we have to be tough on Venezuelan speedboats and on European liberals who haven't signed on to our version of the culture war or with white replacement theory or basically bigotry. Some of Europe has a core. They're doing their best to encourage those people in Europe, incidentally, supporting the AfD and all that, but they're annoyed that some of Europe is a little more resistant to this kind of culture war stuff than they wish. So. Yeah, no, it's not as obviously it's not a serious national security strategy but I think on China, well, it'd be nice of someone who's been sort of Trump acquiescent because you know Bill, I mean they're not great but on China they're really going to be serious. It'd be nice if one of them acknowledge that they've been utterly unserious. Utterly unserious. And in fact he's eager to cut deals with Xi and he's going to sell out Taiwan and he's letting them have all the advanced AI stuff through whoever it is, the UAE or something, you know, so I mean she's running circles around them.
Tim Miller
She's running circles around them totally.
Bill Kristol
But they're going to be tough here in the western hemisphere, Tim. We're going to really be top dog here and we got the Canadians, we're beating them up and we blowing up some fishing boats and Panama Canal. Watch out. I mean it's pathetic. It's really embarrassing honestly. We're just a bully. We're just a hemispheric bully. Not even a very good one probably, honestly. But at this point, I mean and.
Tim Miller
It ties to the farmer bailout. It's like she. They had this deal and they promised that they're gonna buy all the soybeans but they haven't yet. So in the meantime we gotta bail out the farmers, you know, while she slow rolls us. It's truly pathetic.
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Tim Miller
Alright, I want to do a little politics talk. We got some Texas Senate news that I'm not too excited about. So I don't know if you're going to cheer me up or not, but Colin Allred has announced this morning that he's dropping out of The Texas Senate race that seems to be a prelude to Jasmine Crockett getting in. I expect potentially by the time this podcast is out, I'll sign that she is going to get into this race. Terry Virts, who was the astronaut, had also dropped out of the Senate race in favor of running for the House. He's more of a moderate type candidate. James Talarico is still in and so it's kind of looking like this will turn into a Talarico vs Crockett primary. I guess I'll just give my opinion first, Bill, and then you can kind of give yours. But like, I feel like Colin Allred got a real short shrift down there and he ran really far ahead of Kamala Harris last time and he got crushed, but he ran above the top of the ticket. And if you project that out to a midterm, let's say that Trump's popularity in Texas is at like 46 instead of wherever it was last time in the mid-50s. You know, somebody like Con Allred, a, you know, somebody that runs a, you know, safe, somalty conservative race that's appealing, you know, across the board foot former football player, maybe that's the right thing to do. Right. You know, in Texas, I don't know, maybe he can get a primary, I'm not sure. But he's getting pushed out of the race because. Because he doesn't have like this social media juice of Crockett or Talarico. I think just seems like a big mistake. And I think that the Democrats like in some ways learning some wrong lessons from Trump and being like, oh, we need people that are more like Trump. And it's like maybe true. Actually in 28, I think I'd have a different view of a presidential race. Maybe there's some view that controlling the narrative and having a really dynamic candidate is like the most important thing in a presidential race. Maybe it's really important in certain governors races or like there are other certain examples like in red state senate races. I don't know that I having a fire, an anti Trump fire brand that is going to increase the partisan variance, like in the hopes that it turns juices turnout.
Again. Maybe it'll work. I'm not like a total 0% on it, but I, I don't know that it's a smart idea for the Democrats to be kind of circling the wagons around like very partisan social media fire brands in red states. I don't know that there's a ton of evidence that that's a model for success.
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I Think especially in red states. I mean, I talked to someone from Tennessee over the weekend who said he thought, I mean, a more moderate candidate in Tennessee 7 would have lost also probably it just R plus 22 district. But he did think the Democrats lost 3, 4 points because she was just such a left wing candidate. And now the wave is still strong enough to get her from minus 22 to minus 9. So that's not nothing. But again, that's exactly the margin of difference in a place like Texas where you could be winning as opposed to getting to 46, 47%. And so I do think it matters what kind of candidates you have, especially in these purple and red states. I mean, there was a huge wave here in Virginia, but I think we're just purplish. But I think Spamberger won by more because she was strong, you know, ex CIA and a moderate. So I was texting with Michael Wood, our friend, occasional Bulwark contributor, veteran small business owner and in the Dallas suburbs, and telling him he needs to rethink this thing. Talarico, I don't know quite. He's not quite left wing, I wouldn't say. But he is kind of young and a social media ish and maybe someone who owns a business and served very admirably in the military pretty seriously and came back to Texas and then has done well and has a. Someone who would look is more. More of a moderate Democrat. So we should use this podcast to get Michael to make Michael Wood's life miserable now for the next three weeks. So he'll have to answer a lot of questions about why, whether he's running or not. I don't think he. I mean, he sort of just decided not to be busy with his family and his, and his life. But nonetheless, I got a little depressed when I saw that. I don't know that.
Tim Miller
All right.
Bill Kristol
Felt he couldn't make it. Maybe it was just a personal decision. I don't know. He didn't want to do it again.
Tim Miller
But I'm talking about being smart. Having a candidate like Crockett and a certain race might make total sense. I think if Democrats and blue states decide that the base is depressed and they don't want candidates like Ed Markey representing blue states. They want people that are younger and more dynamic and maybe more lefty. Okay. It's a big country, right. And Democrats should be able to run different types of candidates in different places. And so I'm for that. I just like look at the Texas Senate race and I feel like sometimes Democrats, they take the lesson from Trump and they're like, we need to be more turn out the base. Look how well Trump's done it. But look how poorly that works for Republicans in the midterms. Trump's success in two elections has really papered over Republicans failures and a lot of these midterm races. And I don't want to compare Jasmine Crockett to like Herschel Walker, Carrie Lake or whatever. Obviously they're liars and gross people. But Republicans have blown a lot of races that they could have run by running Trumpy. Fire Brandy. Two partisan type candidates at the Senate level. And Democrats should learn from that just as much as they learn from the way Trump has succeeded at the presidential level.
Bill Kristol
Just to make this point even more real time in 2024, Alyssa Slotkin won in Michigan, a state that Trump carried. And she would not have if she were a more left wing Democratic nominee, in my opinion. And David McCormick, your close friend there in Pennsylvania as a rep, as a Republican run in Pennsylvania because though he pretended to be Trumpy and was Trumpy in the primary and so forth, there were enough voters who were sort of reassured that deep down he's not crazy and he's not really like Herschel Walker, which he isn't, I guess, as a business guy and all this that he managed to squeak through in Pennsylvania. So we have quite a lot of evidence that at the level of Senate races and purplish states either way for the Democrats and the Republicans, or reddish districts and states for the Democrats, the kind of candidate matters. But I'm also not. I got beat up by so many people for saying I was kind of okay with Mamdani back in October. It's New York, you know, whatever.
Tim Miller
And I also have said this a million times. I'll say it again right now. If the left part of the party wants to go into a red state and say, hey, what we're going to try to do is run somebody on a Bernie ish economic platform, but who's more center on social issues. That's at least a theory of the case. Okay, that's at least something. I don't know that that's going to work, but. But why not try it? I'm on board for trying new shit. We got to figure out how Democrats can win in red states. Or like, so Ken Paxton is not a US Senator. That's not what Jasmine Crockett is like. Jasmine Crockett is a just down the line progressive left firebrand. Like that's what she is. I mean, maybe Donald Trump will fuck up the economy so bad and Donald Trump will face plant so bad that she'll win by accident. That happens. People win by accident all the time. Katie Hobbs won by accident in Arizona because Carrie Lake was such a terrible candidate. It wasn't because she ran a great race. God love her. So that can happen sometimes. But anyway.
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I want to do some.
Tim Miller
Politics on the other side with the Republicans. My final section here I have my headline is do we have to hand it to him? And it's Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz. Marjorie Taylor Greene was on 60 Minutes last night. Do we have to hand it to Marjorie Taylor Greene? Here she is going after Trump for now being the establishment.
Bill Kristol
Are you saying that the President now.
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Is siding with those establishment powerful people and against maga?
Tim Miller
He passed a crypto bill that helped out all the crypto donors. He has served Israel's interest, even attacking Iran. He has served Big Pharma. He didn't take away the COVID vaccines that we want to see taken away. So those are the areas that are still getting everything they want while the people we're still out here saying we want to see Action on areas for the American people, not for the major industries and the big downers. Bill.
Bill Kristol
A little cross pressured on this one. Crazy. The things she wants to see are a couple of the cases where Trump has been slightly less irresponsible than he might otherwise have been. But on the other hand, the fact that he is selling out to all the big donors is also an empirically true fact. So, yeah, we need a better expression. I don't want to hand anything to her much, but. But if she says a true thing, it's a true thing. Right? Truth is truth, regardless of who says it. So we're allowed to say that she's saying the truth and I think we're allowed to say honestly that it doesn't. It's good that the MAGA coalition is coming apart a little bit.
Tim Miller
I love that I'm a little cross pressured.
On Marjorie Taylor Greene wanting Trump to be more anti Israel and also being in the pockets of the rich people. Here's the thing. Trump is vulnerable on that, which he just laid out. And is that because some. There is like some part of the MAGA base that's anti Semitic? Of course. Is it also because it is true that he has said that he was going to be America First. And this was another clip that I didn't play where she said, I don't, I don't identify as MAGA anymore. I'm America first. Because he MAGA isn't America first. I think that's a useful frame for people to attack him from, from all parts of, you know, no matter what your ideology is, if you're Jewish, space lasers or if you're just a normie neoliberal. Like he hasn't been America first and he has been corrupt and he's given handouts to the big tech guys, he's given handouts to his crypto buddies and he hasn't gone after the established interest groups like he said he was going to. And instead he's building a big fancy ballroom for himself. There's a lot of crazy in there. I think that going after him on the vaccine is not what I would choose to go after him on. But we should let a thousand flowers bloom. And I think that's the frame that Donald Trump has not been America first. He's not a drain the swamp. He's been acting on behalf of himself, his own financial interests and the big rich guys who he wants to love him. I think that's a good frame and maybe other people can take a little bit of a different tack on the Details than Marjorie did. How does that sound to Bill?
Bill Kristol
Yeah, Reasonable. I think you make an interesting point about her distinction between America first and maga. I mean, essentially, she wants to be America first, and I take it whatever she thinks. I mean, she sort of sincerely thinks that's what she's thinking, you know, but I think it's a vulnerability. Right. It was America First. I mean, much as I deplore it and think its historical associations are very bad and so forth, has a certain resonance probably out there. It seems like commonsensical in a certain way. America first and MAGA has now accumulated so much stuff that I wonder what. How it's interesting to test. I've only seen that done recently. What. How that term is doing. I kind of think Trump loves it. He talks about it all the time. It's, you know, on his stupid, you know, make America myths everywhere.
Tim Miller
Right.
Bill Kristol
But I wonder how that slogan is really faring politically.
Tim Miller
Something to think about. All right, last thing.
Ted Cruz. When you go back in history, one of the things that I. I'm sure people could find it if they want to go ahead and search for it, because I'm not ashamed. I don't love it. It's not something I feel great about when I look back on, but there was a brief moment of maybe two months where I was unofficially part of the Cruz crew in 2016 because it was the only way to stop Donald Trump. And I stand by that. I think that we would have been a much better place if Ted Cruz had been the nominee to Donald Trump, mostly because Hillary probably would have won. But even if Ted Cruz had become president, we'd been a better place. There's nobody storming the Capitol waving Ted Cruz flags. Okay? That was just where we were at. Ever since then. I found Ted Cruz to just be utterly disgusting and deplorable inside and out, and every basically utterance that he's made. And then in the last couple weeks, Ted Cruz is going after Tucker really hard. Ted Cruz is plotting a 2028 to go after J.D. vance. He doesn't like the way that they have basically taken this kind of MAGA nationalism, and it does not think it's representative of where the country should be. Tucker and Don Jr. Were in Qatar over the weekend sucking up to the Qataris, who are giving us this plane, and there's all this corruption, and obviously they're going after Israel, et cetera. And Ted Cruz tweets, quote, tweets, the Tucker panel in Qatar with, I thought fellatio was illegal in Qatar.
And I'm sorry to say Ted Cruz did a good tweet. And could we find ourselves in a situation where it is Ted Cruz that is holding the mantle in a fight in 2027 against JD Vance and the Trump family and Tucker Carlson? And are you ready for that? Are you ready for liking some of Ted Cruz's tweets again? I guess is my question.
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I guess so. It's funny. Was it two months that we were all for the cruise free arena ticket? I in my own mind rewritten that as two weeks or maybe two days. I'm sure it really was two months, but I've compressed that.
Tim Miller
I think it was two months.
Bill Kristol
I've compressed that in my own account of history there. But he was so horrible for the next few years. But he does believe in certain things and he's not an idiot. And he knows that some of these policies are very destructive terrorists, Paris being one of them. I assume he was always a kind of free trade.
Tim Miller
I'm going after NATO. It's not all about Israel, that we should get rid of all of our allies and coddle up to the dictators. He's not for that. He's not for the coddling up to Putin. And.
So that's not nothing.
Bill Kristol
Some of the nativism has got to put him off. I mean, I would think, just, I.
Tim Miller
Would think, you know, he's got some daughters that are libs. The daughters are libs.
Bill Kristol
Yes.
Tim Miller
That's all I hear. And that matters. That matters. JD's kids are still young and so he doesn't have the guilt yet. He's going to convince himself that his kids aren't going to hate him. That's going to come back to bite him in a few years, I suspect. Maybe not. Maybe he'll end up with children like Nayland Haley, who is Haley, who is like a MAGA nationalist for some reason. But I suspect a lot of these guys, and you see that with Marjorie. I think one connection between Marjorie and Cruz is they have to have Thanksgiving dinner with their late teen, early 20s daughters. And that demo, college educated late teen, early, early twenties women are very, very, very unhappy with the current Republican Party. And maybe that, that, maybe that nudges them a little bit. And okay, I'm not saying I'm going to be like, you know, putting a Ted Cruz yard sign up, but someone will have to carry the flag against the MAGA nationalists and maybe it'll be Ted Cruz again.
Bill Kristol
We've ended up. You have to.
Tim Miller
We'll leave it there.
Bill Kristol
Tim Miller got to give it to Te reminisces fondly about his days in the cruise arena, you know, Super Pack or whatever.
Oh my God.
Tim Miller
Come on to the podcast, Ted. We'd have a good time. Anyway, that's Bill Crystal. We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the show if you guys can stomach it. We'll see y' all then. Peace.
Musical Performer
Burning bright.
Pretty lights.
Red and blue.
Put this shut down all the hockey towns tonight.
I say prayer, too.
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If.
Musical Performer
I only knew.
Used to say the hat that way was your home.
Tim Miller
But.
Musical Performer
We both know.
That ain't true.
Tim Miller
It'S.
Musical Performer
Just the only place a man can.
Tim Miller
Go.
Musical Performer
He don't know.
Where it's traveling.
Tim Miller
To.
Musical Performer
Colorado's always clean and healing.
Tim Miller
And.
Musical Performer
Tennessee and spring's green and cool.
Bill Kristol
It.
Musical Performer
Never really was your kind of town.
But you went around.
With the Fort west blues.
Somewhere beyond the Great Divide.
Where the sky's wide.
And the clouds.
Bill Kristol
Of you.
Musical Performer
My man can see his way clear to the light.
I just hold on tight.
I saw you, you got to do.
They said Texas weather's always changing.
And one thing change will bring you something new.
And Houston really ain't that bad a town.
Bill Kristol
So you.
Musical Performer
Hang around.
With the Fort Worth blues.
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
Matt Rogers
This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
Bill Kristol
This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
Matt Rogers
Hey Bowen, it's gift season.
Bill Kristol
Ugh, stressing me out. Why are the so hard to shop for?
Matt Rogers
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Tim Miller
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Tim Miller
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Bill Kristol
Gift the good stuff at Marshalls.
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Shipstation Advertiser
What do you think makes the perfect snack?
Bill Kristol
Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
Shipstation Advertiser
Could you be more specific?
Bill Kristol
When it's cray venient. Okay, like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the.
Tim Miller
Street at am, pm.
Bill Kristol
Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at a.m. pM.
Shipstation Advertiser
I'm seeing a pattern here.
Bill Kristol
Well, yeah, we're talking about what I.
Shipstation Advertiser
Crave, which is anything from am, pm.
Bill Kristol
What more could you want?
Lowe's Advertiser
Want stop by ampm where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience ampm. Too much good stuff.
Episode: Bill Kristol: This Is Not Democratic Government
Date: December 8, 2025
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Bill Kristol (Bulwark Editor at Large)
In this episode, Tim Miller and Bill Kristol deliver a wide-ranging, candid analysis of the week’s major political news—the reality of escalating immigration crackdowns, the Trump administration’s controversial farmer bailout, public pushback to federal actions, intrigue within the DHS, foreign policy stumbles, and evolving electoral dynamics. Their discussion blends sharp skepticism with concern for liberal democracy, examining where democratic norms are being eroded and how political actors are adapting. Expect pointed critiques, frank political talk, and a few lighthearted jabs, all in the signature tone of The Bulwark Podcast.
[01:12–15:33]
New Orleans Becomes a Federal Target:
Tim recounts how New Orleans has unexpectedly become a focal point for ICE and Border Patrol operations, with federal agents—often masked—detaining and menacing locals based largely on racial profiling rather than actionable intelligence.
Questionable Justifications for Federal Action:
Bill and Tim dissect the administration’s shifting rationales (from “violent criminals” to “job displacement”), highlighting their dubious logic and the reality that labor shortages have worsened as workers, even those legally present, fear harassment.
On-the-ground Impact:
Public & Civic Pushback:
Federal Militarization & Lack of Accountability:
Dysfunction at DHS & Leadership Scuttlebutt:
Reports swirl that Secretary Noem may be on the way out, exposing the inner turmoil and lack of coherent strategy.
[17:24–24:29]
Announcement of $12 Billion Farmer Bailout:
Trump administration to provide one-time, direct cash payments to select farmers hit by the impact of tariffs—juxtaposed with slashed social programs and lack of help for lower-income Americans.
Double Standard and Political Quid Pro Quo:
Recipients of farm subsidies are often expected to praise Trump at White House events, while those in need of health care or food assistance go unsupported.
Mockery of Administration’s Ethical Posturing:
The Treasury Secretary's dubious claim to be an “agricultural expert” is lampooned, with Tim fact-checking the assertion and finding it laughable.
[24:29–28:32]
Enhanced Obamacare Subsidies & Political Opportunity:
Democrats push to extend enhanced health care subsidies, using Republican opposition—and the overt farmer bailout—as talking points against Trump’s first year.
Tariffs, Rising Health Costs & Missed Priorities:
The administration’s lack of a comprehensive health care plan, despite ample time and power, is contrasted with its aggressive action on tariffs and tax cuts for the wealthy.
[29:55–39:25]
Controversial Caribbean Strike:
Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner, after viewing video, is disturbed by both the administration’s conduct and lack of Congressional transparency.
Secrecy and Democratic Norms:
Congress and even top intelligence officials denied full access to information, with shifting administration stories about strike legality and targets.
National Security Strategy: China Neglect & “Culture War” Priority:
The Trump administration national security strategy is criticized for barely mentioning China—despite years of rhetoric—and instead fixating on “culture war” issues and hostility toward European liberalism.
[40:39–47:57]
Colin Allred’s Departure and Jasmine Crockett’s Entry:
Texas Senate primary turns toward younger, more progressive, social media-savvy candidates—Tim argues this may not be electorally smart for Democrats in red states.
Lessons from Candidate Selection:
Both hosts stress the risk of elevating partisan firebrands in tough states, pointing to recent evidence that moderate candidates often perform better.
A Cautionary Comparison:
Democratic over-correction in response to Trump-era tactics may result in repeating the GOP’s own mistakes with unelectable, extreme Senate candidates.
[49:24–57:06]
Marjorie Taylor Greene's Rhetorical Pivot:
MTG attacks Trump from an “America First” stance, distancing herself from MAGA and critiquing Trump for helping donors and establishment interests.
America First vs. MAGA—A Fracturing Coalition:
Bill wonders about the future salience of “MAGA” as a slogan, given its increasingly mixed reputation even among Trump’s own base.
Ted Cruz’s Surprising Relevance:
Tim jokes about his brief, reluctant stint as a Cruz supporter in 2016 and notes Cruz’s recent aggressive critiques of obvious MAGA excesses, such as Tucker Carlson palling around in Qatar.
Family Influence on Political Moderation:
Both speculate that seeing their daughters (liberal-leaning young women) and the broader generational backlash might nudge some GOP figures like Cruz and MTG toward more independent stances.
On Racial Profiling in Immigration Enforcement:
"They're masked guys. They're going out and menacing people, just solely based on racial profiling." —Tim Miller [06:15]
On Democratic Erosion:
"This is not democratic government. I mean, this is the President of the United States just doing things as he wishes and then not briefing...the United States Congress." —Bill Kristol [32:56]
On Political Coalition Fatigue:
"America First...has a certain resonance probably out there...MAGA has now accumulated so much stuff that I wonder...how that slogan is really faring politically." —Bill Kristol [53:08]
On Farmer Bailouts vs. Social Safety Net:
"These fucking welfare queens. Have some dignity. The farmers showing up to the White House to take yet another welfare check from the President." —Tim Miller [17:24]
The episode is sharply critical, often sardonic, but rooted in fact-based argument. Both hosts blend mockery of administration excesses with a serious lament for eroding democratic standards and norms, all while calling for smarter political opposition—be it grassroots activism, more effective candidate selection, or strategic political messaging. It closes with levity: Tim and Bill reflecting on the strange predicament of potentially rooting for Ted Cruz against Trumpism’s next wave.