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- [00:13]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Buller podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, August 4th, so we're here, of course, with editor at large Bill Kristol. How you doing?
- [00:22]
Bill Kristol
Fine, Tim, how are you?
- [00:24]
Tim Miller
I'm doing well. I'm here in LA and a little programming reminder for everybody. We got that Bulwark Takes feed that you should check out if things are happening. I was out here in LA on Friday and I was over at the Pod Save America studio and we did a pretty funny YouTube video about Candace Owens. People should check out when all the breaking news was happening around the firing of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics. So if that happens, where we get off scheduled on this podcast, you can, you can check out that feed, but I've so much more to talk about. So obviously nobody's missed it at this point, but Trump ordered the firing of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, essentially the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hours after a government after her report, or the government report rather, showed significant slowing in the economy the past three months. He bleeded that the jobs numbers were all caps rigged in order to make the Republicans and all caps me look bad. And he attacked McIntyre for personally and she was dismissed from the role. There are just so many layers to the story and it's pretty alarming from an authoritarian creep standpoint, from a. You can't believe your lying eyes when it comes to numbers and the element of how having to lie about bad news is now your obligation if you want to remain a Republican in good standing or a government worker. And then there's the actual economic numbers themselves. So I kind of want to talk about the first part first. Your newsletter started with Democracy Dies in Daylight this morning. Where's your alarm scale? I guess following that firing, it's pretty.
- [01:59]
Bill Kristol
High, as you know, it's been pretty high for quite a while, so. But it's going off even another ticket, it really is, because in the old days, of course, presidents would have and their staffs would have spun the numbers and they would have said, you know, it's complicated in the modern economy, the Internet, these adjustments are a little bigger than usual. So you can't be quite sure. Right. I mean, that would be a normal, so to speak, political reaction.
- [02:22]
Tim Miller
Sure. Though I will say I saw an Ernie Tedeschi tweet a shout out to him about how that seems like that could be true, logically. But it's actually not. It's actually not. The numbers have been more like very recently, the revisions have been pretty significant, but like the trend line has been towards these numbers getting more and more accurate.
- [02:39]
Bill Kristol
But anyway, yeah, to be clear, I wasn't saying that that would be accurate to say that it would be plausible enough to be adequate spin for the White House press secretary, surely for Republican members of Congress and so forth. But that's not okay anymore. Spin is not okay. Now we just have to have, I guess, literally pure, I mean, what. Just pure propaganda. You can't report facts if they run a counter to the narrative that America first is fantastic, great, that everything Trump does has instantaneously great results, and that they'll never be disappointing or down bump in the economy again as long as Trump is president. I mean, it's really, in a way that he. There's a bit of a Streisand effect, don't you think? He brought an awful lot more attention to these numbers, which were a little jarring. They were slowing, but they aren't recessionary. Exactly. Just to be clear, I mean this, as I understand it, this woman is a career civil servant, an economist, very well respected, has been in the government over 20 years. Took this job in 2023, I believe, as a promotion from a previous job in the government. Was confirmed. This one is Senate confirmed, was confirmed by something like 86 to 9 or.
- [03:42]
Tim Miller
Something like that, including J.D. vance.
- [03:45]
Bill Kristol
And the way that works, incidentally, it is complicated getting these numbers to survey and they have to figure out how to weight things. So many, many, many career economists and career civil servants of other kinds, statisticians, work on this. The idea that you could snap your fingers and rig it is literally, it's as ludicrous as saying you could rig the 2020 election, which you know, which is conducted by 50 state governments, or.
- [04:06]
Tim Miller
The 2024 state election, if you're one of the three blue and on out there. But anyway, continue to drill.
- [04:12]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, good point. And then the firing again, not kind of waiting. Maybe you'd wait a few months. Maybe if you really wanted to kind of change, you really did think. Conceivably, I don't know why you would. There's 50 statisticians and economists over at labor at the Bureau of Labor Statistics are biased against you. You'd have a review, you'd get a little panel together of economists and business types and labor would lead. You know, you'd do it and maybe six months from now. But of course, none of that is of any interest to them. They want the firing, they want the demonstration effect, they want the intimidation. They want the sense that the whole government works for Donald J. Trump. Right that me that you were laughing about the capitalized me in his truth social post is very revealing though.
- [04:53]
Tim Miller
Yeah, he sees himself as a capitalized me like the capitalized G in God maybe. The intimidation point is, I think, right. To me, the two most alarming elements of this is just the street fundamental fact that this woman, a public servant, lost her job because she reported the facts. That gets you into a really bad place around the government where you, like, if you're a public employee, you're just trying to make sure that people have the correct information about whatever it is, whether it's hurricane reports or intelligence reports or you know, military like, you go down the list. If you put out information that is true but inconvenient for Donald Trump, then you could lose your job. Obviously that has a ripple effect throughout the government. And we saw this with the DNI already. This is not the first time where Tulsi Gabbard fired people for not, you know, advancing the lie that Venezuela, you know, Trenda Aragua was invading the country under the orders of Maduro or whatever the absurd proposition they put out there was. So now we've seen this a couple of times and who knows what kind of consequences there are of that. There's a lot of unpredictable consequences. And then specifically though, in the economic area, you know, the economy is based in a lot of ways on trust, right? And the belief that institutions are going to pay their bills, you know, that the numbers that they report are going to be accurate. Right. That there is not going to be some corrupt scheme that hyperinflates or deflates the dollar. Right? Like this is the reason why the US the world reserve currency, while the US is still a trusted harbor for investment for people around the world, right? Like it is because our institutions like are strong and legitimate. If you delegitimize your economic institutions, like that puts you on a path to having an economy that looks more like Argentina than the U.S. right. So I think that there, like this is just one data point. But you know, in his firing note he also had his final line about essentially about how Jerome Powell might be next. Watch your back. Jerome Powell and I think the systemic economic risk is not 100% or whatever. We're not definitely speed running our way towards Argentina hyperinflation, but it's a non zero risk that the US no longer feels a safe and reliable place for investment. If you think that the government is going to start putting up fake numbers to please the despot, right?
- [07:34]
Bill Kristol
I mean, you would like the government numbers to be as accurate as they can be. So if you are making an investment and you see a recession coming, maybe you pull back a bit or the opposite. I mean, the almost, I don't know, more metaphysical point or whatever is the kind of Havel Hannah Arendt type point. It's a little too deep for me, but it's true. I think they really want, authoritarians, want to discredit the notion of truth, of objective truth of facts. And it just becomes, he says this, you say that it means that if things really do go downhill, Trump just keeps saying that don't believe what you're seeing. They're not going downhill or not even quite hang on to a tough patch like a Reagan message or something like that, or there are just cycles in the economy, let's say, which might be a more traditional Bush, Obama type message. It's, you know, don't believe what you're seeing. And also I do think that this particular data, who knows how important it is? I don't. But there are many, many other data that the federal government puts out. Right. That people are depend on for all kinds of things. You know, And I do think in that respect, it just, it's third world. It's literally third world.
- [08:34]
Tim Miller
And Mark Cuban has been good on this. Over the weekend. He posted, just for example, of other data. The BLS also is responsible for cpi, which is used to set the annual increases for Social Security. Right. So it's not even like. So that's like a very tangible effect on people's lives. Right. Like if Trump. It's not crazy at this point to say hypothetically, they don't want it to seem like there's inflation, you know, and so they put out fake numbers. And so inflation is happening, but seniors don't get the increase in their Social Security that they would have otherwise. Am I predicting that's going to happen? No. But if you're in a position where you're firing the people that give out bad news, then, like, there are going to be, you know, real consequences to that. And, you know, Cuban was also going back and forth with some of the, you know, Trump fluffers on social media about all this. Like, Trump takes advantage of these things that are, like, complicated and people don't understand. Right. To pursue conspiracies. And you saw this with the 2020 election. But it's like, I can understand how people are, like, it is kind of weird that the numbers, you know, it said 200,000 jobs last month and then they're like, oh, no, we're off by 100,000. Like that seems like a big mistake. But it's just like that's the nature of how these things work. Like you take surveys at the end of the month, you report on what the surveys from the businesses said. More surveys come in the next month, you update them. And in a lot of ways this update, getting to the actual economy side of this brought the government's reports in line with what people were seeing. Anecdotally you were seeing a lot of conversation in econ nerd world over the last couple of weeks which is like why is the economy so strong? We're seeing all these underlying things to be worried about, whether it be the tariffs, concerns about the debt and deficit and interest, interest rate increases. You're seeing these anecdotal reports and the regional feds about businesses saying that they're not investing about hiring right now. And why is the top line number so continuing to feel like the economy is strong and growing when there are all these other negative signs? And this adjustment really just brought in line with I think what everybody has felt like was happening, which is that we have a slowing economy. I don't know what you think of all that.
- [10:52]
Bill Kristol
It seems that way. But again, I come back to your point about cpi. The discrediting of the numbers has all kinds of effects and the firing has its intimidation effect. The discrediting of the numbers has real effects on the, on politics conceivably. I mean do we trust that before election day in 2026 when there's the third quarter GDP which I think is usually late October or many, many other obviously monthly and all kinds of employment inflation numbers, do we trust in 2028 that we're going to get honest numbers? I mean I really, you know, how could you? Yeah, so that's really bad. I mean then you really are, you know, it's. This is one. In other words, this is the. He's doing this six months in. He could easily have written this out. I think he wants to establish the predicate for both the firing of people and the intimidation side of it and the discrediting of facts and you know, government facts that heretofore from put out by the US government and are treated in a very bipartisan way when they come out or I mean, or a few just not partisan when they come out. He wants to discredit that. So then it just becomes, you know, we say this and they say this.
- [11:54]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Do you have any other big economic thoughts? I mean, you know, you are seeing like there's a big article about how, how much Vegas is struggling. Like, you're starting to see this in these early indicators of, you know, where do people start to pull back, you know, things like vacations and such. I'm taking the kids to Universal today here in L. A, so I'll be able to report back on how crowded that, that feels. But, you know, you're starting to see some evidence of people having real worries about the economy. And if you looked at the actual report, I mean, the jobs right now are essentially in health care, elder care, and investment into AI and data centers. As our buddy Derek Thompson wrote about the economy, he goes, economic growth right now is basically a Friday church service, just old people plus trying to summon God. And like, it's not. It was like the underlying numbers were pretty, pretty stark. I don't know. I mean, and like, to me that is the biggest risk for Trump. And while the lying is dangerous, you know, you can only lie so much about the economy or maybe you can't, I don't know.
- [13:03]
Bill Kristol
Would you say it does affect real things like Social Security and other things, it gives them an excuse for conceivably to fire Powell, you know, in other circumstances, and so it could affect real policy. But no, no, I agree. The real reality does hit. It hit at some point, that's for sure. So you can't just lie your way through that. The economy is so complicated, though, and the people make decisions based on anticipating things are going to happen, but that can be good for short term economic growth. People import more, they go out, they think things are going to slow down later, so they buy, prices are going to go up later from tariffs, so they buy stuff now. So I kind of think Trump has probably been benefiting a little bit from people front running, so to speak, expectations and spending a little more than they might have and they're getting ready to pull back. I think the tariffs have had a delayed effect, but they're not going away and they're not and the chaos isn't stopping either. So it feels to me like it could well slow down. But I mean, it's a very big economy. On the other hand, a lot of innovation, so who knows?
- [13:59]
Tim Miller
It is. Yeah. I will say one thing. I feel like a flyover country bumpkin coming out to LA now. I've just lived in New Orleans a couple of years and I mean, my hamburgers are very expensive. I don't know, I don't know how people live out here. Producer KATIE I don't know what you're doing out here if you don't if you're not a millionaire. And I do think that like there was this big discussion about Biden over is it the fact that he was messaging it poorly or is inflation really harmful? And like Sarah and JBL would fight about this all the time on the Secret podcast and there's a little bit from column A and column B, but I don't know the reality of people's lives in certain parts of the country, at least I think are you can only do so much spin, I guess, if you can't afford your life.
- [14:39]
Bill Kristol
I mean, I've had the sense that inflation is higher than I would have thought, given that it's supposed to be down at 2.5 or something and not like late 2020 and all of 2022 when it really was at 79%. Of course you could see it in real time, but it feels like things are continuing to go up quite a lot, I guess. We had that piece about a week ago on Morning Shots, a guest piece by Chris Trax actually from California. So maybe that's why he was so struck by this. On meat prices, which have gone up quite a lot, hamburger and beef in the last maybe that's why your hamburger was struck by how expensive it was. Certainly one reason they've gone up a lot is we have pretty high tariffs on countries from which we import a lot of beef. Mexico, but I think especially Brazil turns out to be. And so that is a thing that's partly at least caused by Trump's actual policies. It's not simply an outside variable. It's hitting the economy or macro variable. Democrats might make that point a little more. Inflation did hurt Biden a lot. I'm all for making a big point about Medicare. God knows I'm for making a big point about Epstein. But they shouldn't forget about inflation.
- [15:42]
Tim Miller
Well, particularly, I mean, there are going to be a lot of those Swing House seats are actually in blue states. So it cuts against in places like this because the Democrats did, and this is probably why. But the Democrats did unusually poorly in Southern California, New York, places like that. And a lot of those seats are going to be back up again. What does feeling safe at home really mean to you? For a long time I thought it was enough to have good locks and maybe an alarm that would make a lot of noise if somebody broke in. But I've come to realize true security takes more a system that works to prevent that break in, that violation of your space from ever happening in the first place. That's why I trust Simplisafe to protect my home and family. It's about security that's proactive, not just reactive. I'm not naturally a security oriented person. I always made fun of my grandpa because when we were at the old folks home, little pool on property and so we'd walk from his old condo to the pool and he would like do three locks on the door and I'm going, I think we're okay. You know, we're just going to be, just going to be down the block. But as you get older, get wiser, you start to recognize that there are other obligations that you have in life and it's important. Better safe than sorry as they say. Not just a saying. Most security systems only take action after somebody breaks in that's too late. Simplisafe's new active guard outdoor protection helps stop break ins before they happen. If someone's lurking, agents talk to them in real time, turn on spotlights and can call the police proactively deterring crime before it starts. Monitoring plans start at just $1 a day and you get a 60 day money back guarantee. Visit simplisafe.com thebullwork to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simplisafe.com thebullwork there's no safe like Simplisafe. Speaking about more political stuff, I think the big news of the day is what's happening in Texas with redistricting. Talked about this a lot with Mark Elias on Thursday. Sam Stein is interviewing James Talarico who is in the Texas legislature. Democrat. He's got one on Rogan recently and so that will be on the aforementioned block takes feed but the Texas Dems have now disembarked to Illinois to not give Abbott and the Texas Republicans a quorum for their redistricting vote. For their gerrymandering vote, Abbott is threatening to like strip the to banish any Democrat who doesn't show up to vote from public office. I don't exactly know what the rules are on that, but that's the threat that Abbott's putting out there. What's your sense of what's happening on the ground with the story?
- [18:22]
Bill Kristol
I mean the Abbott statement, which I think is very late last night, but I saw it this morning, is worth looking at it really. I mean it's got sort of fake legal citations in it and so forth but it basically says if you don't show up they can kind of declare the seat in effect vacant. You've vacated your seat and Then you're not a member of the Texas legislature anymore and then you have the 2/3 quorum, which is what you need to do business. The number, what is it? The dominator goes, my math's not so good anymore. The denominator goes down so that the Republicans in effect create a quorum. And he says at 3pm this afternoon if the Democrats aren't back, he's gonna, he's going to do this. I was talking to some lawyers earlier who said well you really should go to court and establish that you have the right to do it. But he's going to do it and let them challenge him in court. So I think we could be at a pretty big crisis this afternoon. Crisis. But just a moment this afternoon where in effect Abbott has vacated 50 Democratic seats at least for now and had a vote and redistricted Texas to try to create five additional Republican congressional seats. And then he'll dare go ahead and sue. Good luck in the Texas courts incidentally and maybe even the federal courts down there. And you know, it'll take a while anyway. Right. So I mean and it was coordinated with the Justice Department. Remember they laid the predicate for this a while ago by saying they have problems with the way the Texas seats were constructed was they created some majority minority districts. That's contrary. That's D.E.I. like I suppose, I'm sure Justice way in defending Abbott and they think they can pick up five seats. Maybe they're overestimating. But that would be big, right. If there's another close, obviously evenly divided vote for the House. Big. Anyway, it's a lot of seats given how few are in play basically. So yeah, you know, the free and fair elections. I'm a little worried about that. People have been saying this. It's happening, it's happening. They are trying to move a non trivial number of seats with a mid year redistricting which is almost never been done was actually in Texas. However political gerrymandering is at least it's sort of attached to the every 10 year census and redistricting. So it's sort of like, you know, when it's coming, you know, et cetera. It has a certain legality. Well it is legal as a certain, you might say regularity. And now if every state could just redistrict, whatever, it's a good moment for them. And Florida's talking with the gaining up population. They should have a mid decade redistricting also. They should get some more seats. They're saying. So some Republican member of Congress saying they want to Introduce a bill to actually, you know, adjust the seats of the states because of this population growth. I mean, this is literally the kind of stuff that Orban did. They'll also change the roof. Not so much change. Everyone still goes and votes. You and I will go cast our vote. Right. But you change the rules enough and you change the apportionment and districting enough, and then you collude with red states to make it a lot easier for them to do it. Then blue states, which incidentally, some of which have independent commissions. It's happening. It's happening, I guess, is what I'm saying, in a bad way.
- [21:10]
Tim Miller
A couple of thoughts. Here is the actual statement for Abbott, just so, so people get it. The derelict Democrat House members must return to Texas and be in attendance when the house reconvenes at 3P on Monday, August 4th. For any member who fails to do so, I will invoke Texas Attorney general opinion number KP0382 to remove the missing Democrats from membership in the Texas House.
- [21:34]
Bill Kristol
I mean, that is kind of amazing, right? Elected officials, I mean, right?
- [21:38]
Tim Miller
It is. I mean, it's extremely amazing and alarming.
- [21:41]
Bill Kristol
Trump thinks he can fire everyone in the federal government, basically, even if they're traditionally protected or even if their tradition is that they shouldn't be fired or even if there are laws in some cases, they shouldn't be Texas. Abbott now thinks he fire elected Democratic members of his own legislative body.
- [21:57]
Tim Miller
Yeah, he feels like he can take away the choice of his own citizens. Right. I mean, it's Texas citizens that voted to elect these people to represent them. And Abbott feels like he can, as I guess a soft dictator of Texas, determine, you know, whether or not those votes were valid. Just as a quick aside, I do wish they wouldn't have gone to Illinois, which is like the worst gerrymandered state on the Democratic side. They did it, as you mentioned, in the normal, regular gerrymandering sense. But even still, I do hate the talk point. I've seen a lot of social media posts about how the Democrats have fled to a state that then they show the pictures of the district where, you know, they're not the prettiest districts. Let's just say they're not exactly contiguous. But that said, Talarico, in the conversation with Sam says that, you know, he thinks that California and Illinois and all these states should move immediately to deal with this, which, you know, is also what Elias said last Thursday. I think that's true. And you end up in this kind of race to the bottom situation. Which kind of adds in larger questions about how we kind of unravel all this if we ever get past Donald Trump. But I feel like that's kind of a question for 2029. And the more urgent question is on what to do now to try to offset some of this. I mean, Elias, I felt like in our conversation was more bullish than I am about the number of potential seats that Democrats could find. I think there are more potential seats for Repub to squeeze out of this than Democrats, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
- [23:30]
Bill Kristol
I agree with that last point. I've looked on it quickly, but I think California is already like 43 to 9 or something like that. And Illinois is pretty lopsided. New York has a pretty strict rule about the Independent Commission. It's going to be a little hard to get around that, I think. So. I haven't looked in any detail and I'm sure lawyers can find their way and governors maybe can find their way. I think Newsom is going to have a tough time getting it to be much more lopsided than it is, though. I'm pessimistic about the real world. You know, arms race working out okay for Democrats. I'm not entirely sure they'll go ahead with the arms race. Incidentally, they do believe in these independent commissions in some respects, and they've put them in place in some of these states. If this were happening in a foreign country, as the cliche these days, you'd say this country's in some danger of splitting apart. I mean, this is like the 1850s in America, right? Each side kind of escalates and kind of blocking the other side from having any power at all in their own states. And it is being caused by Trump and by the Republicans. Obviously the Democrats will or won't respond, but no question who's going first here. And it's very bad. I mean, it's really dangerous.
- [24:37]
Tim Miller
I feel like we need an 1850s historian on where, I don't know, just regular old tobacco farmers just going along with their lives, though in the 1850s while this was happening, maybe. So to me, that is the cognitive dissonance that you try to deal with in all this, where you're at, structurally speaking, think the fabric of the democracy is tearing. It's not just fraying, it's like being torn apart. Like meanwhile, it doesn't feel day to day when you're at the Ralphs here, that we're on the brink of Civil War.
- [25:08]
Bill Kristol
I don't know. That would be a good thing to discuss with someone who studied the 50s. Ron Brownstein is obsessed with the 50s analogy, but he's not himself a historian, though he's read a lot of stuff about it. But I do think I remember this when I read it. Used to know a little more about this. You know, one of the puzzles in a way was that most people in the south are not slave owners, right? I mean, many, most people were not wealthy, obviously. They were whatever they were small farmers and small merchants and so forth. But they were, they went along. So, you know what I mean? There was never a real resistance to the Slavocracy. So yeah, there is a way in which these things have a momentum of their own, I suppose. Sort of similar in terms of media though, and the kind of one sided account of everything that's so dominated in these different states. I think that's also true.
- [25:53]
Tim Miller
Well, a little Civil War chat for your Monday morning here at the Bulwark.
- [25:58]
Bill Kristol
Everyone.
- [25:59]
Tim Miller
People, people come and see me and they're like, you're helping me get me through this crazy time. Like, it's nice, it's calming. And I'm like, really? Are you listening to the content of the podcast? I'm happy that. I'm happy that that works for people in some way. Delete Me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. At a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable, data brokers make a profit off your data. Your data is commodity. Anyone on the web can buy your private details. This can lead to identity theft, phishing attempts, and harassment. But now you can protect your privacy with Delete Me. Yes, it's about privacy. Yes, it's about making sure that data brokers aren't proffering off your data. It's also just about trying to avoid hassle. You know the amount of hassle that you're getting online right now with these sort of phishing attempts. I've mentioned that. The spam bomb that I had to deal with on my email, the texts. You can minimize this stuff if you're taking your information offline. And Deleteme is a service that helps you do it. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com Bulwark and use promo code Bulwark at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com bulwark code bulwark. The other news in Texas is J. Maxwell, one of the most depraved and sick child sex traffickers that we've encountered in the country, recently has been moved from Florida to a more minimum security prison in Texas. I had a, a listener emailed and I did not. I don't know how to fully vet this but, but based on their understanding, it's the only example of someone with this type of crime who is now in this type of more minimum security prison in the country. Obviously that was part of a deal that was made with Trump's personal attorney turned Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch before they met in Florida. I mean it doesn't look good and I think that we are kind of reaching a polarization point here where I haven't seen quite as much outrage from the sort of Epstein right as I might have thought on something like this. And if you're the type of person who really genuinely cares about predation of children, then giving Ghislaine Maxwell some positive treatment and letting her have a more easy time in prison, you would think would, would violate those, those principled views. But I don't know. We'll see. What'd you make of the news with Ghislaine?
- [28:42]
Bill Kristol
No, I agree with what you said and I mean this really is a kind of club Fed type prison based on my brief reading about it and their own promotional materials about how they have yoga classes and all this kind of stuff. I mean it looks a little bit.
- [28:53]
Tim Miller
Like a goat yoga for Glenn. I saw that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is doing some goat yoga at some MAHA HHS event. Now if that was a Democratic administration, you would think that would be mocked pretty relentlessly as some, you know, globalist elite socialist thing. But I guess goat yoga is in now on, on the right. So Glenn and rfk it is amazing.
- [29:16]
Bill Kristol
I sort of agree about the right. The right seems to this gradually succumbing to Trump and, and losing whatever authentic. If it was authentic, you know, outrage about what Epstein and Maxwell did as opposed to outrage about, you know, that's more of a Clinton conspiracy kind of, you know.
- [29:33]
Tim Miller
Sure.
- [29:34]
Bill Kristol
QAnon type thing. I hope there's of Americans are still outraged though. I would think Ari Melbourne made this point. I was on with him Friday night and he actually I thought had hit the core point which is this is different from Blanche going and having a conversation with Maxwell. It's different from even not releasing the files, going to try to get the grand jury testimony. All that stuff is processed and sort of hard to tell. I mean, we think it's not legit, so to speak. We think we know what the motives might be. We don't know what Blanchard Maxwell said, this is an actual deed. This is an actual thing that they did. It didn't happen normally. There's zero justification. And I looked at the Bureau of Prison's actual handbook for putting someone convicted of the crime she was convicted of in this Club Fed, very light security prison can only be done at the direction of the Director of the Bureau of Prisons and presumably of the Attorney General. And presumably Trump knew something about it. I mean, this is really straight up. It's not quite a pardon of her, but it's a step towards a pardon. Right. They have done something to make her life much better. Are they promising war? Is it an inducement? Is it a reward? Is it what? I guess we'll find out. But, yeah, I think people really should be just horrified by this. And I think a lot of people are interested to see in the town halls and stuff how much it comes up. But I think MAGA is sort of. I don't know how much is Trump able to get them back on board? I can't quite tell.
- [30:57]
Tim Miller
I think he's able to get the core folks back on board for sure. But I definitely think that there is. My guess is if I looked in my crystal ball, my past is not 100% on the crystal ball. So it's not a magic crystal ball.
- [31:11]
Bill Kristol
Shocking.
- [31:13]
Tim Miller
Every once in a while I get some false positives. It's kind of like a chatgpt situation where they get. Every once in a while it just makes up an answer. But I think that if you look a couple years from now and looking back on this, you'll see this is the time that Trump kind of lost that alternative media manosphere type person more than the actual mega person. And they say that this was a moment where it was like a trust was broken, like he broke trust with us. And you and I and our listeners can all say it was ridiculous. You had any trust with this con man ever, but a lot of them did, and they felt like he was going to challenge the status quo and challenge all the things that they had complaints about. And it's just preposterous the way he's acting on this. And that will be an easy kind of in the way that the Hillary deplorable thing was like an easy shorthand. Sometimes things just break through and become a shorthand for certain parts of the audience. And I think that this group, well, this wound up being the shorthand of them seeing Trump as a typical politician or is a liar or is sleazy or is not trustworthy. And I think that's not insignificant. And just back to your point, really quick on goanne for me. You know, we, we have two facts now about this that are like very simple to explain. That the Trump administration is covering up the mentions of the president in the Epstein files. We know that, like they have an Epstein file. They have a file that includes all the flags of Trump's names. And they're covering up. They don't want to show it. So we know that there's a cover up about Trump's involvement. We don't know the extent of it or what is actually in there or why they're covering up, but we know they're covering it up. Trump's relationship with Epstein and the extent of it. And we know also that they're, you know, now giving friendlier, lighter treatment to Glenn Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's second in command, whatever ringleader, the person that was recruiting and grooming all of the girls that he was assaulting and raping. So those are just two simple facts that this is what the government's doing. They're covering up Trump's involvement and they're giving Maxwell, well, lighter treatment than she otherwise would have gotten. And so people can take that with those what they will. Do you have anything else on this? I want to talk about Judge Box of Wine as well. We have some news about our new new U.S. attorney.
- [33:31]
Bill Kristol
Just that I think Democrats really need to keep the pressure up. They should read excerpts from these, the documents that are public, which include trial, obviously transcripts and indictments and stuff. And, but other things that people have said, you know, other, other victims have said on the floor of the House and the Senate when they get back. I mean, this, I feel this personally. When you really hear what happened and hear how close Trump was to what happened, it changes one's view from, oh, he's covering up some embarrassing stuff. You know, what would we do anyway if we saw it to really a more sinister thing, honestly. So I hope they stay on this.
- [34:07]
Tim Miller
I do too. On to Pirro. So on Saturday, we're laughing, but you laugh to not cry. Only in this situation. The Senate approved the nomination of Jeanine Pirro to be the top prosecutor in Wall Washington, D.C. u.S. Attorney, a very prominent and significant post. She was confirmed in a 50 to 45 vote, which I think there were no actual no votes from Republicans. The only reason that she only had 50 was that several people didn't show up to the vote. So I think that she received every single Republican's confirmation for this post. I think it bears mentioning when you consider the fact that Jeanine Pirro will be the lead prosecutor in the, in the District of Columbia for our government, that during the discovery of the Fox Dominion lawsuit, the person that oversaw her shoe. It's not a random person. Executive David Clark said that he took her off the air after the 2020 election because, quote, I don't trust her to be responsible. Her guests are all going to say the election is being stolen and if she pushes back at all, it will just be a token internal Fox communications show. Her executive producer describing her as a reckless maniac who is nuts, promotes conspiracy theories and should never be on live television. So her own staff thinks she's a reckless maniac who should not be trusted to be on live television. And every Republican member of the United States Senate thought she should be the lead Prosecutor in Washington D.C. it's pretty, pretty dark stuff.
- [35:42]
Bill Kristol
It is. So he's lost no confirmation of votes, if I'm not mistaken. Is that right? He withdrew Gates and he withdrew Marshall for this post.
- [35:51]
Tim Miller
Actually, this was Ken Martin's. Yeah.
- [35:52]
Bill Kristol
Wharton was for this coast, so he was somehow a bridge too far. But Piro's fine. And I mean, that, that sort of does say it. All right. I mean, you nominate Pteg, Seth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And Tulsi Gabbard and Janine Pirro and that guy Bovet for the Third Circuit, and they're all much a little bit of hoopla and a little hand wringing at the end of the day. 50, 51, 52 votes.
- [36:15]
Tim Miller
I mean, going back to the Social Security thing, though, this is a real job. Yeah. I don't know. This is not like being appointed to the Deputy Secretary of Commerce or whatever. Like, this is a. This is a real job. And I guess it relates also to the Maxwell conversation that, you know, is on behalf of ostensibly a law and order party, like there are very serious prosecutions of dangerous people that need to happen in the District of Columbia District. And you need a U.S. attorney there, there that is like, capable of doing the job. And like the idea that they fired Maureen Comey, that actual qualified prosecutors are fleeing this office and Jeanine Pirro is going to be in charge of prosecuting These crimes is preposterous. And, and it's not. I don't think it rushed too far to say it's dangerous. And it is certainly essentially will get me to my next topic, like making the government totally complicit in all corruption, all public corruption. Because I don't think anyone can possibly take seriously that Jeanine Pirro is going to be a bulldog as the US Attorney on public corruption, given who's in power right now in Washington.
- [37:30]
Bill Kristol
I mean, I think the Justice Department. I was thinking about this this morning. Which department has been damaged the worst by Trump and maybe hopefully not irreparably, but the most lasting damage and also moved the furthest. What important department has been moved the furthest from anything? Resemb. Responsibility, competence, something one could trust. And I think justice is probably, I mean DHS was never great. It's obviously terrible in my view, DOD maybe even tougher. The uniform military is a little excess ridiculous, but the uniform military has more of a ballast, so to speak, against this treasury, who knows. But it seems a little less crazy. Justice is really and I was talking with someone who's worked there, a career person who's leaving people who tried to say at the beginning that's true. The person I was talking to thought they could do some good, thought they could probably not have to do most political stuff. They just believed in being public servants at the attorneys at the U.S. department of justice turned down jobs in the past at three times the salary and stuff, leaving. They can't deal with it. So you're going to have a hollowed out Justice Department. They're replacing them, incidentally. They're putting in all their loyalists. I mean justice is going to have, you know, to be 60% Pam Bondes, if I can put it that way. It's not like there's going to be a career staff down there that can stop stuff from happening. I think in other departments it's a little more complex. We'll see. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Well, for now, the number two is taking over. Awful lot of people work there. You'd have to spend a fair amount of time going through them, so to speak, or intimidating them to kind of.
- [38:54]
Tim Miller
Get to Steve Bannon said we got to get our people there into the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And I was like, do you have people that do statistics Justice?
- [39:02]
Bill Kristol
They do have a fair number of lawyers. I mean there are a lot of lawyers in the country. They're not great. Anyway. I do think justice is and if you care about the rule of law, obviously, if you care generally, though, about the key agencies of government. You were making fun of Deputy Secretary of Commerce before. If you care about, about justice, defense, intelligence community, DHS is important. What's happened to justice is really unbelievable. Joe Perdico and I did this Sunday show with him yesterday and he said he thought he wondered if Matt Gates was now regretting having pulled out in November, December, he would have gotten confirmed too, right?
- [39:32]
Tim Miller
He has to be regretting. I don't. I said this to him. I saw Matt in the lobby of a hotel in Phoenix over Christmas. You know, Matt and I are like the same age and I worked with his sisters. I know Matt a little bit. I went up to him, I was like, why did you pull out, so to speak? I was like, number one, you made me look like a bad pundit because I was on TV saying, you're going to get confirmed. And number two, I think I was right, actually. I think that you would have been confirmed. It's also hard to see how Gates would have been any worse than this because your assessment is correct. And I think that the DOJ is getting completely hollowed out. And I think that again, going back to this question of, you know, even in a best case scenario, what do we do in 2029 to, you know, kind of reassert some type of rule of law and have norms, that's going to be the hardest place to do it. Right. Because of the a. The new lawyers that are in there. Cash Patel stanceway is a ten year term.
- [40:27]
Katie Cooper
Right.
- [40:27]
Tim Miller
Like you have all of these elements and once you've kind of broken this idea that the DOJ is independent, you know, it'll take smarter people than me to create new rules that reassert a DOJ independence. Because to me, that is the other element of this besides the actual staff. There's no pretense that the DoJ is an independent institution anymore. And so once you see that that is how things worked, how do you convince people that we've moved back to a place where it's independent? I think it's very challenging. Challenging.
- [41:05]
Bill Kristol
And if you are worried about election interference in 2026 and 2028, which one should be. DOJ is probably the key part of the federal government through which that would run, as we saw that in free January 6th maneuverings where they refused to do what Trump wanted to do. Barr quit first of all, and then the others wouldn't go along with his attempt. But if you got people spending weeks, months, year and a half, two and a half, three years, plotting of States run the elections primarily, but if you've got people at the federal level plotting how to undermin that and undermine voting rights in the more obvious ways, but also just the whole way the election system is supposed to work, casting doubt on it, supporting legal challenges by, you know, troublemakers at every key state, that this, this election commissioner should be thrown out or disbarred. I mean, I think you. It's a very worrisome.
- [41:56]
Tim Miller
Yeah, Elias was really good on this. And it's like really the biggest concern is the post election. Like what is the. What does doj. Not that there's no concerns about pre election. Obviously redistricting is concerned. So are suppression. There's some concerns, but the most acute concern, it's like after election, DOJ interference and throwing out votes. Right. Like all this kind of stuff. Just really quick on the corruption things I mentioned there was a big New York Times story over the weekend. We'll just put in the show notes if people want to read it. But the scale of Trump's corruption I do think might be the biggest story that is getting lost amidst all of the other craziness. The crypto contributions, which we've talked about several times here. But the Times sort of lays them out talking about people that give huge amount of money and then the SEC stops looking into them. People that are giving huge amount of money directly into Trump's coin. There were some people giving money to his campaign coffers, which is bad enough. Traditional insider corruption. In these cases, it's people giving money directly to Trump and Trump's family. Family. There's one case in the New York Times stories, they talk about coinbase, which I contributed 10 million or something. And the Times article didn't even mention the fact that there was some oversight of coinbase. There were some investigations, SEC was looking into them that were dropped. So in this story that lays out all the different corruptions, they even weren't including some things. There was the pardon buying it goes on and on. I mentioned it just because I don't want it to get lost. And I do think, I think when you think about the political side of this, making Trump into a normal dirty politician is an important job for the Democrats, I think in the coming two years. And sometimes I feel like it gets lost. This goes all the way back to 2015. I was briefing the Hillary super PAC on what we learned from the primary, or I guess it was 2016. And I was like, we never really tried to turn them into a corrupt. Make it about corruption and make it about Screwing people over over to enrich himself. And I think that a lot of times, broadly people that pay close attention and Democrats are like, everybody knows that Trump's a huckster. Right. And a shyster. And it's kind of like not really. I don't think actually, I mean I think that some people know it and like it that support them. They're like, it's fine, we want our, you know, it's a corrupt system, we want our own corrupt guy. But I don't know, I think that there's another group of people that are, that are reachable by turning them into somebody that's more looking out for his own interest. I don't know. Is that wrong, do you think?
- [44:31]
Bill Kristol
No, I think that's right. I think, yeah. I thought Trump University might, you know, really ripping off working class people with fake promises that this would help their lives and their incomes and it was shameless way. I thought that might have an effect in 2015. 16 I think you did too, I think. But it didn't. This is a little different though, because he's president. Right. So the corruption is not. It's one thing for a businessman to be a bit of a huckster, but okay, he'll get to Washington and there'll be rules and he'll be constrained. Now, now he is president. Corruption is, as you say, utterly mind boggling. I think it could be politically taken advantage of maybe. On the other hand, a huge amount of money is flowing to his personal pockets, obviously and the family, but an awful lot is flowing to his super PAC and other Republican pockets. I don't know if this goes on for three more years. The disproportion of. And also they are, they're scowling at people who might give to the Democrats and I've been told there is some intimidation going there in terms of self intimidation, you might say by some donors and by corporations. They used to give evenly very business. We've got to got to support our Democrat. You and I remember this. You got to support our Democratic Republican friends equally. Now it's a little more. Well, we'll support a few Democrats a little, but we got to support the Republicans much more. And you know, money doesn't buy elections. I mean in America, luckily it's overrated, I'd say generally, but still, if it gets to enough of a disproportionate, it could have a real effect. It's another form of election interference. Right?
- [45:50]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Murphy, Chris Murphy is really strong on this. It was something I hadn't really Been thinking about, and now I'm kind of dialing in on a little bit more. So we're getting to keep monitoring that stuff. All right. While we do Democrats, just really quick, one more thing. Cory Booker was on the floor of the Senate late last week going crazy over, like, the details of this are kind of not really even worth getting into, but, like, it's a police kind of reform bill and funding bill. And Booker is the Booker side of the argument is basically, we shouldn't be cutting deals with these guys on anything. I represent a blue state. Who the hell knows? We cut a deal with them on some police funding issue and they end up clawing it back for blue states under some pretense that we don't do DEI right or something. And why should we be going along with them at all, especially after they just. What they just did with rescissions. We should just be fighting them on everything tooth and nail, basically. I came down on the side of some of the details of Corey's point were a little bit hard to follow. And it was a little bit kind of hard to follow the intensity of his speech on the Senate floor. And like, what the. You know, what exactly he was arguing. But like the broader principle. I found myself very much on his side of this. And I think that it is pretty, you know, you see things like Gene Shaheen agreeing to, you know, advance. Was it Beauvais? I forget who she voted to confirm one of these horrible people that they're confirming in exchange for, you know, money for Haiti or whatever. And. And I'm for money for Haiti. Like, I'm for all this. But, like, these guys have proven themselves totally untrustworthy. And just from a strategic standpoint, I don't know that there's really a lot of strong arguments for doing bipartisan deals with John Thune, I guess, at this point. But maybe. I don't know. Where are you on that bill?
- [47:46]
Bill Kristol
Exactly where you are? I think the details. Yes. Booker could have raised this months ago. They got it through committee. It's a classic bipartisan bill. You introduce a poison pill amendment, it breaks apart a bill that's probably mostly okay. Yeah, sure. Klobuchar negotiated it with Republican members. I don't know if the administration was even that much involved. But having said that. Yeah. So on the trees level, I'm slightly. Booker, man. It's not the best instance of maybe picking this fight.
- [48:10]
Tim Miller
Sure.
- [48:10]
Bill Kristol
You know what I'll say in just a. You can't sit around saying, well, this is really a good one to pick the fight on this is an 8. I'm not going to do the fight. That's only a four because that's ridiculous. At some point, you just got to say, you know what? They should all fight. Some of these fights are going to be more, more worthwhile and a little more defensible in the details than others. But all this is setting up a huge question for September, which we'll talk about undoubtedly over the next several weeks, which is what does Schumer do when it really does come to a serious question of compromising with. They need 60 votes to keep the government open and pass appropriations bills. And does Schumer provide or Democrats provide votes to go along with food and keep Trump's government working away Transferring Maxwell to low security prisons know and firing heads of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I mean, you can't shut down the government for three years, obviously. So I. But somehow it can't just be business as usual. I guess I'm with Booker on that.
- [49:04]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I can't. And sometimes I find myself like, my. I don't want to be blinded by my personal hatred and distaste for the Republican senators and their fucking craven behavior over the past nine years, but I've just eaten the whole thing of like, I don't like, if you're sitting down with them to do some bipartisan deal at this point, like, shouldn't they be forced to take some pain? You know, like, that's my thing. I just like, even the notion of Senator Klobuchar, like, go, you know, like, oh, we need to cut a deal with them because this bill is so important. It's like, well, okay, well, if it's that important, then shouldn't they not get Janine Pirro, a total psychopath, as the US Attorney? Shouldn't that be part of the deal? Shouldn't the food that is rotting away in storage bins and the UAE be delivered to the poorest people in the world. Shouldn't we make sure that we're doing that right? Like, you know, I just. They're doing so much stuff that is so beyond the pale that the compartmentalization, like, there's an easy. Like, I think it's much easier if you're a US Senator. I get it. To compartmentalize all the bad stuff and be like, okay, I'm not going to pick fights with them on this. I don't want. I'm not going to make enemies. I'm not going to shout at them on the Senate floor. Like, I'm just going to argue against the bad things they do and on these few areas work with them in ways to make things better. Most of the time, I would say that's probably the right and grown up thing to do. I just don't think we're in most of the time right now, I guess is where I land on it.
- [50:35]
Bill Kristol
Well, this is a piece of legislation I'd say in Booker's defense. Said he was only a 4. He only deserves a 4 or something. I mean there's appropriations I think is the strongest case for. You got to keep the government functioning. We need to have Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security work. So you have to ultimately probably to vote for appropriations bills for the different agencies of the federal government and you don't get everything you want or most of what you want in those bills. This is a fresh piece of legislation. It wasn't obviously necessary that it exist. Right. So in that respect, Booker is right. Why are you going out of your way to pass this legislation which is basically about law enforcement, which you think you could add some provisions about like ice people wearing masks and you know, know, shipping people to, to Club Fed or whatever. I guess that was that little afterwards. But anyway, yeah, so I'm, I'm, I'm where you are in this. They, they need to, they need to toughen up. But it's hard and there's a lot of, you know, kind of inside baseball, institutional pressure. Go along, get along pressure, some pressure from within their states to get, make sure they get certain things. So I, I think September will be very. That'll be an interesting moment for the Democrats.
- [51:38]
Tim Miller
It will. We've come a long way. Cory Booker, you blocked me on Twitter in 2011.
- [51:42]
Bill Kristol
Really?
- [51:43]
Tim Miller
Oh yeah, he blocked me. I think I was to going after. He had a kind of a composite character in one of his books called T Bone. Not really a true person. He kind of had made it up and I was teasing him about that on Twitter and kid a little too close to home, it turned out. But he unblocked me recently, which I appreciate.
- [52:02]
Bill Kristol
Did you get on the podcast?
- [52:03]
Tim Miller
Oh yeah. He came on, I got him to unblock me live. I guess you missed that episode. Bill, it's okay. Not everybody can listen to every episode. It's fine. Yeah, I got him to unblock me live.
- [52:11]
Bill Kristol
Many of your fans do listen. Listen to every episode.
- [52:12]
Tim Miller
I know and I appreciate, I appreciate the everydayers but you know, it's a lot of content we're putting out there.
- [52:18]
Bill Kristol
But anyway, that's good.
- [52:20]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Corey blocked unblocked and now here we are, coming to his defense in an intern democratic fight. You know, life is long. It's important to keep the opportunity to, you know, keep relationships open. I have one, one final thing, Bill, that, that is not really aimed at you, but for the audience, you know, we send people out with the song over the weekend. Your friend Kam Kowski, my Fypod co host, his ex girlfriend is a notable Olivia Rodrigo, and she was at Lollapalooza and brought out Weezer to do a cover of say It Ain't so, which was my favorite song in sixth grade. And it was unbelievable. And I gotta tell you, Olivia is just, you know, she's 22, she's a Zoomer, and she's doing everything possible to hook you in the millennial girl dads to make sure that we indoctrinate our children into her music over Taylor Swift and the competitors. And I gotta tell you, it is working on me. She absolutely annihilated say It Ain't so at Lollapalooza. So I'm gonna take people out to that and I'll be back here tomorrow. Pray for me, everybody. Speaking of being a girl dad, going to Universal with two girls, two seven year olds today. We'll see how it goes. Got one more pod from California tomorrow and then I'll be back in home. Appreciate everybody for listening every day. Bill Crystal doesn't, but so I appreciate you if you do. We'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. Peace.
- [53:56]
Katie Cooper
My my eyes.
- [53:59]
Tim Miller
Oh, yeah.
- [54:03]
Katie Cooper
All right. Feels good. Rip on the T. Wrestle with Jimmy. Something is bubbling behind my bed the bottle is ready to blow Sing it.
- [54:38]
Bill Kristol
Good job.
- [54:40]
Katie Cooper
Is a heartbreaker My love is alive I never could do I wish my hurt you to try and be cool Is a water slide away from me that takes you further every day to be cool is so your trouble but Jesus this bottle of Stevens awakens into feelings like father stepfather the sun is shining in the blood yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [56:34]
Tim Miller
The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.