Bill Kristol: This Is Trump's Cover-Up

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast — Episode Summary

Episode: Bill Kristol: This Is Trump's Cover-Up
Date: December 22, 2025
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Bill Kristol (Editor at Large, The Bulwark)

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Episode Overview

Tim Miller and Bill Kristol break down a tumultuous political news week, focusing on the Trump Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files ("cover-up"), internal feuds among right-wing influencers, J.D. Vance's alarming embrace of extremists at the Turning Point USA conference, the suppression of a major story at CBS, and a whirlwind tour of recent political maneuvers both in US government and abroad. The conversation is candid and cutting, holding nothing back as they connect the week's stories to longer-term authoritarian and anti-democratic trends on the right.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Epstein Files Cover-Up and Justice Department Corruption

• Misleading File Release (03:06–05:57)
  • The Justice Department failed to comply with mandates to fully release the Epstein files, providing only partial, heavily redacted documents.
  • Both hosts express deep skepticism, arguing this is an intentional cover-up, not bureaucratic slow-walking.
• Lack of Victim Statements & Redaction Tactics
  • Bill Kristol emphasizes that victim statements—central to understanding the extent of Epstein’s crimes, and what victims wanted released—were almost entirely withheld.
    • Quote (07:32, Kristol): “When the victims said release the files, they meant release the victim statements. That was the core thing they wanted to see out… that’s what is in these statements.”
• Suspicious Omission of Trump References
  • Despite reported existence of a SharePoint file cataloguing all Trump mentions, none were released, raising eyebrows given historical ties.
• Management of Ghislaine Maxwell
  • Discussion around the controversial transfer of Ghislaine Maxwell to a cushy prison, including DOJ Deputy AG Todd Blanche’s unsatisfactory explanation on Meet the Press.
    • Quote (10:09, Kristol): “It doesn’t meet the laugh test… You don’t move her to the cushiest prison possible…”

Key Take:
Kristol and Miller contend that the Justice Department is behaving as Trump's “defense team” rather than as an impartial actor, directly calling it a “cover-up.”

• Quote (11:12, Miller): “It's just such clowns at the head of DOJ… this guy was Trump' personal lawyer. He has no business being the deputy Attorney general. I assume that this was part of some cover up and deal…”

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2. Turning Point USA, MAGA Fissures, and J.D. Vance’s Embrace of Extremism

• Ideological Battle at TPUSA (15:45–28:27)
  • Internal fights: Ben Shapiro and others want to oust open bigots and racists (e.g., Nick Fuentes and his supporters); Bannon and Tucker Carlson oppose deplatforming, urging MAGA unity.
  • J.D. Vance’s main stage speech criticized for equating calls to ban white nationalists with exclusionary “purity tests” and refusing to denounce extremist elements.
    • Quote (19:26, Vance at 18:56): “I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform. And I don’t really care if some people out there… will have the fake news media denounce me after this speech.”
  • Miller fact-checks Vance, noting Kirk did ban Fuentes, highlighting Vance’s calculated choice to side with the far-right (20:51–22:17).
• Dangerous Precedent
  • Kristol draws historical contrasts, recalling Bob Dole’s 1996 convention remarks rejecting Buchananite bigots—something notably absent from Vance.
    • Quote (24:29, Kristol): “It’s obviously totally different situation now after 10 years of Trump being in charge of the Republican Party. But again, the Vance thing is ominous…”
• Explicit Racism in Vance’s Rhetoric
  • Vance uses a “Freudian slip” to call Minneapolis “Mogadishu” (28:27), aiming a crude, racist joke at Somali immigrants—evidence of further descent into open bigotry.

Key Take:
Both hosts express alarm at how Vance, eyeing the future of MAGA, has moved to embrace extreme racists and anti-Semites, showing the new core of right-wing power eschews any moral or rhetorical boundaries.

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3. Media Integrity and CBS News’ Self-Censorship

• Killing of 60 Minutes Story on Migrant Deportations (34:27–37:39)
  • CBS, under new management, abruptly pulls a story on the wrongful deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, which had previously cleared multiple rounds of legal and editorial review.
  • Speculation links the move to CBS/Paramount leadership’s desire to curry favor with the Trump White House for an impending Warner acquisition, suggesting political interference.
    • Quote (34:27, Tim Miller quoting the reporter): “Pulling it now after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision. It’s a political one.”
  • Kristol: The media’s “basic integrity” is shattered if reporters cannot trust editorial decisions to be independent from political interests.

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4. Greenland Appointments and Eroding Global Alliances

• Louisiana Governor Appointed "Special Envoy to Greenland" (43:58–46:29)
  • Mockery of Trump’s appointment of Gov. Jeff Landry as a “special envoy to Greenland”—a revival of previous, widely derided attempts to undermine Danish sovereignty.
  • Kristol notes genuine international alarm: “You can’t have a treaty alliance if you’re also trying to seize land from one of the allies… it kind of freaks people out over there.”
• US–Russia "Shadow Diplomacy"
  • Ongoing concern over informal US envoys (e.g., Steve Wyckoff and Jared Kushner) issuing pro-Putin statements.
    • Quote (48:24, Miller): “The US convoy to write that Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace is extremely crazy. I mean, it's a Sputnik level statement…”

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5. DNC Autopsy Reports and Democratic Structural Challenges

• Controversy Over Autopsy Report Suppression (40:09–43:58)
  • The DNC decides not to release its 2024 post-election "autopsy" report, sparking criticism that this reflects complacency after off-year wins.
  • Miller and Kristol warn that Democrats still face deep, unresolved structural challenges in the Senate and must avoid self-congratulation.

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6. Morality Tales in Trumpworld: Elise Stefanik’s Downfall

• The Cautionary Tale of Selling Out (51:39–55:56)
  • Elise Stefanik, once a moderate, becomes one of Trump’s most uncritical defenders—pivoting entirely for personal ambition, only to see her career stall and end in anti-climax.
  • Hosts underscore the fickleness of Trump’s world: “It’s a one way street of loyalty… you’re also, if you’re a woman, selling yourself to somebody that has no respect for women…” (53:52, Miller)
  • Kristol: “So rare that people actually fail in this last 10 years… that people like her have failed in their effort to shamelessly and shamefully climb up the greasy pole in Trump land.”

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Kristol on DOJ & Trump:
  “We have to treat Trump's Justice Department the way we spoke about Soviet era Justice departments… This is Trump's defense team and that's how they're managing this.” (04:03)

• Miller on MAGA Coalitions:
  “The idea that everybody was welcomed at the MAGA table, it's crazy… There's been deplatforming from MAGA circles, there's been ostracizing people. The thing you could do to get ostracized wasn't saying something anti-Semitic—it was saying something mean about Donald Trump.” (25:39)

• On Vance’s calculated moves:
  “He’s not a stupid guy and he’s making political calculations here… you cannot literally nothing is beyond the pale.” (20:51, Kristol)

• On Vance's racist joke:
  “His just willingness to do just like base, childish, you know, racist, like, material from the stage going after Somalis… his just willingness to do base, childish, racist material from the stage…” (28:39, Miller)

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Timestamps for Key Sections

• Epstein Files Cover-Up: [03:06–13:25]
• TPUSA & J.D. Vance Segment: [15:45–30:36]
• CBS News Censorship Story: [34:27–37:39]
• Greenland & Russia “Envoy” News: [43:58–49:07]
• DNC Autopsy Report: [40:09–43:58]
• Elise Stefanik Segment: [51:39–55:56]

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Tone and Language

The episode combines sharp critique with moments of dry wit and exasperated humor—a hallmark of The Bulwark. Tim Miller is biting and sarcastic, often fact-checking in real time. Bill Kristol’s tone is more reflective, with historical context and a sense of foreboding about the direction of American politics.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

This episode provides urgent, unsparing analysis of the latest evidence of institutional decay: from a politicized Justice Department to an emboldened, openly racist right, and a press increasingly compromised by political and corporate interests. Listeners will come away with a clear sense of what’s at stake in the current moment—and why the Trump movement’s second act looks even more dangerous than the first.

Expect hard truths, historical comparisons, and a bracing reminder that the fight for liberal democracy is not over—and the worst may yet lie ahead.

Transcript

[Matt Rogers]

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[Bill Kristol]

The.

[Tim Miller]

Clock'S running out on December deal drops at Lowe's, but there's still time to wrap up something they'll love. Shop great gifts under $50 like the Dewalt Elite Series 100 piece bit set plus if you order by 2pm, you get same day delivery by 8pm Shop December deal drops while you can. Lowe's we you save. Hello, welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Quick scheduling note. We will have shows for you on this feed tomorrow 1223 and then the day after Christmas, Friday on the 26th. Then next week we'll have shows on the 29th, 30th and 31st. Monday through Wednesday we will be off on this feed. The Bork podcast feed Thursday and Friday, New Year's Day and January 2nd. I'm taking my little daughter to New York for her eighth birthday, so I'm not going to be podcasting on Friday next week. Hope everybody has a wonderful holiday and we're giving you enough material to give you a little break from the family if you need it. I also should say if there's breaking news, I'm just kind of sitting around here through the first. If there's breaking news, make sure you're subscribed to the Borg Takes feed. If we invade Greenland or something, I will be popping on there. And at the end of next week Sam or JBL or Sarah will be popping on. So make sure you're subscribed to Borg Takes as well. Also, at the end of the show we're doing the Monday Mailbag. Now for Borg members. It's a good gift to yourself this Christmas to become a Borg member, so stick around for that at the end. But it is Monday, so we've got Editor at Large of the Bulwark, Bill Kristol. What's going on Bill?

[Bill Kristol]

Have a little cold like everyone else in the East Coast, I guess. But I'm fine, thank you.

[Tim Miller]

I'm feeling great. We took the top off the Jeep on Friday here in Louisiana. Everyone's welcome to move to the south if they choose to, you know, and no cold down here.

[Bill Kristol]

I talked to our friend Ron Brownstein over the weekend about something else and he's in LA and he kind of, he loves doing this in the winter. He goes on at 68 degrees, just got back from the bike and he goes out at great length. And we're going out to lunch at a nice outdoor place and you know, we're sitting here looking at the kind of overcast rain, 31 degrees. Anyway, it's good for your character, though. It's good for your character being up here in the Northeast.

[Tim Miller]

I disagree. My character's fine. I want to start. We got so much and the craziness in Phoenix with kind of the MAGA crack up happening with the right wing influencers we're going to talk about and some drama at cbs. And there's then actual news. Besides the Real Housewives of maga, we have actual news happening as well. I want to start with Epstein, though. When we taped this on Friday, we knew that the documents were coming out, but we hadn't actually seen anything from the government yet. They put out the first tranche. They're legally required to release everything. They did not, they did not meet that legal requirement for out the first tranche of information. Lot of redactions, a suspicious amount of Bill Clinton pictures and a suspicious lack of Donald Trump pictures. Given what we know is in the files, I would say you talk to Ro Khanna who's been spearheading this for the Crystal live on Substack on Sunday. What's your take of what we know now and kind of where we're at in this quasi cover up?

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, it is a quasi cover up or a partial cover up, I guess, but it's still a cover up. I mean, that's the key to say and you know, the redactions and then the fixing, the non redactions and so forth is only the tip of the iceberg. The most striking thing is, and Ro made this point yesterday, it's really, I mean the stuff that people really expected to see, wanted to see and that almost is really is virtually indicated in the legislation that was passed is what we need to see would include things like this, the 60 count indictment of Epstein from 2008, which really lays out the real case against him. They bargained it down to two counts and he pled in that sweetheart deal with the cost of it that is in there. Everyone knows it's in the files. And then of course the victim statements of which we got almost none, and those are statements to the FBI. Obviously you can redact the name of the person giving it and whichever details one feels one should, but they're not even there. I mean I think people slightly, I think the coverage, because we all got involved understandably in the redactions and this whole 119 pages was blacked out, have sort of missed slightly missing the forest for the trees, which is we're nowhere close to seeing what we should be seeing. And I think we have to assume that this is, you know, it's not just that, gee, they were overwhelmed. Such hard work going through all these things and how did they know then there was a little monkeying with Clinton, but come on, we're going to get it all. Roe actually Ro Khanna maybe he sort of has to say this. He's a member of Congress. It's his legislation. He has to presume good faith until it's proven otherwise. I guess sort of seems to think that they're going to get more and maybe ultimately get most of the key things or many of them. I guess I'm not there. I think this is a cover up. We have to treat Trump's Justice Department the way we spoke about Soviet era Justice departments. This is not a Justice Department that's a little tilted, a little pro Trump the way Justice Departments often are. Not quite little thumb in the scale. There is no scale. This is Trump's defense team and that's how they're managing this.

[Tim Miller]

Just a couple things of that the victim statements is such a great point. Right. And some of these victims have given the government permission to release their statements. Right. So like the idea that it's a redaction question and that is certainly the case for some who are anonymous or who have passed away and Virginia Jeffrey killed herself since then. So there's certain maybe questions there. But you know, to have nothing is notable that's related to the other element which is I believe it was Massie that said, you know, basically they're like from what they'd seen like 20 potential co conspirators involved in this, nothing, no one is going to accept that the Epstein files have fully been released. If at the end of any document dump as we had on Friday, there's not like any other credible accusations about other folks involved. And we know for a fact in the New York Times reporting that one of the victims, who was talking about how she had met Trump at four different parties, didn't accuse Trump of wrongdoing, but said that Epstein had basically given her when she was underage to other men at the party. Right. So until the notion that there's information that is revealed about other people besides Jeffrey Epstein and Gwyne Maxwell, nobody's going to accept this, and they shouldn't. And so I think that those are two things in addition to the obvious, the Trump part. There's nothing from Trump in here, which, which is preposterous when we know, we know they said they have a SharePoint file that lists all of the times that Trump was mentioned. It should have been the first thing that they could have released. Right. Because they've already gathered the Trump mentions inside of this, according to reporting that we've learned from the administration.

[Bill Kristol]

And that's really so important just to emphasize this point, when the victims said release the files, they meant release the victim statements. That was the core thing they wanted to see out. They had gone to the FBI off at a considerable personal risk and cost. They had made these statements when they were fresh in their minds, unfortunately. And so they said to the FBI the names of the people they didn't redact themselves, you know, it was John Smith and it was John Jones and they were there at this time. And maybe they said, I can't quite recall the second time, but the third time this person was there. That's what is in these statements. And there are a couple of cases we've seen statements where they did redact, interestingly, the Justice Department, the names of people who were the exploiters or the alleged exploiters, not the victims. But in most cases, since they didn't release the statements at all, we don't even have that. Now. Trump could well be in those lists of people. He could not be. We don't know. But again, I just want to bring home how contrary to the idea, the spirit of releasing the files.

[Tim Miller]

What they've done is the other news related to this. So Todd Blanche was out doing interviews over the weekend and he was on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker. And she was asking not just about the file release, but also about the transfer of Gwain Maxwell. I want to play a little bit from there conversation. Why was she moved just days after.

[Todd Blanche]

You interviewed her, Mr. Blanche?

So that's a Bureau of Prison Security issue that, that I will not talk about.

[Bill Kristol]

Did you have anything to do with it? Did you have anything to do with it?

[Todd Blanche]

Let me finish. First of All I am responsible for the Bureau of Prisons. So every decision that they make lands on my desk to the extent it needs to. But just let me talk about the security issue. At the time that I met Ms. Maxwell, there was a tremendous amount of scrutiny and publicity towards her and the institution she was in. She was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her Life. So the BoP is not only responsible for putting people in jail and making sure they stay in jail, but also for their safety.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, there's a lot of scrutiny around child sex trafficking. That is true. You know, people, people have a lot of feelings and opinions about women who are like extremely notorious child sex traffickers. So it's not surprising. I think it would be very interesting for a lot of other criminals, lawyers to know if their client is getting threatened in prison, that they can get moved from gen pop to kind of a fancy prison where they get the nice toilet paper and get better treatment. I'm not familiar with that. And other kind of high profile case of child rapists.

[Bill Kristol]

I mean, again, it doesn't meet the laugh test. Obviously, if you have to move her to another prison, move her to another prison at the same level of security. Keep it quiet where she is. Put her in under some assumed name in some wing that doesn't have other people in it. I don't know. There are a million things you could do and they do do. I'm sure in cases where they're genuine threats, you don't move her to the cushiest prison possible where she can have her little puppy visit her or whatever the situation is. I mean, it's horrible what she did. And the idea that I just was struck by this watching the Blanche interview, how horrible it is that she is actually in a cushy. In the cushiest federal prison you can have. I mean, this is a woman who has done things that are very high in the scale of really detestable things that were done by people in federal prisons. I'm going to say, just without knowing all the kinds of criminals who are in federal prisons. But she's being treated in a favorable way, in a cushy way. It's really horrible, actually. And Blanche, of course, doesn't even try to defend it. And again, it comes back to the point about the Justice Department. This is not like a Justice Department that's acting in anything resembling good faith and isn't even trying to defend what they're doing in anything resembling good faith.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, you just listen to that answer and it's like it's hard to tell if this guy is just being totally manipulated by Ghislaine Maxwell and her team. Right. And he's just that naive, or like whether this is just the best bullshit they could come up with to spin the corrupt actions of the government, honestly, it's hard to know because they're clown. It's just such clowns at the head of DOJ that this guy was Trump' personal lawyer. He has no business being the deputy Attorney general. I assume that this was part of some cover up and deal and they have a bad job spinning it. But I do think it's also possible that they're just totally in over their head to such a degree that it's kind of crazy to even contemplate.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, I used to be more closer to 5050 on some of these judgment calls about which of those is the correct explanation, but I've gone pretty far to the it's totally corrupt and they know what they're doing. They may be stupid in the way they do it, of course, and they're not good at making up good defenses and they are clownish. But there's so much that's now happened in this case and in some other cases that I think it's a mistake probably to assume that they just, gee, I don't know, they got wool pulled over their eyes. I don't know, really. I mean, at this point, you know, the questioning wasn't great, honestly. Did he talk to Trump about this when they moved there? Has anyone talked to Trump? Is it at least Bondi talked to Trump? Is all this happening? One thing that I'm slightly annoyed at the coverage about while we're just, while I'm venting here is, please, this is Trump's cover up. I mean, it is Pam Bondi's and Todd Blanche's cover up. They're the executors of it. They're not doing anything that Trump doesn't want done. I don't know whether they literally have spoken to Trump about particular decisions. I don't put it past them, but certainly they're doing what they think is in accord with Trump's wishes and they'll be notified if what they're doing isn't in accord with Trump's wishes. Again, Roe, I think Ro Khanna was trying to be kind of nice and I understand it's sort of his job is to try to win, you know, win them over a little bit, make them do the right thing. So it was like, well, maybe Trump's pretty disappointed. I'm pretty annoyed. He was saying by What? The way it's going badly for them politically. And he probably thinks that Bondi has kind of screwed it up, you know, but I don't know, maybe he does and that Bondi isn't very deft at running this cover up. But I want to. It's Trump's cover up. Watergate was Nixon's cover up. Epstein is Trump's cover up.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, that's right. I mean, the whole like Susie Wiles telling Vanity Fair that he was ticked she was moved to the kosher prison, it's like, okay, well then move him back. Yeah, he's not that ticked, obviously. So anyway, part of this is if we're going to do meta kind of media analysis of why it is that people feel more comfortable, like calling out Bondi and Patel is. I spent a lot of time over the weekend listening to kind of like more MAGA right wing podcasts to hear. I was curious about their takes on the internecine feud at tposa, which we'll get to next. But I was also kind of curious how they were covering Epstein. And even in MAGA world at this point, they feel very comfortable going after Bondi and Patel on this stuff. You know, like, I was listening to the, these shows and they're like, you know, Patel wants us to believe that they looked at the files and there's just nothing to see here, which is like totally unacceptable and preposterous. You know, Bondi released those partial documents. It was such a clown show. She's so clownish. You know, Then they have some other theories. You know, on one of the shows I was listening to, they're like, I refuse to believe that Donald Trump is covering this up because he wants to protect other people. That is not the Donald Trump we know and love. You know, and so their, their theory was like, must be protecting intel assets. They're covering up something. Right? And so that's the question to figure out. But I do think a lot of times the mainstream coverage feels much more comfortable if they have the COVID of. Even Republicans are criticizing Pam Bondi and Cash Patel and Todd Blanch over this. And so it's like it almost gives them permission to do it. And I think that maybe kind of explains what we're saying, but I agree with you. This is not happening without Trump's attention. This whole idea of Trump is all powerful wannabe autocrat, except when it comes to the management of a single prisoner and the transparent release of files that he might be implicated in. Those are the only two times where Trump has actually no power. And he's at the mercy of.

[Bill Kristol]

And he's just watching it. And if he doesn't like what's happening, he can't fix it, I guess. I mean, it's ironic. These are the big unitary executive guys. Their whole line is everything goes to Trump. Every decision is Trump. If he delegates them, they're still Trumps. He can overrule anything, right? He can fire anyone. He can reverse some Federal Trade Commission decision. There's no independent agencies. There's no independent anything. Except here, Trump is somehow, it's like very, you know, hard for him to.

[Tim Miller]

He's stymied, you know, it's the head of the Department of Prisons, actually, that is the final decider on this one. All right, y', all, I want to talk to you once again about our friends at Seoul. Seoul offers those gummies that Sarah Longwell likes so much. For me, that sole out of office beverage, you don't want to have a hangover. If you're going to be podcasting and talking about the parade of horrible speaking at the Turning Point USA convention. You want to be fresh, but you also need to chill out a little bit when you're watching Pluribus and the solar office beverage. It's been a nice way for me to do that, and that might be something you need this holiday season. Sol's wellness brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy. Sole specializes in delicious hemp drive, THC and CBD products designed to boost your mood and help you unwind. Their best selling out of office gummies were designed to provide a mild relaxing buzz, boost your mood and enhance creativity and relaxation. With five different strengths, you can tailor the dose to fit your vibe from gentle 1.5 milligram microdose to their newest 15 milligram gummy for a more elevated experience. And if you like their out of office gummies, as mentioned, try that out of office beverage or refreshing alcohol free alternative that's perfect for winding down on the couch or doing a little socializing with your neighbors. Bring on the holiday cheer and treat yourself or someone you love to soul this season. Right now, Sol is offering my audience 30% off your entire order. Go to getsoul.com and use the code the Bulwark. That's getsoul.com promo code the Bulwark for 30% off. All right, let's move on to what was happening in Arizona. We talked about this a little bit on Friday. This has been kind of ongoing over the weekend. The America Fest, the annual gathering of Turning Point usa, which was Charlie Kirk's organization, it spilled out into. And I've gone to these every. I didn't go this year, which I slightly regret, but next year I'll be back, I guess. But I'd been going for the last few years and you know, it's like anything, there's always dissent within a coalition where there are like little digs pushed back and forth and crooked con. Earlier this year, like I was on stage with Hassan Piker and Simone Sanders and like we had some disagreements and you know, the people of the Atlantic wrote a story about disagreements within the, you know, anti Trump coalition or whatever. But it was all, you know, pretty much in decent cheer. You know, there's just going to be disagreements about tactics and policy if you only have two parties in a country within a coalition. This was not disagreement about tactics and policy. This was like deeply personal attacks from the stage going back and forth with basically the camps being like Ben Shapiro on one side and others arguing that, you know, they needed to throw out the bigots and the liars and the conspiracy theorists who are pushing conspiracies about Charlie's murder and conspiracies about, you know, a whole range of things. The French president's wife being a man and you know, the open anti Semitism and white nationalism of Nick Fuentes and his group. So Shapiro's on one side and then on the other side you have basically Bannon and Tucker arguing that, you know, we should let a thousand flowers bloom and that Ben is trying to take over the organization. So with those being the battle lines, J.D. vance came to speak to be the keynote speaker at the end. And I want to play for you where he, where he landed in that disagreement.

[J.D. Vance]

President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless self defeating periods. Test, he says, make America great again because every American is invited. I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform. And I don't really care if some people out there. I'm sure we'll have the fake news media denounce me after this speech.

[Tim Miller]

Yes.

[J.D. Vance]

But let me just say the best way to honor Charlie is, is that none of us here should be doing something after Charlie's death that he himself refused to do in life. He invited all of us here.

[Tim Miller]

So, Bill, I want your take on this. But first I have to fact check the Vice President about his supposed friend Charlie Kirk. That's not true. Actually, there's a lot of things you can critique Charlie Kirk about But famously, he did not allow Nick Fuentes to come to those events. And there was big brouhaha over that where Nick Fuentes and his group, the Groipers, would protest and try to create problems at Charlie Kirk's events. And there are several videos you can go through, the record of Kirk being on stage when someone asked him questions about anti Semitic conspiracy theories, where he's like, no, that's not true. We're not accepting that here. So I have many different red lines than Charlie Kirk, and he said a lot of nasty stuff. I would have drawn the line in a very different place than he did, but he did. I banish people from going to his events. That's not true what J.D. vance says. And I think it's pretty telling that J.D. vance refuses to pick a side between the valid racists, white nationalists that want to have influence in his movement and those who are saying that, you know, no, actually there's, there's some opinions that aren't acceptable even within maga.

[Bill Kristol]

Interestingly, by far the most important thing, which is Vance came down on one side. I think there was a question about where he would be in this internecine debate. And I think maybe we discussed it a week or two ago. He wants to be obviously Trump's successor. And I guess the argument was he doesn't want to annoy any of the most extreme elements, the conspiracists and stuff. On the other hand, he kind of wants to keep the support of some of the normie Republicans, the business types, the billionaires, blah, blah, blah. And those guys, allegedly, they probably do have some red lines, and therefore he's got to be careful. But you know what his calculation is that it's the crazy conspiracists and bigots who matter, that the billionaires will go along. He doesn't have to draw any lines. That's very striking to me. He's not a stupid guy and he's making political calculations here. And the calculation he has, as someone who probably more than any other single human being in America, is thinking 24 hours a day, seven days a week about the right wing coalition that he hopes to take forward, you cannot literally nothing is beyond the pale. I mean, I first heard of Fuentes, I think, when Charlie Kirk banned him or wouldn't let him. I mean, it shows how far it's got in just a few years that Vance, who is not, again, he's not Bannon, he's not Kirk, he's not Tucker Carlson, he's not one of many, many people operating in this ecosphere, he's the Vice President of the United States. I really actually don't. Has any vice president ever said anything like this even, I mean, you know, Agnew probably. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Or Andrew Johnson.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, well that's true. Okay, fair enough. But these are literally ne Nazis. Also, we're not talking about people who said a couple of, you know, indecorous things or maybe they have some background. Thirty years ago they said X when they were 19 years old. We're talking about just flat out neo Nazis who. You've been very much on this and I've been slightly, I got to say, behind the curve on the growth of the genuine anti Semitism and genuine, not just kind of occasional bigotry, if I can call it that, but deep seated bigotry and racism of various kinds and bigotry of various kinds on the right and its growth among especially younger people, unfortunately on the right. And that's where Vance thinks the future of the right is, I guess.

[Tim Miller]

I mean Nick Fuentes called his wife a jeet and not like again, not 10 years ago when he was an average Trumper like the other day. And you know, here he is just basically saying, well, we don't want to deplatform. Also, can I just say, criticizing somebody is not de platforming also, you know what I mean? Like Ben Shapiro going up there and saying these people are wrong. They are espousing conspiracy theories that are not true. You know, the Jews and French legionnaires did not kill Charlie Kirk. And it's important in a free society for us to at least be able to understand what is true and what is false. If we're going to make decisions about our self government like that isn't cancel culture deplatforming, it's criticizing. The fact that J.D. vance won't even criticize them from stage is like pretty noteworthy. And you remember, were you at the 96 convention with Joel? Yeah, I just pulled this up. Right. It's not like this is a new thing, that there's some racist cracks on the right. This has always been a thing waxes and wanes in level of influence. But Dolan96, I just pulled this up, wrote this. If there's anyone who's mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief we're not open to citizens of every race and religion, then let me remind you tonight, this all belongs to the party of Lincoln. And the exits which are clearly marked are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise. So it's not as if there's no precedent for somebody in an actual position of authority going up there and saying, sorry, there are lines here and we don't accept racists and bigots. And J.D. vance did the literal opposite.

[Bill Kristol]

And Dole's was a message to the Buchanan delegates who were there, incidentally, who had won votes in Republican primaries. Buchanan left the party three years later. And again, what everyone thinks of the Republican Party and the extent to which Republicans and people, you know, I was part of it, tolerated things we shouldn't have, and there's probably some truth to that and didn't want to see certain things that were there. All that Buchanan did leave the party because Dole basically said, who was the nominee, obviously said, you're not welcome. In Bush in 2000 also, and McCain, the two leading nominees, two leading candidates, then said, you're not welcome. And so, yeah, it's obviously totally different situation now after 10 years of Trump being in charge of the Republican Party. But again, the Vance thing is ominous, I really think. Now, will there be a reaction? He's getting slapped on the wrist maybe a little bit by the National Review and Wall Street Journal types. But, I mean, the Vance thing should itself be a red line. Of course, everything should be a red line. And they've ignored 5,000 other red lines. I hate to say, but I mean, Vance invites all the big shot business leaders or the tech guys, but not just the right wing, rabid Peter Thiel tech guys, but the Schwarzmans and the diamonds to dinner at the Vice President's residents to really talk about some issues of the future. They will show up. How many people will regard this as unacceptable?

[Tim Miller]

Very few. You already see it. We've already run this test, like, you know, like, whether people will cower in the face of potential political power. And like, you're seeing it with Vance already. Vance sided in this debate with the conspiracy theorists Candace Owens and the Tuckers, saying that they're allowed. And simultaneously, Erica Kirk at that event said, we are going to elect you President 48 in 2028. She's the one that they're doing conspiracy theories about, you know, because she knows, right. That like, okay, well, if he's the heir apparent and I want to take over my late husband's organization, I can't be on the wrong side of it. So, yeah, we already know that everybody will fold to him. And that's why, you know, you want to have people with some integrity running these sorts of organizations so that you can ensure that in the future, like, things will be different than under Trump. And frankly, it just seems like the opposite. Trump also had red lines. The idea that everybody was welcomed at the MAGA table, it's crazy. I mean, Trump was calling Marjorie Taylor Greene a traitor like three days ago because, you know, she was criticizing him. It shows there were red lines. There have been red lines last 10 years. There's been de platforming from MAGA circles. There's been ostracizing people. It's just like the thing that you could do to get ostracized wasn't like saying something anti Semitic. It was saying something mean about Donald Trump. Right. And if you did, you are out. And you can just look at any list of conservatives that got kicked out of the MAGA coalition because they weren't. Didn't show enough fealty to Donald Trump. And so, you know, in some ways, it's like, pretty concerning that going forward. I get like Trump at times would say, oh, okay, well, whatever. I think that's kind of weird. Or, you know, Trump had weird idiosyncrasies. It was like whatever Trump wanted, he got. And like, at times he was extremely, you know, whatever racist and extreme on immigration and crime and various things and on other things. Like he had other views. Like that doesn't seem to be the case with J.D. you know, J.D. is going to be full ideological taking down the. The furthest America first nationalist line on every.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah. Trump will end up being a transition figure in a way where he merged the kind of con man, salesman, TV celebrity Persona with the bigotry and authoritarianism, to be sure. But of course, by the time Vance takes over, if he does, it's only the bigotry and the authoritarianism and the no enemies to the right. No enemies at all to the right. I mean, obviously it's the opposite of the conservative movement. That again, with plenty of criticisms legit. But you know, with Buckley did say, no, this is too far. And he said the people think he thought was too far was the job Birch Society, which is hell of a lot less repulsive than Nick Fuentes. You know, I think.

[Tim Miller]

No doubt. Just one more thing because you had any doubt that we're overreacting about whether JD has gone, you know, is just going full racist to signal to. To the crowd where he's at. I just want to play one other clip from his speech.

[J.D. Vance]

Omar Fateh was Ilyan, Omar's candidate for mayor of Mogadishu. What I mean, Minneapolis, little Freudian slip there.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, well, two thoughts. One, just again, I have to fact check the vice president that Person lost. Omar Fateh, whatever you think about him, didn't even win. Jacob Frey won the mayorship of many of Minneapolis. You know, his just willingness to do just like base, childish, you know, racist, like, material from the stage going after Somalis. Minneapolis is turning into Mogadishu. I could totally fake narrative that is being created, like, whatever, to go after Tim Walls or go after the Democrats. I mean, the only silver lining of that is it's so humorless. I don't know. Trump's racist humor was all a little Archie Bunkerish. It's kind of like old guy. It's a little tongue in cheek. It's kind of. You could understand how I didn't approve. You can understand how some people would see it as Trump, you know, being like, you know, I love my Jewish friend over here. He's just good with money. You know, it's like those kinds of jokes are the ones he kind of do. Whereas Vance does, like, nasty, cruel, and he tries to do a little, oh, sorry, Freudian slip. It's just. It's charmless.

[Bill Kristol]

Sickening, really. Incidentally, Trump also is 40 years old in advance. Is that right? Just about right. 79, 39, I guess. So with Trump, you could. The people I knew who were accommodated, this is. I haven't spoken to the last few years, but back when I was in somewhat speaking terms with them after they had accommodated Trump in 2016, there was a lot of the Archie mark. Oh, look, his generation. Yeah, they're a little more bigoted than you would like. I mean, they grew up that way in Queens. And literally they would mention Archie Bunker, you know, wealthy, not the cab driver or whatever, but, you know, but it's not really. He's reverting to it. It's unfortunate, but it's not. Vance has chosen this. Vance is 39 years old. Vance went to Yale Law School. Vance served in the military, went with a very mixed group of people. The military is that way. Went to Yale Law School, married the daughter of Indian immigrants. He has chosen this. That's both really more contemptible, I would say, morally, but also more ominous politically.

[Tim Miller]

Cold mornings, holiday plans. Well, for you guys at least, as I mentioned with Bill, we took the top off the Jeep this weekend. So warmish. I had some crawfish. Crawfish season is back. But for the rest of you suckers, you got cold mornings. So you need your wardrobe to work, and I'd recommend you turn to Quint's Quince makes it easy to look sharp, feel good, and find gifts that last from Mongolian cashmere sweaters to Italian wool coats. Quince pieces are crafted from premium materials and built to hold up without the luxury markup. Also, Quince's outerwear lineup is no joke. Down jackets, wool top coats and leather styles that are built to last. You might have seen me and we had one chilly day here, one chilly day. And so I took the opportunity to wear my it was like a little maroon cashmere. What what's the name of the shirt with the three buttons on it? The Henley. The maroon cashmere Henley sweater. I thought it looked pretty handsome. I thought it looks pretty handsome. I got some positive feedback from it. So if you like that, get one of those for your husband or boyfriend child. Get the wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with quints. Don't wait. Go to quinns.com the Bulwark for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada. That's Q U I-N C E.com the Bulwark free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com the Bulwark I want to talk a little bit about what's happening at cbs. I'm doing my best. I just want to say I truly do not care about what is on the CBS Evening News. I don't think anybody's watching it anymore. The influence it has is so much smaller than like media commentators want you to think. And so I'm doing everything possible to ignore what is happening at CBS News because it deserves to be ignored. But yet Barry Weiss continues to force my hand, unfortunately. And last night, 60 Minutes had previewed a story that's close to my heart about what we were doing sending these Venezuelans to Sukkot in El Salvador. They had interviewed a couple of the prisoners there that we'd wrongfully sent to El Salvador. They had said that this is what's coming this week on 60 Minutes on their little football game commercials and stuff. Stuff. And before the 60 Minutes aired, Barry Weiss made the decision to kill that story. They replaced it, I think, with a story about two brothers who are both savants at various playing various instruments, a story that probably could have done fine on CBS THIS Morning on the weekends. But hey, I'm not in charge of a network. The actual reporter on the story, Sharon Alfonsi, said this. Our story was screened five times, cleared by CBS attorneys and standards and practices. It's factually correct in my view. Pulling it now after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision. It's a political one that's said by the reporter working for CBS News on that story. Obviously, the implication there is that Paramount, the parent company of cbs, is actively in a hostile attempt to take over Warner, which is parent company of cnn, and it's going to require government approval. And so they want to stay on the good side of Trump. Bari Weiss has said that she killed it because she felt like they needed to have an interview at the White House in order for the story to be worth publishing. Also, some people say that she didn't like some of the terminology in the story recalling the people we sent to El Salvador, migrants because they were in the United States illegally. I guess you wanted to call them illegal immigrants. This is from the New York Times. I should just say, again, not true. At least 50 of the people we sent to El Salvador came to the country through legal pathways. There you go. I mean, to me, this seems obvious what's happening. I think that. That in theory, sure, there's something he said that it could be better to have interviews with the Trump administration, but it's hard to kind of take that explanation in good faith. What do you make of it?

[Bill Kristol]

They say they had offered, they wanted it to be people from the Trump administration. The Trump administration was just saying, no, we're not cooperating. So if they're not cooperating, they're not cooperating. I think Barry Wise also suggested that they talk to Stephen Miller because he's in charge of immigration policy, though, and she gave them a good phone number to reach him at. That was nice for. Is this a business paramount thing or is this a political. I mean, do we think Barry Weiss just made this decision on her own? I think that's a. She's new at CBS News. She just went in. Maybe she did because she knew that she would get credit for this at the White House and from her bosses at Paramount. They didn't have to talk to her. Maybe they did. She talked to the boss apparent. Maybe she talked to people at the White House. I don't rule that out. I mean, she called up and said, do you know anything about this story? But did they talk to you? Well, we didn't work. We're cooperating. Well, I think they should talk to you. Okay, well, why don't you say that? You know what I mean? I don't think that's at all impossible. I think it means that you don't have. Just like we were saying with the Justice Department earlier, if you're working at CBS now, you have a tip on something, can you tell your higher ups about it. Can you explore a story idea without being confident that it's going to get blown up by being given to someone at the White House or in the administration and 10 minutes later. Right. I'm not one of these big media ethics and the integrity everything has to be got. In the old days, it was also wonderful and all this kind of stuff. But there is some basic integrity of a media organization, and this seems to me to come pretty close to shattering it, honestly. Will she take questions on this, incidentally? Will she explain whether she's spoken to anyone in the administration or not before she made this decision? I don't know.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. It definitely seems like there's some real doubts. I don't know. And I did the stand where the standards of news gathering met with her town hall with Erica Kirk. Were there enough counter views offered to that effort? I don't. I don't think so. The most generous view of this, right, is that, like, this is only big news if we get the administration to respond to the claims, I guess. But you know what Steve Miller is going to say? He's just going to spin his authoritarian bullshit. And even in that case, like, the management of this is horrible. So reportedly she, she didn't talk to the actual reporters on this. Like, in any situation where, you know, you have underlings who are like, going to the press to accuse you of making a political decision, even if it wasn't political, the optics on this are horrible. Even people that work for you think you're a stooge for the administration. So that, I think, just reflects really, really bad judgment. And by the way, a story that's like, what was the worry again? It's like, oh, we had to have the. We had to have the two kids who know how to play the trello on instead. It's like, obviously the only worry was that Donald Trump was fucking sitting around watching 60 Minutes or that somebody was going to flag it for him and get mad. You know that you have to do a show every week, right? Like, I don't know, are you going to have the administration on the record every week? It stinks, I guess, is where I would come down on that.

[Bill Kristol]

She wants the administration to think she's on their side. That is very, very important to her and to her bosses. And she's willing to take the little hit of the criticism now because this cements in that she did the right thing for them. It's sort of like Todd Blanche, they don't mind looking foolish if Trump and the other big shots understand that they're on the team.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, and also worth mentioning that Trump did post this week like something like CBS has been worse since the new people took over than it was before, so they are conscious of this because it's related to their desire for more mergers. So we'll continue to monitor it as little as possible, but we'll see what happens going forward with CBS, I'd prob watch NBC instead or the Bulwark YouTube feature. It's the year 2025. You know you can put us on your TV now. It's crazy.

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[Tim Miller]

I don't know how much I care about this, but since I infamously was part of the RNC autopsy report in 2012, I feel at least an obligation to mention it briefly. The DNC announced that they're not putting out their autopsy report. After the loss last year, Ken Martin said their North Star is whether any action they take helps them win. If the answer is no, it's a distraction for the core mission. He said that releasing this report would have been a distraction of the core mission. Do you care whether or not they're putting out an autopsy report?

[Bill Kristol]

I don't care. I do feel like this is if they just put out the report on like December 22nd or 3rd, you know, with no hoopla, I think it would have less attention than the decision decision not to release the report. It's a little weird, right? I mean, I understand the North Star is winning, but presumably this report helps tell you what you did wrong and what you might do to win. Or they don't need that anymore because they had a good November 2025. I don't know. You know better than I. These autopsy reports, I don't know.

[Tim Miller]

I would understand the notion like we're not going to do this. Look at what the RNC did. These things become political. They reflect the biases of the people writing them. We wrote the 2012 autopsy report about how, which I will defend to this extent. If the Republicans had nominated an autopsy candidate like a compassionate conservative in 2016, do you think they could have beat Hillary? I don't know. It's an interesting counterfactual. We'll never know. But anyway, Trump goes the other route, throws it in the garbage runs. We're going to try to maximize the working class white vote works and he loses the popular vote, but works wins the electoral college. And so obviously the document ended up being worthless and pointless in retrospect. So I don't care that much about the actual document because the future is kind of hard to predict. What I do care about is part of me thinks that they didn't do this because they feel like things are going good. It's like we won these off year elections in 2025. Like why mess with the momentum? Things are on the right track again. And like that is the one thing the drum that I'm just going to continue to bang, which is, God willing, things continue to move on this trajectory. The Democrats will take the House next year. They will have oversight committee. We'll be able to start investigating the administration More will be able to impeach various members of the administration. Hopefully that that happens if the Democrats don't take back the Senate. It is not a good off year. The idea that the Democrats did well in New Jersey and Virginia, it's good, it's good, but it is not a like, there's no mission accomplished banner going up. The Democrats have some major structural issues with their ability to appeal in the parts of the country where they need to win a majority in the Senate, an electoral college and doing better, like winning back the swing districts in the country in the House is not good enough for actually beating back the MAGA threat. And that is my one note on this. If we're not releasing this because we feel like things are getting back on track, no, that's not good enough. The Democrats actually have real structural things that they need to address and they shouldn't be papered over.

[Bill Kristol]

And for the sake of the country, they really need to win the Senate. There's so much the Senate does that the House busk doesn't do. Confirmations, obviously, Supreme Court, but Cabinet. But also just the ability to have both branches means you can pass legislation, make Trump veto it, maybe override the veto, give Republican stuff votes. If you control one branch, you could do some good. Better than controlling zero, but much, much, much less so. I agree. I was talking with a Democratic strategist here in Washington this past week. Not about the autopsy report which never came up. He's a pretty hard headed guy, pretty conventional, but sort of conventional in the good sense that he looks at all the data and all. He was not. I said I think the Senate could be doable. And we walked through some states, you and I discussed this maybe last week, even Iowa, Kansas. He wasn't dismissive, I'd say. It struck me that I think the conventional wisdom has moved from Senate totally out of the question. Best cases you get 49 seats to, I don't know, could be a pretty big year some of these. The world economy's horrible. Alaska could be in play. There's a lot of funny combinations that could get you to 51.

[Tim Miller]

Speaking of Alaska being in play, another country in the Great north, another part of the world, the Great north is worth mentioning now. Back in the news, Greenland. My governor, Jeff Landry was appointed special envoy to Greenland last night. Landry posts this. Thank you, real Donald Trump. It's an honor to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the United States. This in no way affects my position as governor of Louisiana. He writes this is insane. Obviously I would hope that my fellow Louisianans would be outraged about this. A lot of problems in Louisiana. Insurance crisis, bottom of the list in ec economic growth, economic dynamism, bottom of the list in education. You would think that the governor of the state would be focused on that. He has instead been inserting himself very heavily into the LSU athletic department and also now is I guess the point person for our Greenland invasion. That needless to say, I don't, I oppose. I oppose. I think that's bad. I think the governor of Louisiana should probably be doing. Has some, some, some bigger priorities. But what do you make of the re. Reinvigorated effort to take a wandering eye at Greenland?

[Bill Kristol]

He seems like such a buffoon that it's, it's. If you don't want Greenland to be invaded, this is probably a good sign because you know, what if they put some like four star general in charge of this or something, you get a little more nervous. Right. What does Landry know about any of this stuff? But nothing but it is. I mean I sort of was mocking it just kind of a few weeks ago to someone who does, you know, international politics and knows Europe. He said Denmark is a NATO allies ally. People do not understand, not just in Denmark, but throughout Europe the fact that he can cavalierly talk about taking land from another NATO ally and not entirely taking it in a concession, in a kind of let's make a deal and sell it kind of way, but in a kind of bludgeon your way to it and use subvert Denmark's rule over Greenland in that kind of way. It kind of freaks people out over there. And they're right, dude. You can't have a treaty alliance if you're also trying to stay. They seize land from one of the allies and Denmark's been a good ally incidentally. They fought with us in key wars and stuff. They're a small country obviously. So no, it's terrible in that respect and does some real damage. I mean it's one of a zillion things that's doing damage to NATO. Maybe not the most important, but probably a little less unimportant than I had realized. That was brought home to me.

[Tim Miller]

Denmark said it will summon the US Ambassador after Trump appointed Landry as special envoy. Greenland belongs to Greenlanders and the US should not take over Greenland. We expect respect for our common territorial integrity. Yeah, I don't know. It seems like the governor of state of Louisiana should be thinking about trade we can be doing how we can bring jobs potentially or sell products Sell Louisiana products to folks in the EU rather than thinking about invading them. But one man's opinion. The other creepy news related to the weakening of NATO is the Russian special envoy, that guy Kirill Dmitriev, who's been what appears to be kind of like the self appointed side negotiator with Kushner and Witkoff. He is a Russian oligarch, spent a lot of time in America, I think, went to school here, worked at, I don't know, like, I don't say the wrong guy. Worked at some big American finance company. So, you know, he's one of ours now. He just decided to throw his lot of with Vladimir Putin. Anyway, he was down in Florida with Wyckoff and Kushner. I want to read Wyckoff's tweet at the end of the meeting, the American delegation included. So he's writing this, I guess in the third person. The American delegation included special envoy Steve Wyckoff, Jared Kushner, and White House staff member Josh Gruenbaum. Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace in Ukraine. Russia highly values the efforts and support of the United States to resolve the Ukrainian conflict and re establish global security. That's from our envoy. That's from Steve Wyckoff, kind of the outer borough real estate man that's supposed to be solving this crisis. He writes, russia remains fully committed to achieving peace in Ukraine. Did Dmitriev write the statement? What do you mean? If Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace in Ukraine, they should leave Ukraine. They're the ones that did the invading.

[Bill Kristol]

I mean, the Russians clearly wrote the statement. They gave it to Witcock. Maybe they gave it to him thinking, well, you'll turn this into your, your own prose to make it look like it's your own. But here's what we want you to say. I don't know, maybe they're just sharing the statement with him just as a kind of here's what we're saying and you say whatever you want to say. Anyway, he's such an idiot. I guess he just put out this statement on his own. I guess they have no one minding these people. Well, he won't accept CIA types. He won't accept briefings from the agency. He was selected by Putin basically for this job, it turns out. Wasn't there a good article about this a week ago or something like that? Yeah. How much Putin looked at, at the profiles of the different people who might be sort of designated to negotiate with him with Russia and sort of decided that Wyckoff would be good.

[Tim Miller]

You know, Dmitriev, thanks to producer Katie has worked at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. So you know we're not sending our best. The Goldman Sachs and McKinsey alums are now Putin shills. Apparently just a truly insane statement that in any other world would be top of the news. And I think people have gotten bored with this and aren't covering it or anything. But for the US convoy to write that Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace is extremely crazy. I mean, it's a Sputnik level statement from from Steve Wyckoff let's do the.

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[Tim Miller]

I want to close with some candy. A final topic Our old friend Both of our colleagues, really. She worked for a little while out of your office at one point. I worked with her on the aforementioned autopsy. Elise Stefanik, she was the great hope of the moderate neocon establishment for a minute there, believed that we should address climate change and was for gay marriage before the SCOTUS ruling and got into Congress as a great moderate hope. Wouldn't even say Donald Trump's name for a while. Then she went on to completely sell her soul and give away every ounce of integrity to become Donald Trump's most slavish supporter. Stefanik started tweeting like Trump weirdly, and became just a slavish devotee to him and his movement in the hopes, I think she at first of being vice president and then. Then didn't get that J.D. got it. She got UN ambassador or something. I think she really wanted to do. Then she got pulled off of that because they were worried that they're going to lose her seat in Congress. Then she decided she might want to run for governor of New York. Donald Trump wouldn't endorse her. He was neutral. The primary between her and some rich guy. And last Friday, late on Friday, she announced that she wants to spend more time with her family. Lisa Stefanik is going to be leaving Congress and not running for governor. Her. Her career, for now at least, is over. All of her efforts to sell herself and her beliefs to Donald Trump amount to nothing. So, Bill.

[Bill Kristol]

That'S a good story. That's good, if true. It's so rare that people actually fail in this last 10 years, that people like her have failed in their effort to shamelessly and shamefully climb up the greasy pole in Trump land. That. I don't know. I kind of assume, though. Do you think maybe she's. Maybe she's still in line for the next Cabinet job or something? I can't quite tell what her relationship with Trump is these days. That's a little bit. She has bad relations with Mike Johnson. Apparently she attacked him and stuff. But she could replace Kristi Noem next week. Right. She'll decide. She spent the week she needed to spend with her, with her family and she can go back now. She could be a Cabinet secretary. I don't know. Do you think she's really out of it for a while? I can't tell.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, she wants to be. She wants to be Stephen Miller's secretary, basically. And the deportation regime, I don't know. Who knows? Yeah, she could replace Nutlik after the midterms as Secretary of Commerce. Who knows? I don't know. I know this. It has just been like an unbelievable crash from what she had hoped. I really do think that she believed herself to be in the short list for vp. And if not that Speaker F. Mike Johnson fails, kind of rising through the House ranks. She gets totally sidelined with the House, recalled from the UN Ambassador jobs and not even endorsed by Trump. I think she thought that she was going to get something out of this shameless self sacrifice of totally giving herself over to Donald Trump and she gets nothing. Donald Trump. I think it just would be worth mentioning that this is the risk that you run when you throw yourself into Donald Trump. I mean, sure, a lot of people have gotten a lot out of it. So it's not with, without potential opportunity. Like you know, his golf caddy is now one of the most powerful people in the world. So you know, you can get a lot by being, by sucking up to Trump. But also it's a one way street of loyalty. And you're also, if you're a woman selling yourself to somebody that is like has no respect for women and is misogynist and wants to like appoint people to his administration based on whether they look the part. And I think that at least probably harmed herself by, by hitching her wagon to somebody that was going to only appoint her to high roles if she looked the part. So you know, I do think that it's, that's a little bit of a morality play. It's a little lesson. No, we can't get a little bit of joy out of it. You're girding for like another piece of news next year that Elise is going to be.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, she'll sign a $5 million contract with a lobbying firm. She'll be on fox News for $3 million a year and she'll have speaking engagements. Everyone will decide she's respectable now. She'll be put back on the boards of various major corporations.

[Tim Miller]

She'll still be empty though, though. Inside. Empty. She'll still be empty.

[Bill Kristol]

That's good. Okay, good. You've cheered me up.

[Tim Miller]

I think she'll still be empty inside with the Paul Ryan Memorial board seat at News Corp. I think that's probably right. Bill Kristol, thank you so much. You're going to be back next Monday.

[Bill Kristol]

I am.

[Tim Miller]

Because you're working through the holidays.

[Bill Kristol]

Totally. Totally. Yeah. Holidays are overrated, if we can be honest. You have a kid, you have a little kid. So it's actually holidays are good for kids. But first, adults. Come on.

[Tim Miller]

I appreciate you. My love to the Crystal family. Up next for Everybody else, it is our Monday mailbag. We're going to play just a little bit of it for everybody. But to get the whole mailbag, you need to be a bull work plus member. I'll tell you how to do that over on the other side. So stick around. To the mailbag. All right, everyone, this is our second go at this. We've been getting some great questions coming in, so please keep them coming. The email is bulwarkpodcasthbullwork.com I want serious stuff about what's going on in the news, but also goofy stuff, life advice. Just keep it interesting. You know, let's have some fun with this. I want to start here with some topical follow ups, including the first about Susie Wiles. My former boss, Charlie writes this. At Trump's first term, there are a handful of people who had some integrity. It wasn't disqualifying the way it is in the south second term. I don't know why, but I've had the sense from day one that Susie Wiles may be an exception. I'm not saying she's some hero, just that she has non zero integrity. Of course, that's a low bar in a normal administration, a high bar in this one. But you know her a little bit. Did you get the sense that she has non zero integrity? Could you ever imagine her telling Vanity Fair, yes, write all this? Just no, I'm going to call you fake news. It's from Charlie. I don't want to take your hope away this holiday season, Charlie, but I'm not seeing it with Susie. This is a fundamental principle, I think that basically all humans except Stephen Miller are redeemable and have elements inside them of goodness. I saw that with Susie, folks who don't know what he's referencing. Susie was my, was the first campaign manager of the Jon Huntsman campaign in 2012. It's kind of crazy when you think about it. And Jon Huntsman was the most moderate, moderate Republican candidate for my lifetime, certainly of recent memory, running for president was the antithesis of Donald Trump on a lot of issues, even though he did end up going to serve Donald Trump in the first administration as ambassador to Russia. That's a story for another day, actually. If you want to follow up about that, you can send that question to the mailbag. But Susie was the campaign manager on that campaign and I was the spokesperson. So I got to know her pretty good. And I got to tell you, her whole heel turn has been kind of a mystery to me. Like reporters call me a lot and ask Whether I saw this coming or whether I can provide any perspective. And I gotta tell you, I don't understand from an ideological perspective, sure, I can run John Hunter's campaign and then run Trump's, but just as a makeup, like her industriousness, if you will. I mean, she really struggled as campaign manager of that campaign. We're in last place most of the campaign. Campaign and campaign made some mistakes anyway. We could go into the details of what happened behind the scenes, but she basically had an emotional breakdown and couldn't handle it and ended up having to be replaced. And how that person could not survive the pressure cooker of the Jon Huntsman campaign, but could survive Donald Trump, it's hard to know. And I think the answer that we learned from that Van de Vere story is that she just gives Donald Trump everything that he wants, basically, you know, picks a few fights, like handles internal stuff. And there's the quote in the story about how, you know, she said that previous chiefs of staff have had these big confrontations about constitutional questions and, you know, about, about weighty issues with their principal. And she's never had that with Trump. That's like what I mean, you've been chief of staff and administration where we like wrongly sent people to a foreign torture prison over the ruling of a judge. Like we, this administration rejected a judge telling them to stop sending people to a foreign torture prison and they did it anyway. You didn't have a big constitutional question with him about that. We have masked men running around the streets grabbing people, people that are citizens, people that are legal residents. You haven't had a single constitutional question where you've discussed that with Donald Trump and a lawyer. We're bombing people in the Caribbean. We're going after his political fo with obviously ridiculous trumped up charges. So how can you as a human be in the role of chief of staff over the past year and say, I've never had an uncomfortable conversation with Donald Trump about what the administration's been doing to me, that seems like a person that's made a decision that they want to enable Donald Trump and he joked about it on the next level. I don't know. She kind of references it. She brings it up about how she reminds him of his dad. Maybe there's a daddy issues thing there. I don't know. Know. But she never was to me a bad person or an evil person. Like, I found her to be perfectly nice to me personally. To that end, again, like, I don't think this is a person with non zero integrity or value. But I think that that can be a flaw when you're in service of evil. Right. Like being the type of person that just wants to kind of manage the process and, and be a kindly courtier is a fine job, I think, if your boss is Jon Huntsman. But it's an evil job if your boss is Donald Trump. And that's what she signed herself up for. I don't know. I reject all the people who did 3D chess about that story, about how she meant for this to come out and it was a wink and she's on her way out the door. I think if you actually read every word of that story, you came away with a pretty clear picture of a woman that has decided to fully go along with the Donald Trump project and be somebody that facilitates it for him. So not great. Next question. I get this fair amount, but it is pegged recently into my conversation with Gavin Newsom. If you haven't listened to my pod, I went on Gavin Newsom's pod a couple weeks ago. You can go check that out. The question was, would you ever consider getting back into politics, specifically the 2028 campaign? Listening to your podcast Gavin Newsom, the warm and fuzzy Aaron Sorkin movie starts to run in my elder millennial brain. That's funny. And we did get into. Gavin was kind of asking me for advice. So I understand why that idea might have been sparked in somebody's brain. But I'm telling you, I'm not going back. I'm not. Working on presidential campaign is so fun, I will say for any young people listening. And I should say I asked for feedback from people under 24 listening at the very end of the Next Level podcast last week. And it's been insane how many emails I got from people. So appreciate all of you. It's know that there are some, you know, Gen Z's out there not not only listening to Candace and Hasan Piker. It's really fun to work for presidential campaign. Highly recommend it. It's just an unbelievable life experience. There's nothing really like it as far as, you know, particularly if you're kind of a high metabolism person as far as like intensity and pressure, but also fun and like creating memories. I just, I loved all the presidential campaigns I worked on, even the ones that like, were like a battan death march at some level because we knew we were going to lose and, and it was painful and times still, like in retrospect, I would not trade any of them. That said, I've got a great job. This job's awesome. And I can't. I don't know why being communications director for Gavin Newsom, even if you would have wanted me, would be a better job. I think that this is meaningful, what we're doing here at the Bulwark. I think it's really important. I appreciate all of you guys for listening every day. There is plenty of opportunity out there for folks who want to make their mark and take a chance and pick a candidate that inspires them. Them. I fully recommend that people do that if that is possible for them. It's a great entry into politics, by the way, if you're young or kind of middle aged, a lot of these campaigns, like the, the ramp up is so great. You can kind of go into one of these early states and, and take a job that is, you know, going to be probably not paying that much and hard work, but, but super rewarding. And, you know, if you pick the right horse, who knows, you could be Tommy Vitor. You could go from being the driver of Barack Obama to working in the White House to then coming out of the White House and having the exact same job that I do. So that's something that is an amazing journey. I recommend it. It's over for me, though. You never say never in life. A friend of mine becomes president of the United States. What are the odds of that? I'm just hoping for a president in the future that I don't think wants to turn the country into authoritarian. It's not like I have a pretty low bar for my hope for future presidents. But if for some reason a friend of mine becomes president or chief of staff of the president, wants to do me a favor when Toulouse is in college, I don't know, or not wants to do me a favor, wants me to come in so they can have somebody around, that'd be an amazing thing. Who knows? Who knows what the future's to hold. If you asked me 10 years ago what I'd be doing now, I would not tell you. I was sitting in this hole upstairs in my house in New Orleans talking to a bunch of people about, about the second Donald Trump term. So it's hard to know what the future holds, but I'm not. I'm going to be here for the 2028 campaign, and all the men and women running for 2028 on the Democratic side are going to be rolling through here, I think, and we've got some fun plans for that, and I look forward to doing that. All right, I got a few more questions on the other side, including one I received a lot of criticism for people that I should not be making fun of Greg Bevino for being a shorty. So I'm going to respond to those critiques and have a couple other quick, fun questions. You can keep listening to the rest only if you're a Bulwark plus member. There are a few ways to join. It depends on what's best for you. The best way to access everything the Bulwark offers. It means any bonus content. The rest of this mailbag segment Getting it ad free. All of our written reporting and analysis. You go to the bulwark.com and you can sign up there. If you're someone who's just hanging out with us on YouTube, that's all you need. You can become a YouTube Bulwark member as well. Would love to have you join that. And if you're an Apple Podcast only person, you're just an audio person. You can subscribe on Apple Podcast now Now too. I appreciate. I know there's a lot of places y' all could spend your hard earned dollars and we appreciate those who want to support our effort and support independent media and our mission of protecting this liberal democracy. So if you're not a Bulwark plus member, I'd love for you to join. And if you haven't yet and you're not sure, have a wonderful holiday. Catch you on tomorrow's show. For everybody else, stick around for the rest of the mailb. Merry Christmas wherever you are. I hope you think of me when you see the stars. 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 Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

[Matt Rogers]

Hey Bowen, it's gift season.

[Tim Miller]

Ugh, stressing me out. Why are the people I love so hard to shop for?

[Matt Rogers]

Probably because they only make boring gift guides that are totally uninspired. Except for the guide we made in.

[Tim Miller]

Partnership with Marshalls, where premium gifts meet incredible value.

[Matt Rogers]

It's giving gifts with categories like Best Gifts for the mom whose idea of a sensible Walking shoe is a stiletto.

[Bill Kristol]

Or Best Gifts for Me that were.

[Tim Miller]

So Thoughtful I really shouldn't have.

[Matt Rogers]

Check out the guide on marshalls.com and.

[Bill Kristol]

Gift the good stuff at my commercials.

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