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- [00:00]
Bill Kristol
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- [00:31]
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- [01:20]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We are back post Christmas break. Bill Kristol, I saw you notice that our Department of Homeland Security wished everyone a merry Christmas and said we are blessed to share a nation and a savior. Which isn't quite right, I don't think. But the Merry Christmas part was okay. Yeah.
- [01:41]
Bill Kristol
Well, now we can say that again. We couldn't say that during Biden, so it's nice to be able to wish my. It is nice to my non Jewish neighbors, most of whom are non Jewish, I'd say, you know, Merry Christmas and even some of the Jew. We Jews wish each other Merry Christmas sometimes. Why shouldn't.
- [01:53]
Tim Miller
Is that true?
- [01:54]
Bill Kristol
Why shouldn't we enjoy. Well, it's as someone wrote on the good piece on the Bulwarks website, it's kind of an American holiday at this point, almost a secular holiday as well as a religious one. Right. So that's fine. That's fine.
- [02:04]
Tim Miller
I felt that way. Santa, for example, not in the Bible. Right. Shocking. Yeah. I was talking to Sam Stein about this and Santa does not come to the Stein household. And I was like, why not?
- [02:17]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, we don't do that either. I don't know. That's different. People have different customs. But yeah, okay.
- [02:22]
Tim Miller
All right.
- [02:22]
Bill Kristol
We're exhausted. Giving them the. Unfortunately, unfortunately Hanukkah, which is a Minor Jewish holiday, of course, but it's become bigger because of its. Partly because of its proximity to Christmas. It's eight days, so we're exhausted the signs and the crystals from giving the kids eight days of presents. So it's like the last thing we need is Santa coming. But of course, the 12 days of Christmas, that's. People don't really observe that. Right. That's a thing from the past. I mean, it's a wonderful song performed by the Bulwark Choir there. People should take a look at that. Organized by Kathryn Rampel.
- [02:55]
Tim Miller
I don't think I was that impressed.
- [02:56]
Bill Kristol
I was there to make everyone else look good. And of course, Edgar was there to be. To show that there is a genuine star in the Bulwark.
- [03:04]
Tim Miller
Yeah, Singh, we'll put that in the show notes. Apparently, he was in the Hillsdale Abraham Lincoln Choir. We learned over the break. Speaking of Edgar, he has a nice newsletter. It looks like you were off this morning, despite, you know, I don't know. You could have worked.
- [03:17]
Bill Kristol
I contributed behind the scenes. There's a lot of that people aren't catching up on.
- [03:23]
Tim Miller
Well, Andrew Egger wrote the morning shots this morning and thank goodness, because it was wonderful. And he wrote about going home for Christmas and he's going back to Iowa and his family this more conservative and has some Trump voters in there. And he writes about how like. But it isn't contentious. I was surprised to learn this about him. A couple months ago we were talking about this. He's like, they have a family text chain where they text about politics. Seems very healthy, actually. Yeah, I know you made that face, but I don't know. They don't seem to take it too personal, which is, I think, good in a way. Anyway, he's home and he's writing about just kind of the deterioration of everything and how you. What's the old line about how a movement becomes a.
- [04:05]
Bill Kristol
Starts off as an idea and becomes a movement? Something like that. And then ends up as a grift. Grift's not quite the word that's used in the line. Yeah, something like that.
- [04:13]
Tim Miller
Something like that. We'll find it. And just like the degree of the scamminess of Trump world is pretty disillusioning and depressing. And he talks about how there was this Jake Elsey, who you might remember, you were in a little drama related to him. He was like the more normie guy running in a. In a big primary in Texas for a House seat. Our friend Michael Wood was kind of the never Trumper candidate back when those existed. And then Elzie was more like the establishment person. And then there were some more MAGA people. And Elzie apparently was sending his text to his grandmother asking for 10 bucks so that they can get their Trump tariff checks, which is a scam, obviously. Jake Elzee's pack has no purview there and. And he's from Texas and she's in Iowa. And so, you know, he's kind of trying to help his grandparents understand what was happening on the scam. And then he has an uncle talking to him about Nick Fuentes and AI. And it's just, you know, it's not one of these stories about how we have a family food fight over the holidays, but it's about how it's kind of sad the way things are deteriorating.
- [05:14]
Bill Kristol
No, it's really a lovely piece. People should read. Yeah. It's also his grandma sent $10 and then didn't realize she was, I think, signing up for the $10 a month recurring thing, which is one way these scams really do work. Elsley was a kind of normie Republican. He wasn't as normal as Michael Wood, in my judgment. But I think maybe the reason I got dragged, I'd given Elsley 250 bucks or something the previous cycle. Maybe because he was running as I.
- [05:36]
Tim Miller
Googled it this morning to refresh my memory. Yeah. You had donated to him in 2018.
- [05:41]
Bill Kristol
When there were still a few people one hoped would be normally Republicans who could get elected and would stand up a bit to Trump. And that was kind of his posture in the primary, which he of course lost. Right?
- [05:50]
Tim Miller
Yes. And then he ran again as a more Trumpy candidate three years later. And then his opponent used your donation against him, you know, like never Trump or Bill Kristol support, you know, the puppeteer.
- [06:05]
Bill Kristol
I aim to be used in Republican inter Republican primary fights. But then now Elsie, who I'm sure if wants to talk to in private is a little, you know, I'm sure he's okay on things and isn't crazy, but I mean, the fundraising is the worst of it. They all go for these, you know, generic fundraisers and MAGA fundraising is the way to go. I guess. So it's a nice little. Not a nice. It's a kind of horrible glimpse of how everything has been normalized in a Trumpy, grifty, scammy direction. Right.
- [06:30]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [06:31]
Bill Kristol
I mean, even in a world where there's always been grift and scams, don't get me wrong. But for sure. And then I thought the other thing is, Andrew, as you say, the family's gotten along. They talk about politics politely and stuff, and they still did, apparently, at this Christmas dinner. But I think the degree to which Andrew, who's such a nice guy, was kind of horrified or just so disheartened by the deception and the sort of damage that's being done to his family members, really, by Trumpism, I mean, that was.
- [06:58]
Tim Miller
And the way that tentacles get in, you know, it's like kind of more, you know, less engaged family members asking about like younger, you know, nephews or whatever cousins that are like into Nick Fuentes now and are into white nationalism and just, you can just see the way that things are disintegrating. I don't know. You know, it's the one thing, it's we enjoy the food. Watching the MAGA food fight, the tpusa, the Ben Shapiro versus Tucker. I get there's a little bit of a popcorn element to it. But also there's not a lot of evidence out there that even in a best case scenario, a post Trump right is something where things pivot back. There are all these incentives through, just look at this example, the fundraising through the influencers and content creators, through how you get attention. All of these incentives are towards exacerbating the problems rather than resolving them.
- [07:54]
Bill Kristol
And certainly the dynamic, we have a year now of experience of Trump being the nominee, the president elect and then the president and everything has gotten so much worse. That is the position that we now are sort of semi rooting for because it's not entirely crazy, anti Semitic and, you know, bigoted and insanely conspiracist is still pretty bad by traditional standards and is being held down by people who've got along with pretty terrible policies and other conspiracies and other bigotries, but they're a little less, they're a little better than Dick Fuentes. It wouldn't have been crazy to say that as president thing will get moderated a little. He has to govern. I suppose one could have even argued in 2017, 18. There was a little bit of that. Right. I mean, it is very striking how much everything has gone in the other direction I think in the last year.
- [08:40]
Tim Miller
Well, I was going to end with that, but let's just do it at the start, then we'll get to the news. Where are you at? Just thinking about the last year because I have kind of two minds about it. On the one hand, I'm feeling better than I was about the ability to beat back Trump, I think than I was probably when we sat here at New Year's last year in a pretty, pretty dark, dark time to put your head back into. I think there's like crying on the podcast at that. The New Year's podcast last year. So on the one hand, he looks weaker. Personally, I think his movement looks weaker. On the other hand, you know, like, the perniciousness of what is happening on the right does not seem to be abating in any way. Right. And AI is just coming, right. Like these sort of scams and grifts that are happening right now are happening kind of using more traditional methods. The ability to do that on supercharged ways is coming right around the corner. He's got three more years left where he's going to be deteriorating. They've done a lot of damage already, particularly on the immigration front and the role in the world institutionally. So I don't know, I'm kind of of two minds about what I think about where we sit now versus a year ago. But I'm wondering what you think.
- [09:50]
Bill Kristol
I'm in the same place. I think it's not really two minds. It's just two realities, which is he's weaker than he was. The public has resistant maybe a little more than one might have expected to. A lot of what he's. Both the policies and the way he's done things. And that's good. I mean, it makes it less likely that ultimately he and the movement succeed and more likely they lose one or both houses of Congress, et cetera. More likely, even if they lose in 2028, I guess, if we have something like free and fair elections. On the other hand, the damage that he's done is greater than we expected, I think. And the radicalization, what we were talking about a minute ago is maybe greater than we expected. And so these two trends are kind of both correct. I mean, they're both happening. They're just. They cut in different directions. At some point they hit each other and they can go along together in a way in parallel. You might almost say for a while. He doesn't have to. He can keep radicalizing and the damage can keep getting bigger if Congress doesn't choose to check him, at least for the next year. I guess for me, the swing vote, as it were, between his decreasing popularity and the increasing damage is maybe the elites, that is the public, I think, is in the right direction. I wouldn't be surprised if his numbers go down a little further. If he's gone from what, 50 to 40, think 41, 42 maybe. I mean, he was never going to lose in one year that much. More than eight out of 50, you know, 15% of his support. That's kind of a lot, you know, and great if he could lose another 5 or 8% of his 50% next year. So, I mean, I think that part has been sort of encouraging. I feel like the elites, in a way, are the swing vote. I mean, are they going to start to leave him? That's where the three years is such a big problem. The executive is so powerful, there's such incentives to get along with him to the degree that he keeps radicalizing. The elites are more inclined to go along, not less, because, hey, I've got to run this company for three years and what am I going to do? And you can tell me he's only at 41%. But does that change the fact that I'm not going to get these contracts if I don't do X, or that I can't opportunistically capitalize on this grift for quite a while here, and that there'll be pardons at the end for everyone? So I. I don't know. I feel like some of the elites need to stand up.
- [11:55]
Tim Miller
The Supreme Court will be interesting on this front. On the elites. And then Trump himself, Does he have it in him to fight? Does he have the will and the desire to want to fight in the same way as he has wanting to stay in power? The January 6th, that whole element was driven by the fact that he couldn't accept losing and he had to stay in power and he couldn't take this indignity and the fact that he's aging and does he feel like he doesn't need to go? Obviously he's challenging the courts and the norms in a million ways, but the degree to which he decides he wants to use those bruised hands to grasp onto power, I think is also what is an unknown at this point.
- [12:39]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, no, I agree. Among others, too. There's so many surprises that could come and stuff, but I would say, just on that point, such an important one. But he's now got a movement, though, that desperately wants to hold onto power. I mean, he's got hundreds of people who benefited so much from this administration. Both benefited just in terms of their careers, and they loved being in high office, but also, obviously, the more direct grift and so forth, and did they think they could afford to lose? That's what gets me most worried. In January 6, it was him, some of the true believers. But there were a heck of a lot of people in there who were like, come on, this is ridiculous, we can't do this. Including the Vice President of the United States, for example, and other important figures. And I don't know, I think now their attitude would be much more, we cannot afford to be out of power here for the next two or four years. Even so that's worrisome.
- [13:25]
Tim Miller
Maybe it doesn't work without him, though. It doesn't work without him. I don't know. I was noticed the pictures from the weekend, from the Zelensky thing, which I want to get to next, is the bruise has expanded to the left hand. So if you. Yeah, the bruise has expanded to the left hand. He's got now the makeup on both hands. And so the hand shaking excuse, which I don't think any of us really want in the first place, but I do think it bears mentioning that the idea that he just shakes so many hands at his hand, gets bruised, that seems to be not what's happening actually, unless he's doing left handed shakes.
- [13:57]
Bill Kristol
What is the bruise? Have you looked into this? I haven't really at all. I mean, it could be some medication he's taking. I don't know if intravenously is the right word, even. But you know what I mean, through a injection every week or something like that, which could be for all kinds of things, some of them non dramatic, so to speak, and others more dramatic. I don't, I just haven't followed.
- [14:17]
Tim Miller
I mean, I'm not a doctor. I have a lot of doctors in my life and you know, it's not good about your circulation. I do notice that Queen Elizabeth the same bruises right before she passed. So I don't know. It's not a sign of health, I'll tell you that much. Bill, one more thing on the year, semaphore does this thing where they ask you what they're wrong about over the last year and they. And you hate to hand it to Steve Bannon ever, but there's an interesting answer from Bannon that ties into their deteriorating popularity and how like the damage that they've done and the deteriorating popularity are intertwined. And he pointed to Doge and he's basically like, look, the fact that nobody saw this at the top, right, which was that we wasted all this time under this fake notion they're going to save $2 trillion, which they never were going to do, and instead we wasted all this political capital on doing that. And what you and I would describe as the damage caused by Doge, probably different than what Bannon would describe as the difference caused by Doge. Right. But there was direct damage caused to people, various communities, people lost jobs and obviously there's an international element to it and they did it and got nothing. That's also something that On I think December 29th of last year, we wouldn't have expected was coming like that. The damage done by Doge exceeded what we expected. That was like on our, on our predictions list that they were going to let Elon Musk run roughshod over dough and like put 22 year old like Groipers in charge of USAID or whatever. Like that wasn't on our list and the fact that they did that. But I do think it ends up being very harmful in retrospect.
- [15:51]
Bill Kristol
No, I agree with that and I think maybe for two reasons. One, it wasn't on their list either. And I do think I learned this a bit in 2005 looking at Bush with that. Remember he decided, not having spoken about it at all in the election in January 2005, his big priority in the second term was going to be Social Security or for private accounts and Social Security, which they hadn't laid the groundwork for at all, which people didn't expect. They didn't quite see the urgency of. Suddenly it emerges as the priority for a second term. There are a lot of other things that come that were important. I remember at the time talking to people in the administration and close to it and Republican politico types and they told me, and I think they were right, it's both that it wasn't a very popular idea and they lost the debate over it pretty quickly and it collapsed by three, four months even though they had a Republican Congress. But also that people don't remember that much, but they don't really think just if they elect you or reelect you and Trump's is kind of a reelection, they kind of think you should, I don't know, do what you said you would do somewhat. I mean of course, if you're a conservative true believer in cutting the federal government, Grover Norquist, blah, blah, blah, it's sort of oh, this is great, we're getting this. In addition to all the Trump stuff. You know, we get a culture war and we get massive assault on the government. So I think it's partly the actual real world effects were unpleasant. Partly the surprise of it was just, well, what's going on? And the surprise of it fit into something that I think Sarah's found throughout, increasingly during the year for focus groups, which is a kind of wait. He was Supposed to be watching out for us. And it's, I think, the sort of normal liberal critique of, don't the Trump voters understand that he's not helping them? That's sort of half true, but that's. It's less the. It's more the sense that at least he reached. There'd be forgiveness if you were trying to help them or seemed to be trying to help them or faking trying to help them, and it just hadn't happened yet. You can get by some time and people will give you some benefit of the doubt. These policies are hard and so forth, but the fact that it's all about him and he liked Musk, so he let Musk run rampant for four months, then he decided he wanted to rename everything. So he's doing that for the next four months. I feel like it sort of fits in with the notion that he's forgotten what the point of this was from the point of view of a semi normal Trump voter.
- [17:53]
Tim Miller
And especially if you're somebody like that, that did feel real damage, which I think some did with Doge. Whether that would be healthcare and the hospital issue in rural areas or. I remember being struck at the time just being here in Louisiana, like random people that would have, like, you know, that were contractors for a program. You know, I just think that a lot of, like, the image of it just being, you know, people with master's degrees that live next to you in McLean and Bethesda that were harmed by this was not. Is not right. And I think once that kind of touched people, combining that with his disinterest, that did make a difference again on the margins. Like, it's not taken down to zero percent, but it did make a difference.
- [18:30]
Bill Kristol
I think, of course, every president, certainly every elected president, seems to drift down in his first year back in office somehow. People just want to be disappointed these days. It's an interesting thought experiment. One is, what if he hadn't done Doge? The second is what if he had been fairly normal as far as he could be normal in his first year, he still wouldn't have got up, right? I mean, he'd be at 40. What do you think? I mean, I'm just really curious what you think. Would he be at 46 instead of 42? I mean, is that sort of the difference we're talking about here? I mean, you know, I was trying.
- [18:58]
Tim Miller
To think about the positives of him losing power. The one negative to your point, since you mentioned it was. I saw some analysis now. I think it was real clear Politics just kind of right wing. And so like the makeup of polls they use a little bit skewed. They had put out a thing that was like the approval rating of Obama Bush at the end of the first year of the second term and it was like the same as Trump, like they both had dropped to the low 40s basically.
- [19:22]
Bill Kristol
And Biden first term is very similar looking actually. Remember because of Afghanistan.
- [19:25]
Tim Miller
Yeah, yeah. So there is some of that that is just kind of like what or a reversion to the mean or this kind of thermostatic element of political support. I think he didn't have to be as low as he is though. I mean the amount of own goals like the tariffs, the dough. I was talking about this to Tom Nichols on Friday. I re listened to our podcast after the last election last year and we and Tom and the thing that we were both lamenting was that the economy was getting better slowly now prices were never going to come down. People who are very sensitive to price increases at the grocery store who have fixed incomes or whatever were still going to may maybe not get what they had imagined they would get out of Trump. Right. But the economy was getting better when he came in between Doge and the immigration crackdown and the tariffs, a bunch of stuff they just chose to do, they made the economy worse. And so at that level you have to figure that made the difference at some amount in his favorability and the.
- [20:24]
Bill Kristol
Trump factor, the style of governance, if you want to call it that, it's got to have mattered because I think if you had given us, or more importantly real political scientists the current economic data and said where would Trump be? I think he would have. People would have said, well probably some drift down, but not that much. It's not like we're in some recession. It's not like inflation's going off, it just hasn't come down as much. Unemployment's up a bit. But yeah, I think the chaos, the meanness, just the combination of the willfulness, yeah, that's probably cost him some. So that's encouraging that it's cost him some. Could have cost him more if I could say not to be greedy, but that is encouraging.
- [20:57]
Tim Miller
Could have prevented him getting back in there starters. But okay, that's another for another day. You know it's funny that our first time with this new sponsor, I'm reading the ad and I am like totally ill shaven. I look like a homeless man kind of because it's the week between Christmas and New Year's and I just didn't want to shave before the podcast, but when I do shave, I've been excited to turn to our friends at Harry's razors. Harry's just launched their brand new razor called Harry's Plus. They spent 10 years developing their most advanced razor yet. Yes, an entire decade of R and D for the smoothest possible shave. Harry's plus has an advanced pivoting system to make reaching all corners of your face even easier. For me, it's nice for this little spot right here, like kind of on the jawline. That's where I struggle. But the Harry's razor has been making that a lot easier. They got refined blade technology. A weighted metal handle feels nice in your hand and each blade is honed at three different angles to cut hair cleanly at the root without tugging. Even after all this innovation, Harry's plus still costs less than the Gillette Fusion. For a limited time, our listeners can get the Harry's plus trial set for only 10 bucks at Harry's.com TheBullwerk this set includes the all new Harry's plus razor, one refined five blade cartridge, a two ounce foaming shave gel, and a travel cover to protect your blades. On the go. Just head to harrys.com thevolt work to claim this offer and after you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Talk about what's actually been happening. Yesterday, Zelensky visited Mar? A Lago for a press conference where he was showing, you know, a very, very Christian patience during the holiday season for Donald Trump as he popped off on, you know, kind of doing the whole like it's a real Groundhog Day element with this. But I want to let me just play one clip in particular. So in your conversation with President Putin.
- [23:03]
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Did you discuss what responsibility Russia will.
- [23:06]
Bill Kristol
Have for any kind of reconstruction of Ukraine post agreement?
- [23:10]
Tim Miller
I did. I did.
- [23:11]
Bill Kristol
They're going to be helping.
- [23:12]
Tim Miller
Russia is going to be helping.
- [23:14]
Bill Kristol
Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed once.
- [23:16]
Tim Miller
It sounds a little strange, but I was explaining to the president, President Putin.
- [23:23]
Bill Kristol
Was very generous in his feeling toward.
- [23:25]
Tim Miller
Ukraine succeeding, including supplying energy, electricity and other things at very low prices.
- [23:33]
Bill Kristol
So a lot of good things came.
- [23:35]
Tim Miller
Out of that call today, but they were in the works for two weeks. Generosity of spirit is something you think about when you think about Vladimir Putin. Just a little backdrop on that. So Saturday night, Russia was dropping ballistic missiles and drones on Kyiv. At least one person died in that attack. And then Sunday before the meeting, as Trump mentioned, he had this call with Putin before he met with Zelensky, where apparently he expressed a real deep generosity for Ukraine and a concern for Ukraine's success going forward.
- [24:03]
Bill Kristol
I mean, it's the farcicalness of Trump always focusing on it risks that one doesn't see how grotesque it is. And, you know, the kind of. I know. I mean, it is both farcical and, you know, just so horrifying. It'd be, you know, Hitler really isn't gonna. He really wants the Sudetenland to do well and the rest of Czechoslovakia, too, if that comes along, you know, and it's so horrible to have an American president say that whatever our past sins of accommodating some dictators a little too much and so forth. I mean, to have that. It's a good reminder, honestly, though, that for all the Zeks and zags of Trump's policy on Ukraine and towards Putin, and he gets exasperated, allegedly, sometimes and this and that, and people hope, well, maybe he'll do the right thing. And he does sort of do it for a month or two or three, how fundamentally he's on the wrong side of the deep struggle that's going on in the world.
- [24:49]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I mean, we're in the same place, I guess. It's a point. Groundhog Day. It's just. It's this whole just kind of rigmarole that happens over and over again where it's like Trump gets sympathetic towards Putin, and then he's upset that Putin doesn't give him what he wants and gives him his Pete's Prize, and he has got a handful of people around him that want him to be more supportive of Ukraine. So he meets with Zelensky again, and then it's like, oh, wait, but I also need to get Putin on board to get my Peace Prize. It's just the same circle over and over again. But you're right, like the grotesque underneath it. And the Russians have kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children, stolen children from Ukrainian parents and given them away to Russian families, and brainwashed them into thinking that they're Russian. And that's what he did. And supposedly his wife was negotiating, talking to Putin about this. And at a time earlier this year, people were saying, well, Melania might be a good influence here because she's really concerned about the children. Well, Russia's not giving these children back. Like, the whole notion that, like, the person that is bombing and murdering and killing people and kidnapping children also cares deeply about Ukraine is just so insulting and grotesque how, like, Zansky doesn't spit on him. I Don't know.
- [26:04]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, it's impressive self discipline on Zelenskyy's part. He's got to do what he's got to do to try to save his country, you know.
- [26:10]
Tim Miller
Melody also can't really speak English. I do wonder how that is, you know, kind of meshing with the new nativist turn of the group, you know, I mean, they're all out there over the past week tweeting about how people coming from third world countries and not assimilating or hurting America. Like the first lady can barely speak English and is like supposedly her point job was here as nothing. She doesn't do anything. But I guess the one thing that she's spoken out on is the stolen children. She doesn't really seem to be making a lot of progress on that.
- [26:41]
Bill Kristol
She's white. Like maybe that helps, you know, the third world countries is a way of excusing, I suppose.
- [26:47]
Tim Miller
And that's some Western European Europeans. What they think.
- [26:50]
Bill Kristol
Well, no, I mean, this is what. So we got into this thing, Miller had the insane thing over the weekend about, you know, if only we had all these great accomplishments over 50, 60 years. And that's the America we could still have if we kept out this infinite number of third world immigrants. And every intelligent person on Twitter said, you know, these great things, you're pointing to the nuclear bomb and first flight and what else was its space program, landing on the moon. They were not accomplished entirely or in some cases primarily by native born Americans. Yeah, so that's a fair point. Very important point to make in my view. But then other people said, you know what he doesn't care about? It's okay if some of these immigrants are from, are from Europe, I guess.
- [27:28]
Tim Miller
Yeah, White South Africans.
- [27:29]
Bill Kristol
Oh well, yeah, that is a very big tip off. The white South Africans though, really, we didn't, you know, it's a tiny number. Someone doesn't. It's so insane. One doesn't. Again, it's so ludicrous in a way, you don't think much about it. But of course it is an interesting tip off, right?
- [27:41]
Tim Miller
Yeah, no, that tells you all you need to know, really.
- [27:43]
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- [28:55]
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- [29:56]
Tim Miller
At Mar a Lago, this place that Jeffrey Epstein hung out at a lot, we're going to be doing almost entirely Epstein tomorrow, I suspect on the pod, so I want to kind of go brief on this. But you did talk to Ryan Goodman yesterday. Folks can go watch that if they want on our YouTube or substack. Just kind of about what we've learned so far from the releases and just from more of a legal perspective. I'm just wondering what your takeaways were from that conversation.
- [30:21]
Bill Kristol
I think Ryan really gave an excellent sort of snapshot of where we are and where we might be going. I mean, one big point is we can focus on the redactions, which are inappropriate and illegal actually in many cases, and clearly intentional. Clinton's in a photo with Maxwell. That's fine, put that out. Trump apparently is in a photo on Bannon's phone with Maxwell. Be kind of interesting when that comes from and see what the photo is of. Or is it a photo of a photo from Epstein's desk? Epstein's desk? Or who knows? That's redacted. Why is it redacted? It's Trump and Maxwell. It's not, so far as we know, any victim or survivor, if there were such a person in the photo, in addition, that person could be, of course, blocked out. So that shows a lot, I think, about what justice is doing. The withholding is more important than the redactions. I guess that would be the point that Brian made and that I would emphasize that we have seen almost nothing of what we know exists and that everyone expected that we would see, including the victims, the big charging documents, the prosecution memos, the draft indictments from 2007, 2008, similar things from 2019 after. After Epstein's death. There's internal DOJ documents, and then, of course, the victim statements, which I think the 302s, they call them for the FBI, which the victims themselves, some of them, they've seen some of their own, but they haven't seen all of them. And they want them out there properly redacted in terms of their own personal information. But that's what they want people to understand, what Epstein was doing and Maxwell was doing. None of that's come out. None of it. And again, we've sort of. I don't know, not we, but I feel like some have given the Justice Department a little too much of a break and. Well, maybe it'll come out. Maybe some of it will come out. Incidentally, the degree to which their behavior is so consistent with wanting as little as possible to come out and delaying as long as possible is a little underestimated. And I think it goes way back. I mean, we just have to, you know, July 6, the Stonewall memo that didn't hold up, and therefore they had to start gradually trying to build secondary stonewalls, as it were. But they. Maxwell Blanche goes to see her, they move her to the cushy prison, then we get the he fights still, the release, you know, people take it for granted. Well, of course we're getting it. I read somewhere someone said the other day they should have put all this out earlier and gotten rid of. Gotten through it. Ludicrous. There's a reason they didn't put it out earlier and they didn't want to. And incidentally, we shouldn't take for granted that it was all going to come out. It's due to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Right. I mean, we forget how that was not, like, inevitable that that discharge petition was going to get 218 signatures. Well, most people didn't think it would. And even when it did, I remember there was like, three days there when people. Well, I don't know if the Senate will go along. I mean, it all collapsed quickly, which is good. But their behavior is so consistent with a continued cover up. Maybe that's for me, the most important point to take away from the conversation with Ryan. Can they succeed in continuing the COVID up? That's the drama of the next month or two. It could lead in all kinds of directions. We're in the middle of the story almost still maybe the first part of the story. It's not like we're about to have the conclusion of it, you know.
- [33:10]
Tim Miller
Yeah, you mentioned the Maxwell example of him getting blacked out. There was another statement that had been that the DOJ released, but it had also been released in another case a couple years ago. So the version that had been released already by a judge like three years ago included some accusations about Donald Trump and nipples. So I don't think we want to get into any more details for our, for our listeners benefit. Not wanting to throw up like his name is randomly redacted from that same section that had already been released and unredacted in the past. You know, so that's just the type of thing.
- [33:41]
Bill Kristol
And again, explicitly, the, the Epstein legislation says you cannot redact. You can redact victims and survivors. You cannot redact when it's simply despair or public figure embarrassment. So that's exactly what they tried to prevent, what Congress voted for, in which Trump signed that legislation, and they're going ahead and doing it. Oh well, that's complicated. That's a very disorganized justice and all. Well, maybe to some degree, but I feel like we have enough data points now that we can say they're doing their best. It's not always successful. Luckily to obscure and to help Trump.
- [34:13]
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- [35:25]
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- [36:26]
Tim Miller
Bondi was claiming that they're going to continue to go after the people that perpetrated the alleged January 6th hoax. It's just hard to put your head in their space here because you almost have to accept the premises of Earth2 in order to understand what's going on here. So just kind of bear with me. Obviously, There was no January 6th hoax, but they believe that there was some hoax that was perpetrated on Trump that, you know, the feds were the ones that really were instigating the riots, et cetera. The DOJ is apparently investigating that hallucination. They made an announcement because there's some complaints, I guess, on the right that they have not moved fast enough to uncover the people that perpetrated the hoax on January 6, or maybe even the people who stole the election. Who knows what they could find out? And so Bondi says, basically, don't worry about the statute of limitations. We're not going to be limited by the statute of limitations on this, which has some problems in its own right that did not make make some on the right happy. They continue to complain about Bondi. Bondi's assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon. Then late last night, not going to speculate on what she was doing, but it was very late last night and she was posting the following on X Conservative influencers. If you think you're keeping the pressure on by spreading bullshit attacks on Donald Trump's cabinet, you are not. You are earning money to spread misinformation. You are hoes. Learn an honest profession. She Went on and she posted a picture of her doing like a crocheted hat and says this hat is an hour behind schedule thanks to the influencer retards. So that's what's happening. I guess they're extending the statute of limitations to go after a made up crime. People are upset that they're not going after the made up crime harder. The Assistant Attorney General is calling those people hoes. That's what's happening inside the government this weekend. Right.
- [38:18]
Bill Kristol
And this I think she thinks is her way presumably in the future to maybe becoming Deputy Attorney General or Attorney General. No, seriously, because this is the way up in Trump world to show total loyalty to Trump above all, obviously. And then maybe secondarily to your temporary boss just to kind of make sure that you move up the ladder.
- [38:36]
Tim Miller
That's a great point.
- [38:37]
Bill Kristol
And to of course be unbelievably insulting to anyone out there who might have said something half true.
- [38:44]
Tim Miller
Our meet on the short list for future Attorney General. That's really noteworthy. She was also, I should just say, when we were talking about her meet, Dylan, I mentioned a couple weeks ago, for people who aren't as quite as familiar with all the characters was one of the ones that I think she tweeted sus or Fishy or something related to the Brown Killer. They're spreading around that idea that there was a transition Palestinian student who did the shooting at Brown. And she tweeted like there was some evidence presented. Somebody tweeted some evidence of that that was obviously wrong since we found the actual person that did the killing. And she, I quote, tweeted it was sus. So this is, you know, this is just what you're doing. This is the Assistant Attorney General now, like wildly speculating on social media wrongly about mass murders and also, you know, attacking random conservative bloggers, calling them hoes. That's what the Assistant Attorney General is up to.
- [39:37]
Bill Kristol
And she is the Assistant Attorney General. Right. She's not acting. I mean, she was confirmed by the Senate, I guess, as they all were, Bondi and Dillon. I mean, but it's nice, you know, that those Republican senators, the constitutionalists, the ones who care about that stuff, they're very deep concerned. Some of them even clerked at the Supreme Court. I believe they feel bad about having voted to confirm Bondi and Blanche and Patel. They're deeply concerned. I noticed that in their public statements. No, it's unbelievable. I mean, this is, I just keep referring to this as so stupid of me to even do so because it's so obvious. But the degree of complicity here by the Republican Party and all the normie ones who are still treated in private by a lot of the media and by, you know, certainly by respectable think tanks. Well, they're okay. We could have them at our conference. They're not like Trump. They're not like crazy. You know, they are enabling, totally enabling this craziness.
- [40:23]
Tim Miller
Yeah, 5245 was her confirmation vote, so there you go. I think she got all the Republicans except Murkowski. I'm quickly scrolling through this right now, so maybe I missed one, but it looks like she got everybody except Markowski. One other DOJ item. Here's the one thing. If we're just going to call balls and strikes around here, Bill, you know, we're straight shooters. I don't know who did it at the FBI, the former podcaster that now quit the FBI, but they did find the pipe bomber, which was something, it seems like maybe they were motivated by that because they thought that the pipe bomber was part of the inside job to frame Trump or whatever or was antifa or something. I don't know. There was a conspiracy theory going around about the pipe bomber as maybe being one of the Capitol Police. Even the blaze floated that idea based on the gate analysis, but turned out they did find the guy and he confessed. His name is Brian Cole Jr. We talked about this a couple weeks ago, but we have some more information now. He told the doj, or he told investigators, that something as important as voting in the federal elections was being tampered with. Somebody needed to speak up. Coles told the FBI that the people up top, including people on both sides, should not ignore the grievances of ordinary citizens or call them conspiracy theorists, bad people, Nazis or fascists. So it seems like a pretty typical Trumper to me, was unhappy about the 2020 election, thought it was fraudulent, was unhappy the people were belittling those who held that conspiracy theory of a view. And so he planted two pipe bombs. The thing that's notable about this is that, like, you know how quickly these guys just move on from conspiracy to conspiracy. It's like, okay, so this one didn't work out well, so now we're going to go just talk about something else. You're not seeing a lot of this on Fox over the weekend last week.
- [42:12]
Bill Kristol
And God forbid anyone point out, which would be, I believe, analytically correct, that I don't know, he seems to have maybe been inspired to this act of violence. It didn't, thank God, resulted in actual damage or death, but could have by Donald Trump. I mean, just as an actual matter of apparent causality, you know.
- [42:32]
Tim Miller
Well, if Donald Trump had just conceded after he lost the election, it seems pretty clear he wouldn't have planted the pipe bomb. Saying the guy seems unstable. Maybe he would have done something else. But. Yeah, but there's a pretty direct causality between Donald Trump's lies and this planting of the pipe bombs. That is important to note. Thank you. I feel like I want to keep a list. I'm going to talk to Will Sommer about this. I want to keep a list of all of the wrong conspiracy theories because they have this thing that they do where they're like, oh, they called us conspiracy theorists until they turned out to be right. And they have a list of things that was against conventional wisdom that turned out to have maybe some value. The thing that jumps to mind is, is the COVID origin at the lab. And it went from that was anyone who said that was a conspiracy theorist and now a God. Experts think maybe probably it was the Lab. We're not 100% sure, but it seems like it was the lab. Right. And then if you're one of those people, you have a list of eight of those. I do feel like it would be compelling for us just to gather the counter list. No, the shooter at Brown was not a trans Muslim student. Actually, you guys all thought it was and they were not like, no, Charlie Kirk was not killed by the French legionnaires. You guys all thought he was. No, the pipe bomber was not inside job from the Capitol Police. It was actually a Trump supporter. I do think that'd be valuable. I'm going to get Will Summer on that.
- [43:52]
Bill Kristol
Good. I don't know if we'll change any of their minds, but. But maybe it'll change some other people's minds.
- [43:57]
Tim Miller
And this is what's going to make me feel good.
- [43:59]
Bill Kristol
No, no, it's important. Look, it's important for the record, God knows, but it is amazing. This is, I think, part of conspiracy theories. I think this was people sort of studied this in history. All kinds of things get wildly disproved right in the midst of some conspiracy theory. And it has surprisingly little effect on the overall conspiracy theorizing. You know what I mean? You know, it is a little unnerving that once people. This gets back to Andrew Eggers thing we were talking about earlier. I mean, once you drift into that world, you can get hooked. And it's not like one piece of data liberates you from it, unfortunately, or even several pieces of data. Having said that, you should have. Will summer do this at all?
- [44:38]
Tim Miller
I should, yeah.
- [44:41]
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- [45:46]
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- [46:48]
Tim Miller
The right is talking about a lot this past week that is not a conspiracy theory that I want to talk about for one second. And that is this fraud story in Minnesota, just like pretty shocking. Like the scale of it. You know, essentially it's like a Medicaid fraud, like fake daycares and all these kind of fake groups being run in particular in the Somali community in Minnesota. The result of this has been predictably like J.D. vance and Stephen Miller, et cetera, like using the most noxious rhetoric imaginable to target Somalis and you know, talking about how they, you know, in particular Somalis can't assimilate and all this kind of of shit that people said about both of their ancestors 100 years ago. And that's bad, but there's just something that I'm noticing that as stuck in my craw a little bit on this. I'm wondering if I could just rant for a second and see what you think about this bill. Is that like the Democrats who are talking about this that I've seen, maybe there's an exception. Please somebody send me. So there's an exception. All like, you know, their rhetoric around this is entirely like, yeah, this fraud is bad and we should look into it. But the racism is really the best bad part here and I really need to condemn. I looked at one of Amy Klobuchar's tweets about this. She's a senator from Minnesota. I searched her tweets for fraud in Somalia and the only real tweet was kind of about how the bad people are the vice president for being racist, actually. And the fraud is also a problem. But we're going to look into it and it's going through the process I just think is a matter of doing politics. It would benefit the Democrats to be actually mad about the fraud or to have at least a couple of people who really bang the drum on this and talk about it a lot and talk about how we need to investigate this. We need to take it seriously. And if we want to be the side that defends Medicaid, we got to make sure that there's not hundred million dollars or whatever billions. It wasn't 100 million. It was way more that we don't have some significant percentage of the Minnesota state budget being defrauded when it comes to Medicaid. That's real. That's money that should have gone to people who have real medical issues in this country. It came from people that did real work. And I don't know. I think that there's like a fear of being like thought that you will be thrown in with the racists or something if you say this and it's like it has nothing to. You can disentangle it from that and just talk about this. I think that a Democrat that did this and really made the circuit and talked about this a lot and talked about how bad it is and also talked about how JD Vance is a racist, we should be able to assimilate immigrants would do themselves and the party quite well. Because people are looking for somebody that is looking for politicians that are willing to do that. I don't know. It's just there's a little bit of a caution around this that I don't like or like a instinct to be like, well, if Fox News is talking about that, that it's not a real problem. It's kind of reminiscent of the immigration stuff to me a little bit at the border. It's like, we can't talk about this. And it's like, no, this is a bad problem. And someone should actually act like it's a bad problem rather than doing like a perfunctory tweet about it and then pivoting to J.D. vance being bad. What do you think about that? Maybe that's wrong, by the way. Maybe the right thing to do is to demagogue against J.D. vance. So politically speaking. But I'm not so sure.
- [50:01]
Bill Kristol
I mean, you can do both and you can point out that his allegations against the Haitians in Ohio wasn't based on, so far as we know, any particular Medicaid fraud conspiracy there. But. No, I totally agree. And incidentally, I would say even maybe go once half you apply this. We didn't quite say this. I mean, not just talk about it. If you're a Democrat. There's an actual, I don't know, I think these would be state crimes, not just federal crimes, maybe primarily state crimes or local crimes. There are Democratic mayors and Democratic governors in Minnesota. And I assume they're prosecuting this. They're looking into.
- [50:32]
Tim Miller
Yeah, they're prosecuting. The prosecuting is happening, but like, you.
- [50:34]
Bill Kristol
Know, but is it happening with more oomph and enough, you know, vigor? And shouldn't they be saying, shouldn't you.
- [50:40]
Tim Miller
Have a committee looking into how we could reform the process to make sure.
- [50:43]
Bill Kristol
That this doesn't happen on our watch? This is bad that this happened. It turns out the system wasn't well set up. And we're fixing it right now. And there's a task force of 13 extremely distinguished Minnesotans who are of different political backgrounds and experts in how to get on top of fraud. And we're going to fix this pronto. And I want to report in 30 days. I don't want this thing to be dilatory. I don't. There are ways that executive know how to both do things, but also convey that they're doing things and taking something seriously. And my sense, and this may be a lot fair because I just haven't followed the intra Minnesota side of it much. My sense is that's not the, that's not the vibes one's getting from the state government and state authorities.
- [51:24]
Tim Miller
No, there's. There are. Just to be fair, like there are investigations. There have been investigations into this going back to 2022. So like the, the, the justice system is. I haven't found this close enough to be able to say, like, if it's working per se, but like the justice system is, is that process is ongoing. The political side of it is what I'm talking about. And just like, yeah, trying to demonstrate. I just pulled this up just so I had it right because I pulled a number out of my ass and I was like 100 million right now they're saying that it's potentially exceeding 9 billion in the federal budget. If there was 9 billion of Medicaid, I'm not 4, 9 billion in fraud in the total Medicaid budget. But that's like, okay, in Minnesota alone, that is extremely significant. It and I, I don't know, I, I, I just think that that like outrage about a, the people that defrauded Minnesota and also about a system that's obviously broken, that could allow for the scale of fraud would benefit Democrats who like, for whom there are a lot of people out there that they, they don't have a ton of trust that they're looking out for them. So that's just me. I don't know, we could go on Fox and talk about it and these are, these are just ideas. Feel free to tell me I'm an idiot. Last thing I want to do, a little cultural exchange. Brigitte Bardot died, apparently. I know nothing about this person. I did read Lamond this morning. Apparently she openly defended the far right and she married an advisor to Jean Marie Le Pen, founder of the far right Front National. So Lamond was kind of putting a damper on the odes to Brigitte Bardot that they were saying out there in the media. So I don't know. Bill, did you have a poster of her in your dorm room or anything?
- [53:12]
Bill Kristol
I don't believe so. But she was the type who might have, she might even have been a little earlier in the kind of poster side of things. And we were more in the Catherine Deneuve, maybe a generation of French sex spots. Deneuve, do you remember her? She was in some movie like around when I was in high school or college. But Bardot was more maybe early, I don't know, late 50s, early 60s. But yes, a very famous French actress and attractive woman of her time. I didn't really follow her politics.
- [53:39]
Tim Miller
Subsequently, it is apparently she went full, you know, far right. She went full Stephen Miller. I think she was the Katie Miller of France, it seems like. Yeah, Brigitte Pardo.
- [53:51]
Bill Kristol
Anyway, seeing that name did bring back vague memories of my youth and she was one of those who won. I'm trying to think who the American equivalent would have been with Jayne Mansfield. I mean, there were these people of the prior generation. I mean, she's 20 years older than I am. So, I mean, people a generation ahead of me. But of course one knew because if one is 18, then they're 38 and they're sort of at the height of their career. Maybe were super famous five years earlier in some movie or something like that. And the French movies were more risque at that time than the American movies. So being French was good.
- [54:25]
Tim Miller
I will say. Okay, Brigitte Pardot. Okay, I learned a little bit. There we go. Anything else that I. Anything else I forgot, Phil, anything else you want to leave us with besides Brigitte? Brigitte Pardo.
- [54:34]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I know. It's good that you always. Susan's always amused by the way you subtly introduce something to emphasize how aged I am and how a young person like you can't be expected to have ever heard of any of these figures from, God forbid, the mid or late mid 20th century. I think you're.
- [54:51]
Tim Miller
I don't know, I think it's a little bit. I mostly just wanted to soothe. To hear what you had to say.
- [54:55]
Bill Kristol
I think that's a bit of an act on your part. I think you know a little more, you know a little more about Casablanca and Brigitte Bardot and Mickey Mantle and I don't know all these characters that I knew about. Then you let on. That's my feast.
- [55:08]
Tim Miller
I can tell you about Mickey Mantle. I can tell you about Mickey Mantle. It's damn mutual, that's for sure. Mostly I just wanted to hear. I just wanted Susan to be able to watch you respond to my questions about how sexy Brigitte Bardot was. That's really the only reason I brought it up. Okay, everybody, as I mentioned, I will be back tomorrow. We'll have another pod. It's going to be good. And then we'll have a year end pod. A year end review. It won't be like a clip show though. We're doing it live this week on Wednesday and I'll take a couple days off then we'll be back to the normal schedule next week. So I appreciate you all very much. Bill, Crystal, enjoy the relatively quieter week and we'll see you back here next Monday. Let's see, everybody. Peace. She showed me things I didn't know she did it right there out on the deck Put her canines deep in.
- [55:57]
Bill Kristol
The side of mine.
- [55:59]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
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Tim Miller
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