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- [00:00]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [01:23]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday, so we are here with editor at large Bill Kristol. Bill, I want to start with you with what I have titled Stupid War Update. Is that okay? Can we just.
- [01:37]
Bill Kristol
That's fine.
- [01:38]
Tim Miller
Let me just go through the Stupid War Update.
- [01:40]
Bill Kristol
There's a lot to update, right?
- [01:41]
Tim Miller
So yeah, I think we should just dispense with the pleasantries this week and go to the Stupid War Update. So since we were last together, me and the podcast audience, Friday, Trump lifted the oil sanctions on Iranian oil that's currently at sea, giving them a multi billion dollar windfall while we bombed them. And then Iran fired a couple missiles, unsuccessfully at the island of Diego Garcia. Great name for an island which is far beyond the range that we'd previously known. They're capable of sending missiles. So that missiles they didn't succeed. They were intercepted. It was kind of an interesting data point. Then Trump threatened to hit and obliterate their power plants within 48 hours from this exact point of time if they don't open the strait. That was yesterday, Iran replied, threatening to hit energy assets across the Middle East. The worst case scenario here could have been just a global energy crisis like we haven't seen. Had both sides gone through with that. Then this morning, Trump blinked and called off the threat. He bleeded this I'm pleased to report the United States of America and the country of Iran have had over the last two days very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle east, etc. Etc. And then he goes on to say that they're going to postpone all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days, which you might notice would be like right after the markets close again on Friday. Iran denies that these talks occurred at all. Israel news outlets are reporting that this is basically just market manipulation, that nothing has happened, that they're pressing forward. The Israeli Air force has begun a new wave of strikes targeting Iranian infrastructure sites this morning while Trump bleeded that out. And then Trump was on the tarmac after the bleed this morning and said that if negotiations go well, we'll end up settling this. Otherwise we'll just keep bombing our little hearts out. So that's the state of affairs on the Iran war response. Thoughts?
- [03:42]
Bill Kristol
Well, I guess I've always been slightly of the view that Trump would taco himself out of this, that he was sufficiently worried about boots on the ground in the Middle east and certainly worried about gas prices, that he would find a way to have a negotiation or a fake negotiation or just orders, ceasefire, kind of stop the war and assume that Iran would have to open the strait pretty soon afterwards anyway because of pressure from other nations. And I think that's where he ended up. I mean it is convenient, as Andrew Egger pointed out this morning in morning shots, that he launched the really big bluff, I guess it turned out to be at least for now. And these are all just at least for now because who knows where this could go, but least for now. The big bluff was launched late Saturday afternoon and called off early Monday morning. So it was while the markets were closed. Trump was bluffing. Now, hey, relief was only the market. God knows how much market manipulation there's been by various people in and close to the Trump administration. You know, the threats were pretty jaw dropping on Sunday. To Israeli radio he pledged the total decimation of Iran if they didn't pledged to reopen the strait right away. And they haven't done so. They've simply said, well, they haven't said anything Trump has said. We're talking to them. And they've said actually we haven't talked to the US at all. But I mean they could have talked to Omad or to Qatar or to Japan or UK or a million possible interlocutors, or have indirect contacts with some people there and not others. Anyway, I was. This is this morning. I was busy writing morning shots and they're at 7am and I had just finished basically saying that I did think Trump would still taco, even though, despite all the bluffing that I took his Friday afternoon post about how we're winding down with a whole bunch of objectives he laid out, all of which were huge retreat from his early objectives, and all of which were either doable, had been done, like decimating their missile capacity and weakening them, or they could say they had been done or were vague enough that you could sort of claim to have done them. So I was just finishing writing that when I saw there on our slack that Trump had in fact tacoed. So that required some frantic rewriting. I would like to publicly urge here, the White House, not to have big announcements at 7am Monday morning. It's a little bit, you know, we're just kind of getting the thing, you know, doing some of the other parts of the morning shots and kind of relaxing a little bit after that initial spurt there. And it's very disconcerting.
- [06:03]
Tim Miller
The newsletter writer lament. Yeah, it's tough. I guess this kind of goes without saying, given that we just ran all that through. But they don't know what they're doing. Like, they have no plan. They don't have a plan to get out. Like, that's just the fundamental fact here. They have no plan to get out of here. They're doing. They're just throwing shit against the wall. And it's escalatory threats in the hopes that Iran folds, you know, followed by other things. The Israel part of this is, you know, a wild card here in all of it, too, you know, because as I mentioned, the Israeli Air Force is striking Tehran this morning. If you're, you know, in Iran's shoes right now, Trump could taco, and that would not necessarily resolve their problems. Right. Trump has to deal with the. With the entire region as well. Like, this is very different than the Venezuela situation, I guess is my point.
- [06:50]
Bill Kristol
There's no other player, and it's very different from tariffs. The source of the origin of the taco formulation, where Trump can pretty much unilaterally change them back and reassure the markets. As you say, he's got to deal with Israel, he's got to deal with the region, he's got to deal with an Iranian regime, which is a little unclear who's running it. And Anyway, they may feel they've got Trump over a barrel. Having said all that, I think Trump can make Israel stop. And I think if he sees that that's the obstacle to him being able to declare victory or even quasi victory. We set them back badly and here and now we're getting out of it. And I know how to, not only how to start wars, but I know how to end wars, unlike previous presidents. And the markets get reassured. I think he will lean on Israel hard and probably be able to muscle enough other people in the air in the region to kind of accept this, you know, kind of uneasy ceasefire, which isn't really a deal, but is sort of a quasi deal and does basically reduce the violence for now. Not that it might entirely go away overnight, but this is a big retreat. Let us not kid ourselves. It's one thing to have a theory, a strategy where you're going to bomb for X amount of time and then get a good deal out of it. That wasn't his plan. His plan was to bomb for three days and stop it. Basically it was. His plan was to be Venezuela. He's way in over his head. He's throwing stuff at the wall, he's bluffing, he's blustering. What's been, I think, most worrisome, just from the point of view of actually the US and the world, like the real world, not Trump's psyche, is that he would stumble into a truly insane esc escalation that would cause genuine economic crisis and all kinds of other second and third order effects. And I think in that respect it's good that his inclination is to back off. His inclination is to chicken out for sure.
- [08:31]
Tim Miller
I mean, last night when we went to bed, the possible of a completely catastrophic energy crisis roiling the entire world, leading to untold kind of damage and refugee. And if Trump really had tried to take Iranian energy infrastructure and then the Iranians fired at energy assets across the region and there was no plan to opening the strait, you end up in a situation that affects everybody around the globe. I do think that your point is this is a big back down and we don't want them to escalate. The Iranians, though, more so than in Venezuela, have some impact on what is happening here and have a vote, so to speak. I mentioned earlier, they said that they're not even having talks. Jarrad Baker at the Wall street intended to be friendly towards Trump in the past, writes this. The unsettling reality is that with this president, Americans in wartime are an unprecedented position of having to suspect that the enemy's version of events is more likely to be true than our own. We have become the Baghdad Bobs. And then we had this from the spokesperson from the Iranian armed forces. I swear this is not from Wayne's World or a spoof movie. This is the real, real life that we're in. Let's, let's listen. You are fired. You are familiar with this sentence. Thank you for your attention to this matter. The central headquarter of Ghatam Olambia. That's not Saturday Night Live.
- [09:56]
Bill Kristol
And isn't that amazing? Yeah, yeah.
- [09:58]
Tim Miller
The Iranian spokesperson to Trump. You're fired. Thank you for the attention to this matter. They don't really seem like they've been obliterated.
- [10:07]
Bill Kristol
No, no, no, not at all. I mean, and that also one thing we should be grateful for, if this now moves in this direction, and it will, if it does, it'll be fits and starts and be messy. But if, let's assume for a minute it does move in the Trump backing Dow and a cessation or reduction in hostilities, it does save us from boots on the ground, which I think Trump was stumbling towards. I mean, there were actual thousands of Marines going to the region. So it wasn't just stumbling towards, I suppose, and doing that in the kind of half assed way he was going to do it and not really having prepared it with very unclear what the goals would be. That really could have been a recipe for disaster. So I hope we've avoided that at least.
- [10:46]
Tim Miller
Some of this is like, you can't really report on this because it's like the whims of a madman. Right. So there are no real inside sources except for the voices in Trump's head and like whoever he literally last spoke to who can speak to his thinking within that discrete timeframe. That said, the Israeli sources, the Israeli news outlets are basically did say that like no troops are still on the way and he's buying time and the plan is pressing forward as it has been. So I just, with that caveat to the idea that he's avoided troops on
- [11:21]
Bill Kristol
the ground, I think that's an important caveat. There are really two ways that could play out. One, we do end up with troops on the ground and the escalation has just been delayed and he's buying time, which is possible. Or two, Trump isn't really interested in boots on the ground and is trying to kind of back out of the whole thing, in which case we're heading towards a bit of something of a shotgun showdown with Israel. I mean, Israel clearly is trying to push Trump in the direction that they want him to go in. And they've pushed him pretty well for the last three and a half weeks. But I wonder how big a showdown it would be between Trump and Bibi. That will be an interesting question.
- [11:53]
Tim Miller
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- [13:22]
Ryan Seacrest
I
- [13:23]
Tim Miller
want to talk about the economic impact and you would think that the Secretary of the treasury would be kind of the point person talking about that. He was out on Sunday shows over the weekend but his remit seems to have expanded into military strategy. And so I want to play Scott Besant talking to Kristen Welker about what the strategy is at this point. Every day we are taking out their missiles, their missile systems and the factories that build those missiles and now General Kaine, Secretary Hegseth are leading a campaign to destroy all the fortifications along the Straits of Hormuzz.
- [14:02]
Bill Kristol
Just to put a fine point on this, though, is the president in the process of winding down this war or escalating?
- [14:07]
Tim Miller
Again? They're not mutually exclusive. Sometimes you have to escalate to de escalate. Sometimes you have to escalate to de escalate I mean, I guess technically, but the problem with that is Trump, in each press conference he's giving is escalating and de escalating simultaneously, sentence by sentence.
- [14:28]
Bill Kristol
How bad is Scott Besant? I mean, he is the worst. I mean, I don't know. He's not the worst because Heczeth's so horrible and some of the others are pretty bad, are very bad also. But I mean, this patronizing, if you watch some other clips of the interview, too, to Kristen Welker, who's asking totally straightforward, honestly insensible questions. I mean, not very not gotcha questions, you know, and he's patronizing her. That's the incorrect framing. Kristen, I think.
- [14:50]
Tim Miller
Isn't he saying he's such a, it's like kind of comma, christening her after every question. Like you're too dumb to understand the brilliant strategy that employing Kristen that has skyrocketed energy prices and worsened the economic situation. He also, there was a, there's kind of like a 50 days to bend the curve, you know, 50 days to stop the spread element of his remarks. Also this weekend, like, you know, this is we have a limited period and Stuffed shirt.
- [15:25]
Bill Kristol
Very stuffed, shirty. You know, the one thing I was thinking about writing, I didn't write this this morning, maybe, is Trump is so incompetent and unsuited, let's just say in the nicest way of putting it, to be an actual president at a serious time, like a war. Right. I mean, it's one thing he can script a lot of other things domestically and God knows he hasn't. He's a real threat to our liberties and all that. Leaving all that aside, he should not be in charge of a war. But also the people around him, is there ever. I mean, what a group of clowns and bozos, as David Frum said to you on Friday. I mean, it's, and it's scary. It's really scary. I mean, Nixon went a little crazy, people. I say, I think it's probably true in those last few months, he had Kissinger and Schlesinger and Gerald Ford as vice president and Al Haig and his Chief of staff and Dick Cheney was there. I mean, there were people preventing and literally they did try to make sure that he couldn't give orders over around Schlesinger as Secretary of Defense in terms of nuclear weapons. And so. And there were some crises and people were genuinely scared. There was this, the Yom Kippur War and stuff. One hoped at least that Trump, since he seems to be vaguely averse to foreign adventures, or said he was until he fell in love with them after June and then Venezuela and decided excursion, foreign excursions were great. One thought the least with Trump, maybe we wouldn't be risking actual, like massive death, massive destruction, massive economic catastrophe in that way. We'd just be risking a whole ton of other things. And now it turns out with this love, he's at least fallen in love for a while with foreign adventures. Maybe this will cure him of that. I don't know. Do you think? Or he. He has the memory of a goldfish, right?
- [17:00]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And he thinks that he can get out of everything. And this is an area where he has power rather than dealing with Congress when he gets to Congress in a second. One more thing on the economic part. So oil remains about over 100 bucks a barrel. Prices did go down a little bit this morning after Trump indicated he wasn't going to do mass bombing campaigns on Iranian oil energy infrastructure. But, you know, you talked to Katherine Rappel about this yesterday. You know, people can go listen to that, but every day that this goes on, like, the potentially unintended consequences and ramifications of screwing up the supply chain, you know, become harder and harder to unwind. And like, that is the other kind of element of this that he has sort of lost the rope on, in my view. And that is going to impact obviously people here and him politically, but has global ramifications. And, like, they're trying to do these little things right now, like taking off the sanctions, Russia and Iran, while we're at wars with them and releasing some of the reserve. But it's not sufficient to the scale of the disruption.
- [18:06]
Bill Kristol
No. And let's say that, I don't know, the odds are 70, 30 that he's going to actually taco his way and this thing will die down. But it could start up again. And the uncertainty. Now, once you've seen this level of recklessness and incompetence combined by Trump in taking us to war and his ability to do that, one man taking this country to war, you've got to think hard about a whole bunch of other investment decisions. You're making and whether you want to hold us treasuries. And I mean, I just think, yeah, I very much agree that the economic consequences, both because of the actual destruction that's happened, because of the actual damage that's been done to energy markets, but also the kind of going forward uncertainty that's now built in isn't going away. And I think we'll see it and who knows, but I think we'll see it in the actual economic numbers over this quarter and next quarter.
- [18:53]
Tim Miller
Yeah, Edgar was on this this morning too, on the madman theory. There was a moment where people convince themselves that maybe it is better to have Creat Trump in there because the counterparties don't know how to respond to him and like they're worried he will actually do the crazy thing and so they fold. And we're starting to see the limits of that. Hey everybody, Saturdays are for the boys. They say, well you know, Sundays are for the dogs. What days do the gays and girlies get? I don't know, maybe all the rest of them, maybe Friday night. When it comes to dog food, look at that transition. We all love the ideas of feeding our dogs fresh, real food. But the reality is that fresh dog food usually means taking up freezing space, time to thaw and prep, and then a lot of mess when you serve it. But you can get the good without the hassle with sundaes. Sundaes was founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Tori Waxman, who got tired of seeing so called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics. So she designed sundaes, air dried real food made in a human grade kitchen using the same ingredients and care you'd use to cook for yourself and your family every bite of Sunday. It's clean and made from real meat, fruits and veggies with no kibble. That means no weird ingredients you can't pronounce and no fillers. And the best part, you just scoop and serve. No freezer, no thawing or prep, no mess. Just nutrient rich, clean food that fuels the happiest healthy days. Longtime listeners know that I got bullied into acquiring a cat, Slinky, the cat in my house. And so I cannot offer personal experience on the dog food side, at least for now. I don't know, maybe I'll get fucking bullied into buying a dog too sometime soon. We'll see. But we've many dog people at the Bulwark and they've been thrilled about the move to Sundays. For all the reasons laid out here, I trust them implicitly and why not give it a try, Support the show, make the switch to Sundays. Go right now to sundaysfordogs.com bulwark50 and get 50% off your first order. Or you can use code bulwark50 at checkout. That's 50% off your first order at Sundays. For dogs.com bulwark50 Sundaysfordogs.com bulwark50 or use code bulwark50 at checkout. On the economic thing, I had a conversation over the weekend that really struck me. I think reflects the scale of their political problem right now. I have a friend here that doesn't pay that close of attention to the news. It's in the service industry. I saw him over the weekend, an event, and he is having real economic hardship right now. A lot of Americans are in this boat and he's got a car payment he can't afford, working hard, and he wakes up one morning last week and it's like, oh, wait, now gas to get to work is 20 bucks more a week than it was last week. Next week, the grocery bill is going to go up. The real ramifications of this for people who aren't paying that close of attention to the news and are wondering, like, why is this happening? There has been no rationale provided. Anybody who doesn't follow geopolitical news closely, it's like, oh, the Iranians have been funding proxies to go after us for 47 years. And so now we randomly, out of the blue decided we were going to bomb them. And like, the result is just this immediate economic hardship in your life. You know, that that is like affecting your ability to, to pay bills and do what you need to do. I think that, that it's going to take a little bit of time for that to sink in with people. Right. Paying more in gas one week is different than having to pay more every week for six weeks. But I do think, just, I'm not sure it is set in for, among the conventional wisdom for people, just the amount of anger there's going to be at the administration over this and the scale of the backlash. I think that it is a crisis, both like an economic crisis, but then also a political crisis that has gotten out of control for them.
- [22:48]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, that's interesting. And I think you're right. And again, it's not like the pandemic. The pandemic affected everyone in the world. Trump handled it particularly badly and childishly in many ways and finally paid some price, but not as much as people kind of thought. Look at the end of the day. Everyone's having a rough time.
- [23:04]
Tim Miller
People can process that. And it's like, even after 9, 11, you and Katherine are talking about this. Gas prices didn't go up that much, but they flew planes into our building, so we had to do something up. Deciding that's stupid or the particulars or the strategy isn't, well, but at least initially, there's this, okay, I understand why this is happening. There's this global pandemic. I understand why things are costing more right now. It's like you just wake up one morning and your gas prices and your grocery prices have skyrocketed. And it's like, why? Because we bombed the ayatollah for question mark reasons.
- [23:32]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, because he launched a war with no imminent threat, with no public debate or congressional authorization, and for no articulated reason, which he then backed off of. Let's see if he does. But so far, maybe backing off of three and a half weeks in without having done the things he said he wanted to do anyway. But just having inflicted this damage now, I very much agree that the politics of this at home maybe have been a little bit underrated.
- [23:54]
Tim Miller
If anything, it's just like, okay, well, at the end of it, even if he tacos, even if he quits tomorrow, then it's like, okay, well, there's still going to be months of disruption. People's prices are going to be higher, noticeably higher. Not kind of like, like saying someone like this guy, like, you're living paycheck to paycheck. Like, it is a noticeable difference when you know what you have to do every week goes up this much. So that happens. And then the message is, oh, well, we degraded the Iranian missile capacity and the number of ships. Who cares? Who cares? I got to say, who cares? Like, I understand why you care if you live in Israel, I understand they have different calculations. I understand why you care if you are a foreign policy nerd in Washington or New York that has been following the Iranian proxy threat for decades. But as a regular person, you're like, wait a minute, there's this tangible negative impact on my life. And you're telling me we did it in order to degrade the ship capacity of Iran. So.
- [24:55]
Bill Kristol
And even from the foreign policy nerd point of view, the trade off's not good. That is to say, you degraded some of their missiles and we've degraded what we've got, but at what price? Also, they have shown they can close the straits. That is more of a power going forward than the extra. I'm making this up. You know, thousand missiles that we blew up or missile factories we blew up or Scott Bessant's, you know, deep understanding of the fortifications along the strait. I don't even know that we may have blown up a few of, I don't know, they showed they could close the strait. That's bad going forward. And I do think it builds in all kinds of uncertainty. What if they decide they have some other reason for, you know, causing trouble for their neighbors or for us six months from now? Right. You have to factor that into your calculation. So I very much agree that both on the sort of popular reaction to gas price level and on the more sophisticated investor Wall street energy market level, this is bad. I still think tacoing is better than escalating.
- [25:48]
Tim Miller
Sure. Same obviously.
- [25:49]
Bill Kristol
But it's a bad. No, no, but it's a genuinely bad outcome in the real world with a less bad of two bad outcomes.
- [25:54]
Tim Miller
And it's related to the regime change part of it. Right. Because that's your point. Especially if there's no if you were unsuccessful in destabilizing the regime, which, remember that was the original stated reason for this that we backed off on after two days. But so if they do end up with whatever a hominy junior still in charge or some equivalent version of that, and they now have demonstrated this control over the straight. Yeah, you're right. They have even more power and influence to screw things going forward.
- [26:26]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [26:57]
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- [27:57]
Tim Miller
All right, speaking of stupid stuff, Next stupid DHS update. The Department of Homeland Security is shut down. I have some on the ground reports from the New Orleans airport this morning. I had multiple friends taking flights out. Here's what I can tell you. There are ICE agents in the airports now. Trump has deployed ICE agents to the airports. They don't have anything to do because they don't like know how to use the equipment at the security checkpoints. So they're just milling about, annoying people, increasing people's blood pressure as they look at the ICE agents that are just standing there doing nothing with our tax dollars. I guess it's better that they're doing that than menacing people on the streets based on their skin color. But even still, not a great use of our money. The lines were like three to four hours to get through at the New Orleans airport. This is last night and this morning, both people missing flights. This is happening at other airports. I just, this is my one actual, you know, firsthand reporting or secondhand reporting that I can offer. And the report from Punchbowl this morning is that the Senate Republicans and Democrats basically came to a deal to back off of this. It's not too far from what you had proposed a couple weeks ago, Bill. And this is this. Thune told Trump that Senate Republicans would support funding all of DHS except ice. ICE funding would be handled later in a party line reconciliation bill. So the Democrats will accept that offer. Basically the contours of the offer would be Republicans would not have to make the concessions on ICE and CBP because they would end up jamming it through on a 50 vote thing going forward. But the Democrats would have delayed, installed that and successfully isolated ICE out from the rest of the budget. And who knows, I don't know who would vote on that, but I guess Thune believes he could get 60 votes for that. Funding the rest of DHS.
- [29:44]
Bill Kristol
Oh, for the funding the rest of DHS. Yeah, that's the Democratic position. Democrats would never have to vote for funding ice. That would be the key.
- [29:50]
Tim Miller
Yeah, exactly. And so Thune took this to Trump and Trump said no, it doesn't want to do it. He wants Republicans to stay in D.C. and keep fighting with the Democrats over DHS and the Save America act, his voting crackdown bill. Trump also warned Thune and Senate Republicans that he would publicly attack them if they left town for the upcoming recess. Trump said he'd invite all the senators of the families over to Easter dinner. Some Republicans took that as a threat, not a reward. It's a direct quote from Punchbowl.
- [30:23]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. Who leaked that Punchbowl, do you think?
- [30:25]
Tim Miller
I don't know.
- [30:26]
Bill Kristol
Is that a yes? I'm gonna guess I'm going with that. Thune. I hadn't really thought about how they got that until you started to read it. It's kind of detailed and. Yeah. So Thune's trying to say, hey, I did my best to get us out of this. Here we are. And yeah, it's good. So Democrats need to just scream and yell that Trump is basically preventing a deal that they could have accepted. That was really their proposal almost to fund the rest of dhs. Without ice, they can't control what Thune does later on a party line reconciliation vote. Let them be responsible for funding ice. And ICE has money anyway now, so it's functioning obviously from the last year's reconciliation bill. So they really need to attack Trump. I feel like Democrats should really go to the wall, don't you think, against Trump this week?
- [31:09]
Tim Miller
Absolutely.
- [31:09]
Bill Kristol
They move on both the war and ice. I mean, total fiasco.
- [31:13]
Tim Miller
Absolutely. And some of them have been good. Gaga's been good. Murphy's been good. Murphy was out this weekend. There have been. But I was going to come on this morning. I was thinking about this last night and say, I feel like that the Democrats were starting to lose the messaging battle on this DHS shutdown, mostly just because of volume. Like they had not been out there. Like there hadn't been a clear message. Like, you watch Jeffries talk about this on one interviews he did this weekend, and it's a little bit winding of a road explaining what is happening and what their demands are and all this. And then Trump just like hands him this gift on the silver platter, which is basically that like. Like Trump doesn't want a deal. They offered. There was a deal. Like the Republicans and Democrats had a deal to resolve the airport problem. And Trump doesn't want it. He wants the chaos. On last week's pod, I think it was, people enjoyed. The headline was, bill Crystal, colon, end the war. You know, it was like, that's the Democratic message, End the war. Stop it. Stop. It's not helping. Like, you're causing more problems every day. It goes on. And that's the message with this, like, end the shutdown, Trump. Like, we want to fund fema, we want to fund hsi, we want to fund other homeland security elements besides, you know, your internal secret police. The Republicans agree with that. They're ready to do it. But you want to cause harm to Americans and, and have real security risks by keeping the government shut down in order to like, try to game the midterms. I just think that a very blunt, straightforward. They should be out and everywhere this week on offense, pushing the pressure.
- [32:47]
Bill Kristol
Totally agree. Higher gas prices, lines at the airports. Trump's responsible for both, period. And he is Trump's fault. I mean, it's actually has the advantage of being true.
- [32:57]
Tim Miller
It has the advantage of being true. Stop it now. We want to stop it right now. But he won't sign a bill. I'm not the Hill. Parliamentary procedure machinations, man. But it also feels like they could force this to the floor too. And this is the other thing that they should be doing right. Like now they have enough people. The Republican House advantage is so small now anyway. I guess all the Republicans who would be for it in one situation would maybe not be for it if it felt like it was a rebuke to Trump. But anyway, I don't know. Trump announced this morning one more thing on this that he didn't announce. He bleeded. He bleeded this morning that he supports masks. Big supporter of masks. Not Covid masks, but the ICE agents wearing masks. But he respectfully requests that the ICE agents don't wear masks at airports. I don't quite understand that, why that works. I guess that you understand why people don't like seeing the masks if you want them to not wear them at the airports. So why would you like it when they're going through the streets of our cities?
- [34:01]
Bill Kristol
I had thought about the mask question and I actually was sort of going to interrupt and ask you if you'd heard about whether they were wearing masks or not at the New Orleans airport. But I hadn't seen that reported. In terms of just this morning physically at the airports, are they wearing masks or not? But now you say Trump's bleed at this, which is of course very revealing, isn't it? Right. The upper middle class Americans who are, let's just overgeneralize. But middle class Americans who are flying around the country and probably slightly disproportionately Republican ish voters. I guess maybe air travelers might Be they don't want to see those masks, you know, very distasteful. Right. You know, the poor people in the Walmart parking lots who are trying to, you know, get their day jobs and so forth, tough on them. They got to see the masks, you know, or the people in Minneapolis. No, very revealing. I think very hard and certainly there for them to now continue to wear them. Well, maybe I'm overstating it. Is it hard for them to continue to wear them in the streets? Like, what's the rationale now?
- [34:53]
Tim Miller
I mean, because also the other. The stated rationale is the doxxing.
- [34:58]
Bill Kristol
Right, right.
- [34:59]
Tim Miller
You know, that ICE agents were being identified and that the crazy antifa left was targeting them in their homes, et cetera. It's once they could see their faces. But. Okay, well, now once we've sent them to the airport. See their faces. What? That doesn't compute. Right? Like, if the point was to protect their identities, they needed to hide their identities because the threats to them were so great. Why wouldn't they need to hide their identities at the airport? More people are going to see them at the airport than would have saw them on the streets.
- [35:24]
Bill Kristol
My impression to me going through airports recently is it's full of travelers maniacally taking photos of everything. I don't even know why airports are interesting, but you know what I mean. You're sitting there having your little five guys burger and people are taking photos all around you. Hey, I'm, you know, I'm showing the kids that I'm on my way home or something. So, yes, this would be very easy to take photos of all these ICE agents at the airports.
- [35:44]
Tim Miller
And the people have nothing else to do while they wait very, very, very long lines, except look at the ICE agents and have their resentment build and try to decide who they are. So anyway, no masks at the airports. I should have done this during Iran, but I want to throw One other kind of political fallout from the war is what's happening with the vice president. He's not tweeting anymore. That was his job for year one, was posting shitposting, quote, tweeting people, making fun of people, being very condescending on the Internet. That was his job. And then obviously, after Renee Goode was murdered by agent of the State, he was out the next day publicly fighting with people about that on the Internet and doing press conferences. Not as much from that anymore. I haven't really seen him posting on the Internet lately. He did get another job. He has been sent to Hungary. Viktor Orban's reelection is up next month. I want to do more on that here in the coming weeks here on the show. But JD Is being sent to Hungary to support Orban, one of our only allies left. He's in a pickle. It's hard to do the condescending hall monitor thing about how everybody's stupid and you're smart when everything's going to shit and privately you think that what you did was stupid. Makes it a little more challenging to
- [37:04]
Bill Kristol
do his sht now. Let's say soon the tacoing persists and he gets the hostilities or the bulk of hostilities wind down over the next week or two. Does he get out there and say, see, Trump knew what he was doing all along and we stayed out of these endless wars. Not like Iraq. Thank God it's Trump. God knows if Kamala Harris were there, we'd be still bombing them. Of course, if Kamala Harris was there, we never would have gotten into this horrible mess and oil prices would be much lower than they are. But anyway, kind of.
- [37:32]
Tim Miller
I refuse to absolutely. This is why he stopped posting like this is what he wants. He's praying that Trump will just quit the war so that he can do the thing where he's like, see, we didn't get into the endless wars like these other stupid presidents. He was smart. He got us out of there.
- [37:49]
Bill Kristol
Right.
- [37:50]
Tim Miller
It's unclear to me the efficacy of that, especially given the potential long tail economic consequences from it. But I do think that's what he's hoping and he's really hoping that end at the that the consequences are manageable. Americans have already died. Not to minimize that, but I think he's hoping that it's something that can be spinnable and manageable so that he doesn't have to come out against this war because he isn't able to. Trump doesn't give him any ability in 2028, God willing. Let's say Trump steps aside and we have a normal campaign. JD can't be like I was against him on the war. You can't do that because Trump will post all over and maybe he could try, but Trump would make it very challenging. So anyway, we'll keep monitoring.
- [38:33]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [39:05]
Tim Miller
Dog Grooming Genius here.
- [39:07]
Bill Kristol
Most people see a busy dog salon,
- [39:09]
Tim Miller
but I see operational excellence thanks to Genius. From global payments, scheduling, personalized checkouts, Instant Apple, Absolutely Genius. From gameday crowds to every groomer in
- [39:23]
Bill Kristol
this shop, Genius keeps everything flowing seamlessly.
- [39:26]
Tim Miller
Schnauzer is styled flawless execution, big league reliability for any business. That's Genius. I do just want to touch briefly on the depravity of our president and how just grotesque he is at a personal level. In addition to how terrible the policy choices have been over the last week or two he posted on his social media. He's been posting a lot. Unlike JD who's gone silent on social media, Trump's been bleeding quite a lot. There were two posts over the weekend that we should definitely not ignore. One was now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the radical left, highly incompetent Democrat Party. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I mean, at some level we're kind of used to this from Trump, this type of stuff, the enemy of the people talk, et cetera. But I just think that whatever that is, that 20 words encapsulates how disturbing his worldview is in a lot of ways. I mean, it begins with just a blatant lie and conspiracy theory about the success of their effort in Iran. Iran is not dead. Quite the opposite. And then he compares his domestic political foes to the people that he's literally bombing. You know, that who he says are such a great threat they require us decimating and obliterating them. He's saying that the next target essentially is his domestic political foes, the Democrats, right?
- [40:55]
Bill Kristol
And God, you know, they'll try to claim that there are all these plots, terrorist plots, to disrupt the election by the Democrats and that's why they have to have troops in September and October polling places. I mean, I think this is. It could be. I mean, it was mostly just trumping Trump, I will stipulate. But there's some notion here of laying the predicate, if you combine it with sort of that order they had about domestic terrorists and all that, and calling protesters domestic terrorists. Some predicate being laid for going after the 2026 elections, it seems to me.
- [41:23]
Tim Miller
No, it's ominous on that front. It also, I don't know, I think it's important to talk about. Part of it is like okay, this is Trump being Trump. You ignore it. But I do want the Joe Rogans of the world to have to sit with this and see this tweet that it's like this is what the person you ran cover for is posting. He's gotten us into a war that you said you didn't want. A really stupid war. Americans have died. People have died in Iran also and all over the world. You're being negatively impacted economically and he is overseeing just chaos domestically and abroad. And what he's telling people is that the greatest enemy he sees is his fellow Americans. That's the greatest enemy he sees right now is people in this country who disagree with them. And it's deeply, deeply sick. And I don't know, I understand how it plays with the red hat people, but I do think that, I don't know, it's sad that somebody might have to have a wake up call year 11 or whatever we are of Trump, but I don't know, I would think it'd be a wake up call for people. His other bleat. We talked about this on Saturday. We hopped on on YouTube and make sure you're subscribed to the Bort takes feed and YouTube if you're, you're a total sicko and the one hour a day of this, of the parade of horribles is not enough for you and you need more. Bill and I talked about this at greater length, but I do want to just cover it here briefly as well. Bob Mueller died after a lengthy battle with Parkinson's, age 81. Trump's response to that? Robert Mueller just died. Good. I'm glad he's dead. That's what Trump tweeted about it.
- [43:00]
Bill Kristol
Disgusting. Really disgusting. And, and most people have said, well, a lot of people have said it's really disgusting. And almost a new low in a parade of lows. Haven't seen a lot of Republicans, I guess Scott Besant, your friend Scott Besant got asked about this and he had some three times had to say that. You have to understand Trump and his family. His family is very affected. Trump and his family have been through a lot. Really?
- [43:21]
Tim Miller
Oh yeah, they're stealing money, stealing billions of billions of dollars.
- [43:24]
Bill Kristol
Not indict Trump actually to pull his punches at the very end, you might say, and decided he couldn't because he was sitting president and therefore couldn't recommend even that he be impeached instead of being indict. Very, very tough on Trump and Melania and Ivanka and Jared. And it's just really, that's where the sympathy goes when Robert Mueller, at age 81, dies after suffering from Parkinson's, having served really heroically in Vietnam and been a really admirable public servant for his entire life.
- [43:52]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it's important to note he did serve in Vietnam, volunteered while Donald Trump ran from that said, lied about his health conditions. When you think about patriotism. Yeah. I'm hoping that Trump's family has a lot more to go through. Through. I mean, they're stealing money hand over fist right now with their corruption. Ungodly amounts of money is from foreign entities, and God knows who else is going through the Trump family cryptocurrency, et cetera. And Hunter Biden had to. Had to see. Eventually he gets pardoned by his dad, but Hunter Biden had to see a courtroom. I suspect that the Trump children might have to see a courtroom that he can try to pardon them. But I imagine they've committed some state crimes. We'll see. And I do think that we should go through. Through be going through their taxes and their financial interest with a fine tooth comb for years to come. So hopefully they can continue to suffer.
- [44:41]
Bill Kristol
I'm sure. I'm sure Pam Bondi will be.
- [44:43]
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, I don't think they're currently
- [44:45]
Bill Kristol
one of the Trump kids. Just the way Merrick Garland actually went ahead and let his Justice Department authorize the indictment, had a special counsel and that authorized the indictment, presumably of Hunter Biden and went to trial and he was convicted, leaving. So the pardon, I don't approve of that necessarily. And that was after the election and all at the end of it. But he was. Was. Yes. It's kind of amazing, right? I mean, one can't even say it with a straight face that the Trump Justice Department would prosecute any Trump relative or any Trump crony or any Trump administration officials, so far as one can tell.
- [45:13]
Tim Miller
Well, Joe Kent, they're gonna go after anybody who quits the administration gets to gets the arm of the law targeting them. That's pretty grotesque. She just mentioned about the Mueller report because this stuff gets people's memories get fuzzy. He indicted 26 Russians and eight Americans for working together to interfere with. And then about 5 of the Americans end up getting pardoned by Trump. But, you know, that was real work that they did about a real threat to our elections. And he did so very modestly and, you know, by the book. And there's nothing like the picture that people painted of him. You used it over the weekend. But I think it's worth chewing over one more time because you offered A very depressing Yates quote to honor Bob Mueller's death. And to. That kind of hit me like a ton of bricks when you read it, because it's pretty dark.
- [46:05]
Bill Kristol
I was impressed.
- [46:05]
Tim Miller
I like Darkness.
- [46:06]
Bill Kristol
I was impressed that you were impressed by this.
- [46:08]
Tim Miller
Well, I like. I'm impressed that you just pulled that. The most depressing possible reflection on Mueller's life and career came from a poem, and you just pulled it immediately. So I would like to do it one more time for people that missed that.
- [46:22]
Bill Kristol
So that poem, I would say, was always a favorite of Susan's, of my wife's, and when we met in college, she was a big fan of Yates. I knew a tiny bit about him, as Susan swore, more better educated, more literary than I at the time, as, as since. And so, of course, when you meet someone, you know and you want to get along, you have to pretend, oh, Yates. I like Yates too.
- [46:41]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [46:42]
Bill Kristol
So I used. I had to read a little Yates to kind of keep up with Susan there in college, our relationship on a good path.
- [46:48]
Tim Miller
That is so cute.
- [46:49]
Bill Kristol
And this was her favorite, I believe. Yeah. And this was her favorite poem. Anyway, please read the poem. It's very short. To a friend whose work has come to nothing, now all the truth is out Be secret and take defeat from any brazen throat wrote. For how can you compete being honor bred with one who were it proved he lies were neither shamed in his own nor in his neighbor's eyes. That's the first half of the poem, and that's the key part. Yeah, I mean, he was honor bred. Muller. And this is what's so insightful, I think, about Yates. Where it proved he lies were neither shamed in his own nor in his neighbor's eyes. That's been the key to Trump's success. Right. He has no shame, but unfortunately, many of his neighbors and associates and some of the American public seem to have no shame either.
- [47:35]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it has been a superpower shamelessness. And shamelessness gives you an advantage against people that are honor bred. Hopefully not permanently. I guess I was stretched to find some glimmer of hope in that poem. And I guess it's part, as we discussed on Saturday, the idea that, that at least Bob Mueller's children, his progeny, the folks who read about him in the history books, will know that he was honor bread. And there's something to be said for that, of course. But I do think you see this a lot of how the Democrats and Democratic base is processing the Trump era, that there is a big pull for people to Decide maybe it's time to be a little bit more shameless and a little less honor bred ourselves. And it's hard not to understand the draw of that in the moment.
- [48:29]
Bill Kristol
Maybe the middle ground is to not be shameless. Exactly. But don't let being honor bred make you pull your punches. And you could argue Mueller did a little bit because he felt so constrained by this previous Justice Robert opinion. You couldn't indict a president, therefore you couldn't even recommend the indictment of a president. And all you could do is the double negative of. We're not saying here that he didn't commit a crime. And so Mueller may have been too much, honestly a product of a honorable, pure era where one did pull one's punches to some degree. And how does JVAL like to put it that so much of our politics turns out to have depended on the honor system. And you can't have one party on the honor system and the other not. Doesn't mean you have to be shameless, but it does mean you have to be aggressive. And this is your recommendation. You can be responsible and aggressive, right?
- [49:13]
Tim Miller
It is. It is my recommendation. Okay. I want to end on a little bit of a lighter note, a palate cleanser for the podcast, if you will. Andrew Kaczynski over at CNN was going through some old podcast interviews of Greg Phillips, who was a very important role at fema, which is, you know, an agency that does things. It's not kind of like Commerce Department where you would be a deputy to Howard Lutnick. It's like he is in charge of emergency response. Something very important for people all across the country, acutely here in New Orleans. Here is Greg Phillips talking about, about an interesting life experience. We had a teleport incident, two of them. And I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was.
- [49:55]
Ryan Seacrest
That man who is, yes, talking about teleporting to a Waffle House is Greg Phillips. And he now holds one of the most important jobs at fema, overseeing the Office of Response and Recovery.
- [50:06]
Tim Miller
It was an incredibly frightening moment, I would think. So experience yourself in your car flying through the air. But I tell you, teleporting is no fun. You know, I would say in college a couple of times I kind of came to at a Waffle House. I wouldn't say that it was teleporting, but that experience, I think is one that others have, you know, could relate to. Until he gets to the part where he's in his car. I guess I'm a little Bit concerned about the driving, the quality of the driving that was happening in that car that teleported 50 miles to a Waffle House.
- [50:45]
Bill Kristol
I think his car was good like a Jetson's. It was not on the highway. It was going up in the air and then landing at the Waffle House. That's my interpretation of what Mr. Phillips went there. Yeah, it is kind of terrifying. I couldn't quite tell whether he was most terrified by the teleporting side or the Waffle House or ending up at a Waffle House, but I guess it was the teleporting side.
- [51:05]
Tim Miller
Where do they find these people?
- [51:07]
Bill Kristol
It's unbelievable, isn't it?
- [51:08]
Tim Miller
Right?
- [51:08]
Bill Kristol
I mean, it's like, you know, you think they're venal, they're corrupt, they're authoritarian, they're semi fascist, they're bigoted, they're horrible in so many personal ways. Then it turns out some of them were just crazy.
- [51:20]
Tim Miller
It's the biggest cheat code for jumping to the front of the line in your career in history. The Donald Trump era. Any clown or joker could just put on a MAGA hat and start pretending to be an expert on a topic and they would immediately get a job that, like, they're in a Democratic administration. They're like 10 strivers from Princeton competing over the job, you know, working their whole career to go up the ladder. And these guys just catapulted in front of the line by being shameless Donald Trump supporters. And now we have somebody who believes that he teleported to a Waffle House running emergency response for the country. So I hope you can sleep well at night thinking about that one. Everybody speechless. I'm still speechless. We'll leave it there. We have a big week coming. I had so many guests. I wanted to get to that. We've got pray for Jason and Katie and Katie and the editing team because we have some double headers coming. They're going to be some marathon pods coming. Lots of content for your ears and eyes this week. So do stick around for that. And on top of that, that, I'm going back to the live streaming thing tomorrow night, Tuesday evening. Not sure what time yet, but keep an eye on your YouTube feed. Press the little. Press the little alert bell and I will be. I'll be live streaming with a glass of or orange wine or something tomorrow night. And so much, much, much to come. And, you know, check out Bill Crystal and his Morning Shots newsletter. Appreciate you, Bill.
- [52:52]
Bill Kristol
Thank you.
- [52:52]
Tim Miller
We'll see you next week. Everybody else, we'll see you tomorrow for a Big Show Show Peace. The Borg Podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
- [53:28]
Ryan Seacrest
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