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- [00:00]
Bill Kristol
Having MG can make cooking difficult, but
- [00:03]
Tim Miller
over the years, I've found some really
- [00:04]
Bill Kristol
helpful tools and tips that I'm excited to share. Hi, I'm Alicia. I think cooking should always be fun, creative, and of course, delicious.
- [00:13]
Tim Miller
These Black Bean Burgers are hearty, full
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Bill Kristol
of flavor and MG friendly.
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Tim Miller
You're gonna love them. Check out Alicia's Black Bean Burger cooking video and other recipes. Full of tips and tricks for managing common MG symptoms while cooking only at mg-united.com Ready, let's cook.
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Bill Kristol
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Tim Miller
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- [00:58]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bullborg Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. We are here with Bill Kristol. As always, just wanted to shout out everybody I saw out at Jazz Fest this weekend, especially the guy, the couple actually from Central Illinois wearing Tim is Always Right shirts and this Bulwark Oasis hat. I received so many pictures from people that got selfies with these characters and so it was great. I also did an interview on the Alison Minor stage of Young River Eckert. It was nice to see some of y' all out there. And so I was a little distant from the craziness in D.C. for that reason, but I was present with the Bulwark community. Bill, you had to suffer through a Sunday livestream about all this nonsense, so I might have to carry a heavier load today. But how you feeling?
- [01:45]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, you should do that. I didn't know you had relatives from Central Illinois. That's nice. They're nice that they're showing up wearing your shirt.
- [01:51]
Tim Miller
It would be strange if that was my aunt. It was strange as it was, but I appreciated it. And you know, one more weekend ahead of us. Unfortunately, we have to start with the nonsense at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Obviously by this point, people have seen there was, I guess you call him a gunman that had stayed at the hotel the night before that tried to storm the dinner. The president and others were evacuated. He didn't even make it to the floor that the dinner was on. So I feel like there's a little bit of kind of misunderstanding about what actually happened. But that said, he did engage. The Secret Service is now in custody. There's a ton of discourse around this. We're going to try to get through it as quickly as possible. The most Annoying elements of the discourse. But Bill, why don't you start with what you were vamping about in the newsletter this morning.
- [02:40]
Bill Kristol
Well, obviously I deplore violence and efforts to use violence in this way or anyway, really, we should be clear about that 100%. One thing that. Yeah, we've both said that I think and should. Having said that, one thing that's maybe. I think that is striking about this pro democracy movement that we are parts of, I think is how committed it's been to nonviolence. And pretty strikingly so. I mean, they could easily have been fudging and stuff at the margins, but obviously members of Congress are going to say they're against violence and they are. But the no Kings marches, which were the more mass protest side of the movement, you might say the organizers just got out of their way to say over and over again, it's on the website that these are going to be nonviolent, that we should be peaceful and lawful. And people were incidentally, 8 million people. Right. So this is a genuine nonviolent resistance. Now, I did notice that some MAGA types who decided, I'm not sure based on what, but that the shooter attended a local no Kings rally are using that to try to discredit the entire no Kings. And that's the kind of thing that people need to push. We all should push back on. There should be no giving of ground here. No. Oh, well, yeah, it's kind of a problem, you know, maybe on the fringes. No. 8 million people showed up. Peaceful, lawful protests. One person showed up who then turned out to go to Washington and try to commit violence. That person should be deplored and punished. But it does not tarnish the movement at all. There's no evidence anyway. It doesn't. And I think it's very important to make that point. And it's very important now to fight back aggressively against the attempts by the Trump administration and all their lackeys in Congress and outside to try to use this as an excuse, to use this moment as an excuse to intensify their attacks on free speech, on dissent, on using the federal government to criminalize dissent, on passing bad legislation on the grounds that it's necessary at this moment of this national emergency and let's pass the bad 702 legislation or the bad DHS legislation and so forth. It's striking how quickly they went to that by Sunday. That was the talking point of Ron Johnson and Jim Jordan on the talk shows on Sunday. Totally unconnected. Right. 702 has nothing to do with what happened? Funding for ICE and the Border Patrol has nothing to do with what happened, but it's a moment to take advantage of. And the Trump administration. And Trump personally, of course, have always been pretty good at trying at least to take advantage of such moments.
- [05:03]
Tim Miller
And we saw this also as well, with the stupid ballroom discourse, which we can kind of just dispense with really quickly. But that was what was happening on social media, was that this is why we need the Trump Ballroom, that he is building illegally without support for Congress after just sending a wrecking ball to the People's House. These two things have nothing to do with each other for starters. Again, I just want to reiterate, we'll hopefully do some more on the Secret Service stuff tomorrow because a lot of sub stories, but just fundamentally, the shooter didn't get anywhere near the President. Like, literally, the shooter wasn't even on the same floor as the President. We've all been to this dinner. I haven't been in many years because it's stupid. So we'll get to that next. But go down escalators to get to the ballroom at the Hinckley Hilton. And he was stopped on the floor above. And so, okay, so just for practical purposes, I don't know what the security issue was. And then secondarily, you wouldn't have had this dinner in the ballroom at the White House, because it's the White House correspondents dinner. It wasn't the President's event. He is invited as a guest. And so the whole thing is just kind of post facto kind of rationalization for Trump's kind of soft, authoritarian desire to remake Washington and his image.
- [06:18]
Bill Kristol
Just two quick points on the ballroom thing, which is just. It was Trump himself, of course, who brought it up right away. I mean, within maybe an hour after the dinner, I think on social media and that press conference he had around 10:30 at night. So this isn't just, you know, Maga Mooks doing this. This is Trump himself making the case. It's very revealing, don't you think, about Trump? Because he assumes that any dinner he's at is about him and that he would, therefore, if he had the ballroom, leaving aside the fact that it only seats third of what the Washington Hilton does, and all this, it would be moved to his ballroom. And I guess it would be his dinner. It would be his dinner. It would be at the White House. He would control the White House, would control the guest list. The White House would presumably run the dinner. The White House would, I mean, as the White House does when it hosts a dinner. It's Trump's dinner. He welcomes people, he arranges the entertainment or so forth. The White House does White House social staff. The whole point of the White House correspondence dinner is it's not that, but it's so revealing that Trump assumes that it should be that. Right? And he assumes any dinner he goes to, Chamber of Commerce, National Farm Bureau, all the million things people speak at, presidents speak at, politicians speak at, that they should be at that ballroom. Because he thinks it's not just that he thinks it's about him and it's not just that. Of course, there are special security precautions that are taken wherever he goes and that's fine. But he thinks, not just that it's about him, but he thinks that he should run it. The authoritarianism that lurks behind the ballroom thing, I guess, is what I'm struck by. Just in the way Trump presents it, as you say, and thinking that this would be something that he should be
- [07:45]
Tim Miller
running the press dinner because he controls the press. Which takes us to like, why I was checked out from the weekend to begin with and you know, why I wasn't flying to Washington for this, which is that, you know, I don't understand why the press was in the first place even participating in this kind of tuxedo and ball gown awards dinner and toast with a president who is engaging in a full out assault on them and many of the people in attendance. This president is suing. He's trying to sue multiple outlets to shut them up. Getting multiple outlets to, you know, make payments, you know, to him as part of like totally, totally rigged, you know, agreements after he bullied them with lawsuits. And then on top of that, he had a dinner with CBS the night before. CBS had a toast to like him and their correspondence where he gave an hour long speech in private. They didn't report on it. We don't, we don't know what he said at the speech. The CBS journalists did not. On what the President said to them at their toast. You assume he was insulting people and doing his insult comedy act like he always does. He is orchestrating the takeover of multiple outlets that were in attendance at that dinner by one of his billionaire buddies. The whole dinner shouldn't have taken place and they're going to do it again in a month. And the idea they're going to let Trump stand up there and insult and berate them while he is trying to silence them and use the levers of power that he has to manipulate them and control them. The whole dinner, a total Fucking sham. I think that it was in that way, just like the existence of the dinner was a gift to him.
- [09:28]
Bill Kristol
Well, it's certainly the fact that he was an honoree. That's the official title. He was up on the stage because he was going to be asked to speak because he's an honored guest. I mean, there were many guests at the dinner, and I. He could have sat there in the audience, I suppose, but that wouldn't be the way it would work, obviously. And so, yes, he's an honoree of the press corps, whom, as you say, he's suing and attacking in all kinds of ways, whom he's called traitors. Right. Whom personally he's insulted in the most grotesque ways. Insulting women for their looks, insulting people with medical disabilities for their disability. I mean, that was a member of the press way back in 2015. Right. I mean, this is what he's done for ages. And the press corps response is, we'd like to honor you, Mr. President.
- [10:08]
Tim Miller
We'd like to have a toast and let you. And we'd like to sit there and be humiliated as you insult us. So the whole thing was a sham. Having the dinner, not the shooting. We're gonna get to that in a second. That wasn't a sham. We're coming back to that. One more thing that you just mentioned, though, that I think bears discussion about this resistance and this movement and the opposition to him and what is not only appropriate but praiseworthy and what is outside the bounds, and it is totally, absolutely fine. People should feel unvarnished to not only criticize the president, but criticize him in harsh and personal terms. He deserves it. Words are not violence. Like, you can use words to call for violence, but criticisms are not violence. Okay. This was. I felt this way when there was some of the stuff on in campus protest culture where people are like, we need a safe space from speakers we don't like. It's like, no, sorry. Words are not violence. In a free country, people can say what they want. And I just. I was struck watching Jamie Raskin kind of get bullied on CNN over the weekend. This always happens where there's some political violence. People are like, well, what about the rhetoric? So what about the rhetoric? It's like, it's not the rhetoric. It's like, we have people with mental health issues in the country and very easy access to firearms. Like, that's why this happens. You know, it is not, you know, the manner in which people were speaking about Donald Trump on this week, on the Sunday shows. It's like, the whole thing is insane. And Jamie Raskin ends up being like, why? I have no personal issues with Trump. I just. I just oppose his policies. And it's like, no, I pose his policies and I have personal issues with him. He's. He's a horrible president. He's a terrible president. And I abhor any attempt to do violence, violence against him. Like, those things live totally peacefully together. Like the positions of, of having harsh criticism of the president, even in personal terms, and also opposing in all forms, any attempt to violence. Like, that is not complicated. Anybody that doesn't have a baby brain should be able to understand that. And yet, after every one of these things, we go round and round on the cable news panels, you know, about trying to police people's rhetoric. It's crazy.
- [12:17]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I totally agree. And the criticisms of the president, of the administration's policies and administration's rhetoric, genocide and so forth for a nation, civilization and all that, those criticisms are as true today as they were Saturday afternoon. Right. And there's no reason not to make them honestly. And not honestly. There is no reason not to make them, period. We were joking this morning, doing the headlines for morning shots. I suggested Orange Man Bad. Orange man still bad. You know, this is your formula, I believe. Orange man bad. I give you credit for that. I don't know if that's actually your original formulation. I believe it is.
- [12:50]
Tim Miller
No, it was not my original formulation, but I did.
- [12:53]
Bill Kristol
You embraced it?
- [12:54]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I did embrace it and I wrote about how important it is. Actually, people, people tried to tarnish the phrase Orange man bad and say that it was cringe. And I wanted to retake it back for ourselves because it actually is really. All you need to know about the last decade is that the Orange man is bad. Everything else is kind of superfluous.
- [13:08]
Bill Kristol
And you know what? He was bad on Saturday and he's bad today. And we deplore violence against him. And being bad doesn't mean anyone should take matters into their own hands and shoot people at all, obviously. But yes, his administration is bad. And he's not a great person either.
- [13:22]
Tim Miller
He isn't. He's horrible. And we shouldn't be shocked. This is not hard. The last thing that I wanted to rant about on this topic is there is some stupid discourse coming from in our own ranks about this. You saw this immediately after the shooting, which is that this was a false flag attempt. This was fake. The President did this himself because he wanted the attention. Just for starters, the idea that Donald Trump would want to do this right before he had the chance to stand on stage and do his favorite thing, which is insult the press for an hour. I find that very hard to believe. And I think Donald Trump was championing at the bit to have that evening. And if you want any evidence of that, he wants to do it again in a month. So I think he was very excited to dunk on all the journalists that stupidly dressed up in tuxedos to smile and giggle with him. So just as a practical matter, I also just am very annoyed about this because I made the joke over the weekend that people on the Internet have successfully identified 300 of the last two false flag attempts. Everything now is a false flag attempt. People who don't know what that is. It's basically when somebody in power fakes an event, fakes a shooting in order to get sympathy for themselves, essentially, or in order to advance some other policy agenda item that they have. It used to be the right wing crazies that always said this, Alex Jones said every shooting was a false flag attempt in order to get us to take their guns. And now people on the left, they're like, everything's a false flag attempt in order to make Donald Trump more popular or let him get more power or whatever. And it's just like, we have to live in reality, okay? Like every once in a while there has been a false flag attempt. I think there's pretty good evidence that Russia did one in Serbia in order to try to influence the Hungary elections. But, guys, again, what is happening here is that crazy people have easy access to firearms in the country. Like, that is what is behind almost all of these shootings and almost all of this violence. And that is a thing that we should be addressing. And it just doesn't, it doesn't serve anybody's purpose to descend into, like, total fantasy land, you know, where everything is a scheme. Like, these guys aren't that smart. Just like these guys can't do anything. Why is the person in charge of the false flag account at the White House the only person getting anything done? It's like these guys are incompetent on all levels. You think that they can keep this secret? Donald Trump can't keep any secrets. He blurts everything out like the whole thing is crazy. They said that the Butler thing was a false flag. And one of the pieces of evidence was that crooks doesn't have a long Internet history. This guy, Cole Allen has a huge Internet history. You can see everything. He went to a good college. You can see it back in 2017. You can see everything that he's posted. He posts a lot on Blue Sky. Ken Klippenstein interviewed some of his friends. He had a psychotic break and easy access to guns. The idea that, I mean, what, the CIA planted this guy 10 years ago and had him post a lot of anti Trump stuff as part of this cover story because maybe Donald Trump would get elected 10 years later and they could use him as part of. It's all nonsense. It didn't happen. Free yourself from it. Truth is an important part of democracy. And if you let yourself get sucked up by a bunch of lies and crazy, it's going to lead to negative impacts on democracy. We've seen that very clearly on the right. So there's my rant about that. Bill. I don't know if you have anything like that.
- [16:40]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I kind of just ignored all that false flag stuff that you're right to call it out and, and others should because that is not, you know, a sane or healthy part of the deferred democracy movement and people should fix that in themselves. Or we should just say, as you just said eloquently, that that is wrong. You know, it was an attempted act of violence and we deplore that, you know.
- [17:01]
Tim Miller
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- [19:24]
Bill Kristol
And to the degree that one engages with cranks, one engages to try to lead them out of, to say, look, this thing here is a reasonable point because there is evidence for it, and it's an attempt to lead them out of being cranks, not to double down on being a crank.
- [19:39]
Tim Miller
Okay, I'm done with this. Do you have anything else you want to say about the dinner? Let's move on. Okay. The Iran war. So since Friday, I guess here's the update essentially from the two sides in the war. Iran has an offer that they'll open the strait on their terms and agree to end the war as long as there's no further nuclear talks. That part, the nuclear enrichment talks, the canister get kicked down the road. I should also note that this offer comes from Iran, but I forgot how to say the foreign minister's name. Aragachi, I think.
- [20:12]
Bill Kristol
I think so.
- [20:13]
Tim Miller
He said that there's also no consensus inside the Iranian leadership for how to respond to U.S. demands. Part of the problem with, like, the initial effort here to just decapitate not only the ayatollah, but everyone else that could have succeeded him is that there are now a bunch of factions inside the new ayatollah, we don't even know it could be in a coma. Like, we don't know exactly what's going on. He's suffered serious injuries, so we don't even know who we're negotiating with. So that does make negotiating ceasefires a little challenging on our side. Trump said on Fox over the weekend that his current plan is he's hoping that the oil blockade is going to lead Iran to cave. He thinks it's going to cause systemic issues in Iran if they can't move oil out of the country onto the seas. So that is the current state of play. Doesn't seem like a solution is around the corner here, Bill. But what do you make of it?
- [21:07]
Bill Kristol
I mean, it's pretty amazing eight weeks in that Iran clearly feels they have the upper hand and is playing those cards. If I could use Trump's favorite analogy, they're playing the cards they have pretty aggressively. And we're saying, ooh, gee, we hope we can. Hope there can be peace soon and maybe the Strait could be opened. And maybe we won't even look too closely at the details of how much control you'll still have over it and what tolls you might exact after it's opened. And I get the feeling that, I don't know, we'll see on the nuclear thing whether there isn't some kind of Trump really wants out of it. And I think the Iranians, they're actually being a little more aggressive in pushing their advantage than I might have expected, because obviously Israel and we could still do an awful lot of dam, but here we are very hard to see that this is working out well. And look, and the one thing Trump never mentions, or I've got patience, I've got plenty of time, is the Strait of Hormuz is closed. The damage that's being done is being done to the global economy and to our economy, not just on oil, gas prices and on oil, but on petrochemicals and all kinds of things which people have extensively written about. It's not like once it's closed, it's closed. And so that sort of. That's part of the cost of the war, like blowing up someplace or something? No, each day it's closed increases the cost. So the idea that Trump is just sitting there patiently, it's nice that he's patient, but I don't think an awful lot of businesses and other finance ministries and others around the world, I think that's just great. And we can just go on like this forever. So the pressure will Be on Trump. I don't know. He could start bombing again, I guess he could go to ground troops. I can't believe he will. He could just.
- [22:33]
Tim Miller
He doesn't seem to want to. I mean, his own ceasefire expired and he was making threats about how he's going to escalate and then he pretended like they had a deal because he unilaterally didn't want to go back to bombing.
- [22:47]
Bill Kristol
So I think he'll hope maybe things gets a good break in the next few days. Maybe. There is more pressure on Iran internally than we know. The regime's a little unstable, but I still think we're heading towards a pretty humiliating defeat, really. A defeat in which Iran emerges with whatever actually they do with the Strait over the next weeks and months. They have established the principle that they can close it and they haven't paid a fundamental price for doing so. Most of the damage was done actually probably before they did that. Right. So that's very, very bad for them. And the nuclear thing is left unresolved and our credibility is in tatters in the region and elsewhere. Very bad. And I think the Iranian foreign minister is visiting Putin today.
- [23:29]
Tim Miller
Yes, true.
- [23:30]
Bill Kristol
China's in the mix.
- [23:31]
Tim Miller
You know, it's really, he had a meeting with Oman. Them, Oman and the Iran are now talking about that toll booth that they can put onto the street. So, you know, conceivably, you know, a whole new funding source, semi permanent funding source for, for Iran if it, if it turns out like this. And Trump, in addition to what I said on Fox, he's like, he thinks, you know, it might take a couple more weeks for Iran to cry uncle. And it's like the longest goes on. Why would Iran cry uncle ever? They don't even actually care about what happens to their people, certainly not in this point. And so they have a lot more, I would think, appetite for pain or ability to weather pain economically than Trump does. Like you said, maybe some pressure point happens where things collapse and Trump can get some kind of face saving deal out of this. But hope isn't really an option. And it's unclear what their strategy is besides that.
- [24:26]
Bill Kristol
And the Trump administration is talking about. I saw you tweeted about this. I totally agree with you on this. How outrageous. It is a bailout for the uae. So we're going to bail out the United Arab Emirates, which have average income of, I don't know, whatever, $50,000, $60,000 a year. But of course, that average is wildly distorted because the people who actually run the place are zillionaires and then they have a lot of very cheap immigrant labor whom they exploit a terrible place. Why are we bailing them out at all? I hope, in fact, that Democrats make a huge fuss about this. I guess there's some treasury program that
- [24:54]
Tim Miller
they can sort of currency swap. Yeah.
- [24:56]
Bill Kristol
The executive branch has the ability to do that without congressional approval, though Congress could step in and change those rules. And speaking of that, I think the, the ridiculous justification for the war. There was an imminent threat, which if there really were an imminent threat, the president can use force and that has 60 days to get congressional authorization or to stop his military action. Those 60 days run out. I believe this Friday. I think it's May 1 Friday. So even if you buy the imminent threat thing, which no one should have, I wonder though, do some Republicans in Congress say, yeah, well, this is kind of 60 days? I mean, I only mentioned this because a couple of Republicans have used this as a talking point while he has 60 days, you know, so.
- [25:31]
Tim Miller
Correct. I think so. And the Democrats should pressure them this week and I think they're going to have to vote on this. So I just want to think in addition to the UAE bailout, you posted a substack from David Rothkoff that I was reading this morning. And just the cost of the war is also kind of lost a little bit in the conversation about this and the amount of cost that is taking us to run the war every day. The material loss that we're going to have to replace now, potentially bailout for uae, Iran as part of the deal is going to want some kind of, you know, bailout. Trump has even suggested potentially that we might help them with, with a rebuild. And it is mind blowing. Like the amount of waste and the addition to our debt. You can think about what the, what we could have spent that money on domestically and all of that for. Again, like a strategic objective that is MIA at this point. Like what? Like it seems like the strategic objective at this point is like let the straight get it. Which it was before the war started.
- [26:35]
Bill Kristol
Right. Right before we spent all this money and lost lives and killed a lot of people incidentally in Iran too, and did huge amount of damage to our standing credibility around the world. It's really a pretty epic failure, I've got to say, so far.
- [26:51]
Tim Miller
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- [30:08]
Bill Kristol
so in defending his own country. But his own country as a liberal democracy. Right, And a tolerant one and a decent one, which is a very good. A reminder to us that liberalism does not have to be weak. And sometimes it is a little weak and sometimes the party that's on the liberal side can be a little weak. And there's that Robert Frost line. What is it? A liberal, someone so broad minded that he doesn't take his own side in the fight and all that. And we often see this kind of stuff here and around the world sometimes, but not in the case of Ukraine, not in the case so far at least of Peter Magyar in Hungary. So we're going to get our leaders of 21st century liberalism from Central and Eastern Europe. And I guess I wouldn't have predicted that 10 or 20 years ago or 50 years ago, but I give the huge credit to them, more credit in a way that they come out of cultures, you might say that don't make this as easy as being a liberal here in the U.S. right.
- [31:00]
Tim Miller
It makes sense. I'm just thinking about it right now, after you said that people say there's always something about the patriotism of the immigrant to America, somebody that has come here and is new, particularly if they'd fled oppression overseas and they have even like more, more vigor, zeal, you know, and their commitments to the democratic system. Then folks who've, you know, been here a while and, and don't know the alternative. I mean there's something to that about Eastern and central Europe. Like the, you know, the memory of repression and totalitarianism is more fresh and you know, the threats are more real and so there's less incentive towards decadence. That's an appealing theory. I don't know, we'll have to explore that later.
- [31:45]
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- [33:16]
Tim Miller
I want to talk about the domestic political situation for Trump before the shooting. I guess it was. I should just say I do understand the impulse totally wrong to want to conspiracize about this thing because the best theory of that case is that Trump's political standing was cratering and if you look at his numbers, he really was around the W line. W's approval rating, he's getting into the low 30s. You're seeing in the data anecdotally from people that you meet. Just a sense of that Trump's had really harmed himself with this Iran war and harmed the Republicans prospects in the midterms and so he start to get into fanciful thinking about what he might do to co opt that. But I don't think that what happened over the weekend is going to do anything to arrest his political decline. Maybe lets him buy a couple news cycles for whatever nonsense they want to push about the ballroom, et cetera. But the fundamental decline was related to the fact that Donald Trump said that he was going to run on America first and caring about Americans and caring about Americans economic interests. And instead what he has done is get us involved in stupid wars and focus Most of his attention on redesigning Washington and his gold LeMay image. Right. Like that's what he's focused on. And this is not really doing anything to change that trajectory, in my opinion. I'm wondering what you think about that.
- [34:42]
Bill Kristol
I totally agree. And I do think the economy, I mean, he did benefit more than he deserved to. And people like us complain about it and think it's both the economy's not everything, A, and B, it wasn't quite as good as people, as he said, but he did a pretty good job of selling the fact that it was very good under him. And then they did a very good job of selling the fact, which was partly true, of course, that we had inflation under Biden. Kind of economic growth is actually okay. The Biden four years is pretty comparable, I think, to the Trump, almost entirely exactly comparable to Trump four years. But whatever people thought that Trump was better on the economy, that's one large reason he won. As well as getting prices down, the economy's been sluggish and he hasn't gotten prices to go back up. And that's, that's not going to change. That's going to get worse, I would think, over the next few months. The longer the Strait of Hormuz is closed, for one thing, not better. Everyone's been hoping for the magic moment and the inflection point where Trump gets irreversibly damaged. I don't know if life works that way. Democratic politics does tend to be a little more slice by slice, and that's certainly what it's been for Trump over these 15, 16 months. But now he is probably in the even if he's in the mid high 30s, which maybe is a more safer way to put it, he's lost almost a point a month. And I keep thinking when one sort of thinks, well, okay, it's going to stable, he's got that solid base. He's got that solid base and therefore he's going to stop going down as quickly. And of course, there's some common sense truth to that. Right. You lose your 49th and 48th percentile support faster than you lose your 38th and 39th. Presumably, they're the weaker ones. Having said that, what is striking is that the pace of decline hasn't slowed. If anything, it's picked up during the last two months during the war. And there's now real evidence in the data that his base is beginning to lose confidence in and the people who strongly approve of Trump, that percentage has gone down and it's really lopsided now we're getting to 50% strongly disapprove and, like 20% strongly approve. And you really want to look at those numbers because somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, by definition, those are a little bit malleable. He gets some good news, they go up a couple of points. But if you're starting at 20, 50 of people who are unlikely to change their mind, that's very bad for Trump and very bad for the Republican Party.
- [36:48]
Tim Miller
You know, I think part of it is the economic stuff, as you mentioned, but part of it is, look, this is why it matters, that these crazy America first media people are turning on him. This is why it is worth paying attention, as noxious and gross as he is, to what Tucker and Candace and them are saying, because, like, there is some, you know, some slice of his strong backers that genuinely did not want us to get back into Middle east wars. This is why I think the Iran thing is so made at an inflection point, as in, this was the moment that the walls caved in on Trump and he never was able to recover. But I think that why it was important for him starting to lose that category, because fundamentally, there were a group of conservative type voters who were genuinely upset about the cost of the Middle east wars. And in some of those cases, it was because they had people that were serving in them and their lives. And some of those cases it was just this kind of broad idea that their lives are getting worse. Why are we spending this money overseas? Or there are different reasons, but that was a core group that he started with. And this has just been a total betrayal of them on a very fundamental thing. Sometimes people say, oh, well, Trump betrayed conservative principles on, on, you know, this issue or that issue. But it's a lot of times it was on stuff that, like, really only D.C. beltway conservatives cared about in the first place, tariff policy or whatever. Like, there are a lot of America first type voters in the country that did think we were spending too much money overseas, doing too much overseas. And that usually overlaps with the type of person that also didn't want immigrants to come into the country and other views that I don't agree with at all. But. But they are genuinely held. And Trump is just totally kicking dirt in their face on it right now. And so it's like, not surprising that some percentage of them are bailing. And again, not. The whole country is not podcast listeners. A lot of these people are Fox listeners and they're getting, you know, more positive Trump coverage, but some segment of the MAGA base is alternative media listeners. If you just look at the stats, like Tucker and Candace's audience is growing, and the audience of the podcasts that are more supportive of what Trump is doing is declining. Like, that's. That is a real thing. Maybe it's only a couple percent here or there, but that matters.
- [39:09]
Bill Kristol
Oh, I agree. And just other people who are on the, in the softer supporting side who care less about these individual issues, just see the general, you know, fracturing of support and the kind of chaos, and they sort of think, oh, you know, these were his supporters, what's wrong? Kind of thing. It's more like that, you know, as opposed to, I care so much about these issues. I agree with you. The Iran war, wars are wars, you know, and if they go badly, and this is the president's war, this was not a. I mean, whatever one thinks of the other wars, which also presidents have paid a huge price for, they did have some congressional support, at least at first, and authorization here. This is Trump's war and only his war. The fact that it looks like it's going to end up as a pretty bad failure, a pretty evident failure, particularly hurts him. You know, I was having an argument or discussion with a foreign policy friend who does foreign policy this weekend, talking about how all the coverage was on the White House, obviously, dinner and everything. This was yesterday, I guess were talking and not, not on this Iran stuff, which is pretty striking that Iran has made. The IRGC is making the demands. It is now about, you know, well, we'll open the waterway on our terms and foot off the nuclear stuff. And this country we were pummeling and allegedly, you know, was, we have all the cards. I said, yeah, well, I guess we have to. People get back to making that argument point. And he said, look, at some point, these things do get, I don't know, they escape confinement. You know, people just know what's happening. People see what's happening. People are, this is a war. People have been following it. It's been in the news a lot for two months. And they kind of know that this is not the outcome that he said we were going to get to.
- [40:40]
Tim Miller
And even if they're not following the news, they see it at the gas pump. Right? There's just real tangible impact here. And in that way, you said that some of the software Trump supporters are seeing, they do get influenced in some ways by seeing the Tuckers jump off the ship. The other comparison, and obviously all the ancillary stuff around Trump is so much worse. But just like looking narrowly at this decision to go to the Iran war and the way that the Afghanistan withdrawal happened. I do think that a lot of the Biden people that got off the boat with Biden was the sense that was like, I think he's kind of old, but we needed normalcy back. Things were too crazy under Trump. And then the Afghanistan withdrawal happens and it's like, well, they. That seems like somebody was asleep at the switch, how that happened. It just wasn't handled well. And then right on the heels of that, you see inflation start to tick up. And I just think that again, people that aren't as tuned in and aren't as on one team or the other start to look at all this and say, this guy who's driving the ship here? Do we have a captain? Things are getting out of hand. And they didn't care that much personally about the Afghanistan policy one way or the other. But it was that combined with the economic stuff and there was just a sense that started to grow that like we didn't have the strong leadership, that people wanted to get things back on the right track. I do think that there's some parallel to that here.
- [42:08]
Bill Kristol
That's a good point. But also I'd say a parallel in that Biden paid a price, I think, for seeming unwilling to acknowledge that Afghanistan could have been handled better on the withdrawal and seeming almost oblivious to the inflation problem or denying it or trying to, to argue it or explain it away, deny it or kind of minimize it for quite a long time. And I think that's also true here. Right. Trump obviously never acknowledges any problems, and that doesn't matter as much if the problems seem to be either incidental to his policies or people don't care about them, or maybe it's a global thing like a pandemic. And so Trump's been kind of a clown in handling it. But honestly, is anyone handling it very well? A lot of people told themselves that these are pretty particular problems that he has caused or not dealt with or promised to deal with and hasn't dealt with and that he doesn't seem to want to acknowledge. Maybe the little course correction is needed.
- [43:00]
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- [44:34]
Tim Miller
This matters Trump political standing going down because, knocking on wood, he's not going to try to run again is, you know, particularly about the midterms and for me, particularly about the Senate. And so I do want to kind of do some temperature checks and make sure we're keeping our eye on what's happening in the Senate races as we get through the rest of the year. The baseline for this, which I'll just repeat briefly for everybody to make sure if they're not as close followers of the Cook Political Report as I am and aware of the map, the Democrats need to save their own seats. Obviously, the incumbent Democrats or retiring Democrats, those seats need to be protected. The Michigan Senate race is one of those. There's a big primary going on there right now. Georgia Senate race. John Ossoff is going to be challenged. I think he's looking pretty strong right now. And then there are the two states where Democrats are looking to do pickups, where they've won something statewide relatively recently. So they seem more gettable. That is North Carolina with Roy Cooper running a really strong race. And then Maine looking like Graham Platner, Susan Collins. That's a bit of a wild card. So let's just separate Maine for a second. Let's pretend like that is going to happen. And if they get two Senate seats, then you gotta go pick up two in red states. And so Ohio is the first one with Sherrod Brown back running again that people look at. And then you get in this jumble of Alaska, Mary Paltola. That's when I have my eye on the closest. You have Texas, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, even independent running, Montana, independent running. Those are all Trump 10 states. So you need Trump standing to get really low to start to have hope that either Trump voters are so sick of him that they'll vote for the Democrat in those states or that they'll stop home. How do you kind of assess the state of play right now? I think there was a period of time where people were starting to get very excited in conventional wisdom. I was like seeing some posts on nerd Twitter like the Democrats might get 54 seats in the Senate. It's like maybe, who knows? But I don't know. I've looked at the data recently. There's that Ohio poll that really stuck out to me that had Sherrod Brown down three. That makes me think more work needs to be done here. Trump's numbers need to be driven even lower. But I wonder what your view is on the state of plan Senate.
- [46:48]
Bill Kristol
I think the Senate is doable. I would still you probably it's under 50, 50, but it's not, you know, 9010 either anymore. And I think it's very, very important. I think they're going to win the House and I actually got an argument with some Democratic operative. We can't get lose sight of the House. You know, that's where the winnable seats are. Waste a lot of money on these Senates, especially in big states. Obviously they should win whatever they can win in the House. But honestly it makes much more difference to win the Senate by one vote than to, to win the House by 27 as opposed to 22. You know, I think the House will happen now, especially if Virginia gets upheld in the courts here, which I think is likely. Yeah. I mean Alaska, there's actually a poll showing the incumbent Patola head. Right. Sullivan's down by like five or something. So I agree. The Ohio thing is a good reminder that look, these states are sticky and they can look possible but then the last minute reversion often is to the baseline Republican. On the other hand, if Trump's numbers go down a couple more points, I mean Iowa looks like it's very. I think Kansas, we're going to get a poll this week. I'm very curious to see this, that could be in play. And then there are these. Yes. Sort of wild cardish Montana, Nebraska states, Southern states. Mississippi had a fairly close.
- [47:56]
Tim Miller
Yeah. I just want to say the Mississippi candidate is kind of interesting. In that Senate race and it wasn't, what was it, the Elvis Presley's cousin or whatever, Brandon Presley ran down there statewide and got a little closer than you would think. A big black vote in Mississippi. That's a totally different type of kind of strategy than like for Ital Rico like there you're trying to just maximize the black vote. Hopefully, you know, the Trump unpopularity depresses turnout among white Republican voters. Tough, but not a zero percent chance.
- [48:31]
Bill Kristol
No, and I, I mean these states are different and this is where, you know, a lot of people, Washington operatives are like what's the magic? But there's no one. But I mean different issues work differently. If the farm economy is really suffering and continues, continues to get worse because it could be as a straightforward move affects things like fertilizer, then Iowa and Kansas I think really, are they both elected Democrats statewide in recent times, in Trump times, I mean, so this is not like such an amazing thing that a Democrat could win. Now they tend to win the non federal offices because the state offices rather
- [49:00]
Tim Miller
like for example in Iowa, Rob sand, who is a statewide elected official auditor, is running for governor. I think he looks very good. The Senate race is a little different and in some ways that complicates it because now you're asking some Trump voters to go out and chuck two Democratic boxes. Is Governor Ancender? There's some psychological effects there, but I agree. I mean depending on how the farm economy goes, Iowa might end up looking for all the talk about Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Alaska very well could end up being much closer.
- [49:29]
Bill Kristol
Conceivably, I think it's all in play. If it's a wave election, it's getting not quite there. I agree one should be cautious. The generic ballot isn't quite where it might be at this yet, but again, history suggests it tends to continue trending in the direction it's in. Not to reverse back, but a lot of things are going to happen. Will there be a Supreme Court retirement? Will the economy be in six months? How will the war end? We sort of see where it seems to be going, but we don't see the ending. Will there be other wars? God knows what Trump could try. Will some of the election subversion stuff work? How much will his desperation, and I do think there's a lot of desperation coming here in terms of making him more authoritarian, not less. I don't think we're going to see a triangulation situation here. One could see, see tiny bits of it. Let's get rid of Bovino and bring it home. And kind of thing. But I think on the whole, what you see at the Justice Department and in the Defense Department at this point is intensification, not triangulation. I guess some of that might work, but this is a big year. It's really a big year.
- [50:31]
Tim Miller
You know, it is. Scott Colum is the Mississippi candidate's name. I had it in my head. I knew it was that, but I didn't want to get it wrong. And so I just double checked. It's an interesting race in Mississippi, as you mentioned. You said it's below 50%. I was just curious. Curious. Poly market, which I do not support. Okay. I do not support prediction market gambling. But, you know, just as a benchmark, it's interesting. It has Democrats 52, Republicans 49. Right now for the Senate, that feels a little bullish for me on the Democrats, that's higher than I would have it. But it's, it's telling. And I, it also just kind of is reflective about, like that. That's where the real, real battle is going to be this year. Okay, Bill Kristo, anything else? Anything I missed? Anything? Grinding your gears. You need to get off your chest.
- [51:12]
Bill Kristol
I think we got a fair amount off our chest today, Tim.
- [51:14]
Tim Miller
That, that's wonderful. All right, well, I appreciate you. We'll see you back here next Monday. Everybody else, we got a good guest lineup this week, so we'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of the podcast Peace. I desire your adventure. The Bork 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. Allergy season always has a way of sneaking up on you. One minute you're listening to your favorite podcast, the next it's nonstop sneezing and a runny nose. That's why it's essential to keep Kleenex ultra soft tissues on hand. They're silky soft for up to 100% irritation, free skin and allergist approved. So when allergies hit and they will be ready with Kleenex ultra soft tissues for whatever happens next, grab Kleenex.
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