Loading summary
Transcript107 lines
- [00:00]
Tim Miller
The holidays are already in full swing. The lights are up. You got good people, good food and good vibes. And there to help keep that energy going is Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry with that crisp cranberry flavor with a smooth winter spice twist. It's the drink that livens up game nights, gift exchanges, or just catching up in the kitchen with a burst of holiday flavor. It's a seasonal favorite, but it's only here for a limited time, so. So grab it while you can. Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry Sprite. Obey your thirst.
- [00:31]
David Frum
Amazon five Star Theater presents real customer reviews performed by Ed Helms. Tonight's review, tactical jacket. I was living a simple life. Didn't get out much. Then I bought this jacket and everything changed. Women came flocking to me from lands domestic and foreign. On the 245 day sailboat voyage home, I was attacked by a shark. I knew it was the jacket he was after giving up the jacket in exchange for my life. 5 stars. Amazon Customer 69 Shop the perfect gift this holiday on Amazon.
- [01:25]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back. You don't need his full bio. We've done it a million times now. He's the host of the David Frum show now, which, which I'm not considering a competitor. It's not hurting my feelings that there's a new competitor in the podcast space. It's very good and very serious. You should go listen to that if you're not. It's David Frum. How you doing, sir?
- [01:43]
David Frum
I'm well. It's not a competitor because the guiding philosophy of the show is no concessions to listener taste. It's just like, it's just we are going there for, you know, monetary policy, trade policy.
- [01:54]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [01:55]
David Frum
It's the eat your peas approach to.
- [01:57]
Tim Miller
Podcasting that is to certain listeners. Taste, though, with the podcast numbers, it's like everything else. It's revealed preference.
- [02:02]
David Frum
Yeah.
- [02:03]
Tim Miller
You know, I get many. I get emails from people saying, I wish you would do more David from style shows. And then I have a historian on or something. Yeah. You see the numbers go down and it's like, well, you know, it's. I appreciate it though. It's important to get some peas from time to time. It can't be all fried chicken.
- [02:20]
David Frum
It can't be all Epstein all the time.
- [02:21]
Tim Miller
And let's start with Jeffrey Epstein. How about that? In this case, though, certainly deserved. The files are allegedly to be released today, but just before we started taping, Todd Blanche told us that we're not going to see everything, which is not a surprise to me. He said this on fox. I expect we're going to release several hundred thousand documents today and those documents will come in all different forms. Kyle Cheney, who's been following this closely, writes, the bottom line is the Trump administration is missing today's legal deadline to release the files. Blanche says many will be released on a rolling basis over the next couple weeks. Curious what percentage of the total files hundreds of thousands is.
- [02:58]
David Frum
Look, my guiding rule for all of the Trump presidency has been a phrase I've used over and over again, and that is many secrets, no mysteries. There's a lot you don't know about Epstein and Trump and there's really nothing you don't know about Epstein, Trump, they were best friends. The only photos you ever see of Donald Trump where he is authentically smiling in the presence of another human being, it was Jeffrey Epstein and Putin. He hero worshiped with Putin. He's like the little kid and Putin is the, he's the captain of the high school football team. He admires Putin. He hopes to grow up to be Putin. But they're not friends because they're not equals. But Epstein, that was a friend and they had all the same interests, stealing, sexual assault and they may have in the end fallen out over a real estate deal. But they were so close so long and they knew each other so well. And this whole idea that Donald Trump was the QAnon hero of rescuing victims of sex trafficking, I mean, how gullible did you ever have to be to believe that there were such people? There are fewer. You know, the Marjorie Taylor Greens of this world are dealing with the impact of realizing that the man who is the obvious fake wizard of Oz is the obvious fake wizard of Oz.
- [04:07]
Tim Miller
Yeah. On that many secrets, no mysteries point that great New York Times story for folks who have the stomach for digging in by Nick Confessori. In kind of the lead up to these files being released, they did a bunch of interviews with all the victims, just trying to figure out what really was the Trump association with Epstein. And just a couple things they discovered is in the late 80s, a bunch of people literally thought that they were best friends. Nobody can be sure whether Trump actually has any real friends, but the impression was Epstein or Maxwell introduced at least six women who have accused them of grooming or abuse to Trump. According to interviews, none have accused him of inappropriate behavior. None of those six. One of the women, though, has never before spoken publicly about the experience. Told the Times that Epstein coerced her into attending four parties at his home. Trump attended all four, and at two of them, Epstein directed her of sex with other guests. So that kind of tells you what you need to know.
- [05:01]
David Frum
Basically, the question is, who goes to prison and for how long? Obviously, that has to be based on highly specific factual information. You know, even the worst person in the world, you want to punish that person for the crimes they did commit and not for the crimes they didn't commit, or not for crimes that they were in the vicinity of but were not their personal responsibility. But with the president of the United States, there's just a threshold question. Is this a person who regards all Americans, including women, including young people, including kids, who are adrift, as human beings worthy of respect, or does he regard them as objects to be subject to his demands, pressures, lusts? The Epstein story, whatever the exact details are, and we may never get all the way through it, it tells you who he is, but you already knew that, or you should have already known that.
- [05:49]
Tim Miller
So tbd. More on this will come out over the weekend. And if there are any particularly grotesque revelations from the files that we get today, you can check us out over on the Borg Takes feed where we'll be talking, talking about that. It's just my suspicion we'll see. Based on their behavior to date, I'd be surprised if the worst Trump material is in the first tranche. Yeah, let's say that. So we'll continue to wait. He gave a speech I wanted to talk to you about earlier this week, the kind of Mall Santa yelling at America speech that he did earlier this week about how he was given a bad deal with the economy. And some on the left before the speech in the lead up were talking about how this, whatever it was that he was going to say was supposed to be this big distraction from the Epstein files that was coming. I was never sure if that was really the motivation. If it was, the motivation seems to have been a total failure. I was wondering what you made of his remarks earlier in the week.
- [06:41]
David Frum
Two thoughts. The first is, you may remember from the first term the C. Bannon phrase, flood the zone with shit. This was an aggressive strategy where you created so many distractions that your opponents could never fixate on anything, could never hold you to account for any one horrible thing you did, any one abuse of power. Like so many things in politics, as you know well from your long experience, these strategies work until they stop and the flood the zone with shit strategy worked so long as the American economy was prosperous, as it was, by good Luck. In the first three years of Donald Trump's first term, most people don't pay that much attention to politics. Media elites can sometimes, if they can all converge on one story in a time of prosperity, media elites can elevate that. But if there are too many stories, they can't. And since times are generally prosperous, people aren't that fixed on. On politics. When times are not prosperous and they're not prosperous now, the flood, the zone was shit. Goes into complete reverse because there's one story that the person who decides elections is thinking about, and that is they can't afford their groceries and their kids can't get a job. And meanwhile, the President's fixed on the White House ballroom and Epstein and Venezuela. It's his zone that is flooded with shit. And the shit prevents him from getting in the way of getting to the message that he ought to get to. And anyway, he doesn't have a message, because the truthful economic message, the only thing Trump could do to make a difference to the problems that are afflicting most Americans is, say, the central economic idea of my administration, the central economic idea of my life, was stupid and wrong. I'm sorry I did it to you. I'm going to do my best to undo it. You have to be patient as I undo this stupid thing I did to you. But it's all my fault. And if someone else had been president, it wouldn't have happened. That's a tough message, and that's the message he had to sell in that speech. And that's why I was struck. Donald Trump used to be a really smooth con artist. He had a kind of chuckling manner. He didn't look desperate. He didn't look like he had to make the sale or he would end up like the guys in Glengarry Glen Ross. This is a guy who had to make the sale and had lost the knack for making the sale. And I was struck by one more thing in it, which is he used a lot of statistics. And one of Donald Trump's secrets of power has always been he couldn't remember them. And he knew that most people didn't care about them and didn't understand them.
- [08:55]
Tim Miller
Yeah, Elizabeth Warren's got a white paper and, you know he's selling you a monorail.
- [08:59]
David Frum
This is gonna be. It's going to be the best. It's going to be the best ever, the best of all time. But he would never say 17%. And even though most of the statistics are made up or irrelevant, the very fact that he's using them is part of the desperation of the con artist where the trick isn't working.
- [09:13]
Tim Miller
It's interesting that you say that, because it was one of my observations as well. Obviously he lies all the time, and obviously you and I are going to disagree with the substance of whatever BS spin that he's trying to push no matter what. So just judging it, though, on a performance level, he was always really good at, at the flood the zone with shit strategy, at playing the tabloid game of like, hey, I'm going to get you to talk about this other thing. You know, maybe it's going to offend the sensibilities of some people, but I know my people will like it. And now we'll get. Now we'll move the conversation. It failed completely on that score. It was not successful as a distraction or as a performance or as something to move people to a more comfortable.
- [09:52]
David Frum
Turf for him because his people are all saying, I am paying more for my weekly grocery basket than I did in January. And you told me I was going to pay less. And maybe I discounted that and thought, okay, at least I pay no more. But I am paying more. And this time, unlike Biden, who is kind of the victim of a global inflation, you did it on purpose. You did it on purpose and we.
- [10:17]
Tim Miller
Kind of trusted that you'd be good at this. We never really expected Biden to be good at it, frankly. That's what that voter would think, right? And you're failing, right?
- [10:24]
David Frum
So I've got a head of iceberg lettuce here that comes from Mexico and it costs more because you made it cost more.
- [10:32]
Tim Miller
Democracy depends on citizens who can listen, reason and disagree without rancor. That's what we think of the Bulwark Podcast, at least. And that's what students do every day at St. John's College. They have no majors, no lectures, no professors telling you what to think. Just small, rigorous conversations about the great books that have shaped civilization. In seminar, every voice is heard as students wrestle with 3,000 years of human thought. From Aristotle and Plato to Locke and Rousseau, from Smith and Marx to Lincoln and Douglass, St. John's College has long been America's great books College. And theoretical approach to conversation and community means that learning there is different. Every student is a source of insight, and every question is an invitation to go on a journey with an unknown destination. If you believe democracy requires the kind of trust that is engendered through honest searching and through the great books that built our civilization, become a Johnny by visiting sjc.edu St. John's College, the education democracy needs. Underneath all of this, there's a proxy war happening. You can kind of sense that it's not just you and me, David, who have had Trump derangement syndrome for over a decade now, who are noticing how he's lost his fastball and how he's adrift. Messaging wise. You can tell that the power brokers within MAGA can sense it because there is this sort of proxy war happening now about what to do next with maga. And a lot of that has been centered around conversation about Israel and also the conversation about immigration. Like how much of a national populist movement should we be? Should we be heritage Americans? What should our foreign policy be? And Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have been kind of at the forefront of the more nationalist, conspiratorial side of this. Ben Shapiro gave a speech last night in Arizona pushing back on that. That was pretty striking, the degree to which he went after them. And I just want to, I could bear with us with the Ben Shapiro voice. If you're on 1.5 speed right now, you might want to move it back down so you can understand them. Let's listen to Ben Shapiro in Arizona.
- [12:28]
Ben Shapiro
The conservative movement is also in danger from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle, but actually traffic in conspiracies and dishonesty, who offer nothing but bile and despair. So, for example, if you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi loving, anti American piece of refuge like Nick Fuentes, You know, the Nick Fuentes who said that the vice president of the United States is a, quote, fat gay race traitor married to a jeet. The person who said that Charlie Kirk was a, quote, retarded idiot. The person who said, and pardon my language here, it's his quote, that he, quote, took Turning Point USA and fucked it. And that's why it's filled with, with gripers. If you have that person on your show and you proceed to glaze him, you ought to own it. And when Megan said this week, quote, my goal and my job here is to try to understand, yes. Where Candace is coming from on this and says she sees no purpose in inserting herself quote into this. On one side, that is a moral and logical absurdity. There is only one moral side here, Erica Kirk's side. When Steve Bannon, for example, accuses his foreign policy opponents of loyalty to a foreign country, he's not actually making an argument based in evidence. He's simply maligning people that he disagrees with, which is indeed par for the course from a Man who was once a PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein. Check the record.
- [13:59]
Tim Miller
David.
- [14:00]
David Frum
Look, obviously he's right on every point, and I think what he's revealing here is Trump benefited in his first three years from a very strong economy that he did not create. Basically, the story of Trump one is the United States came out of the Great Recession of 2008, 2009 slowly, and as of 2014, it had still not recovered to where it was before. But the federal monetary authorities got nervous in 2014 and began tightening the money supply some more prematurely. And so the economy in 2016, all those years after the, the Great Recession, was still not performing the way Americans expected and wanted after so many years of first real hardship and then slow recovery. So Trump wins in 2016 because of the reaction to the Great Recession, and then the economy at last catches up, gets back on its growth path. And there are three good years before COVID and he benefited from all that. And the people whom Ben Shapiro is referencing, that whole podcasting industry, well, Tucker Carlson was still on TV and Candace Owen was not yet a full blown maniac in those days. They were a sideshow. Well, now all the people whom Ben Shapiro is talking about are much crazier than they were half a decade ago. The economy is much worse. The Republican Party is in real trouble. There's some real issues. And the nature of the podcast economy is that everyone has to keep upping the ante. My son Nathaniel, who produces my show, has a wonderful phrase. He said that in this environment, Charlie Kirk was the apex predator. And when Charlie Kirk was murdered and taken away from the scene, that left a lot of ecological spaces for like, the smaller, meaner dinosaurs to roam the earth. And they're now all in competition with one another at a time when the Republican Party needs, has different needs. And Ben, who is, I think, much more about power and policy than about personality, is trying to summon them to you guys with your insane campaign that the wife of the president of France is an imposter, which even if true, would be not a subject of enormous interest from the American.
- [15:58]
Tim Miller
Well, unless she's also part of the plot to murder American mid level American political commentators, which is part of the theory as well.
- [16:06]
David Frum
That's why you have to go there, because it's, you know, some kind of crazed junkie high. You need stronger and stronger doses of the same delusional medicine. But meanwhile, the podcast movement is moving farther, far away from anything that anyone else in the world would recognize as politics.
- [16:21]
Tim Miller
I agree with all that. I guess by one note And I was. I've false on social media now here I've praised everything that Ben said. No lies detected, as they say about Candace and Tucker and Steve Bannon. Here's the problem with it, though. Trump is the apex predator, right? Like Charlie was his minion. Not to kill the metaphor here, but. And even Ben in those remarks, like no one benefits from, and no one has yet had the gumption to, to just address the real issue, which is the biggest conspirator in the whole party is not Tucker, Candace, but is the president of the United States. Person screwing the economy is the President of the United States. And the MAGA movement cannot possibly move back to, you know, sanity and sobriety and anti grifting when the leader of it is a grifter and a conspiracist.
- [17:03]
David Frum
Yeah, well, Trump is. Trump is a crook way more than he is a conspiracist.
- [17:06]
Tim Miller
He's both, though. You can be both.
- [17:08]
David Frum
Yeah, you can be both. You can be both. Look, through this year, the MAGA movement has this desperate decision to make, which is if the 2026 elections are free and fair, if they're allowed to be free and fair, they're heading for a massive repudiation, certainly in the House, not impossibly in the Senate, not impossibly in governor's races. And if there is a massive repudiation, a lot of things today are happening because no one in Congress is saying, how did the president make a billion dollars from unknown sources in his first 12 months in office? It's very unlikely that he did that without tripping over some crim statute somewhere along the way. Let's look into it. All of those things become activated. So it is a matter of maybe survival to keep the House. And that means increasingly desperate measures. That's, that's the great question. And so if you're, if you're trying to protect Donald Trump and this getting distracted, this discussion about is the wife of the president of France secretly a man, secretly a Martian, secretly a mass murderer, is a big distraction from the thing you really have to do, which is find some way to stop Democratic votes from being tallied.
- [18:13]
Tim Miller
I want to get into the Trump corruption, but you've piqued my interest there. How has your threat assessment evolved over the course of this year on that question about our democratic stability in this moment?
- [18:24]
David Frum
My threat assessment has been pretty stable since 2016, which is a president, especially with a complicit Congress, can do some things to shut down Democratic competition, but he can't overthrow democratic competition entirely. So there's a disparity you can overcome through electoral manipulation, but it's finite. There comes a point where the wave gets too big, where even the things you can do without absolutely overthrowing the rule of law in a way that the judiciary won't accept and using the military in ways that the military won't accept. If the wave is that big, then you are out of resources. And I think we may be in 2020, heading toward a point where the economic discontent is so bad and on its way to getting worse that all the threats that they have in mind when I hear the things they want to do, it's not going to be enough. And many of them, the courts have already said they can't do, like the president taking personal control of the election mechanics. Trump tried to issue an executive order to that effect and was told, no, you can't do that.
- [19:22]
Tim Miller
I was always less worried in 2026 about kind of the voter suppression parts of their plan, because a lot of times voter suppression stuff backfires. I was more worried about a stop the steal thing, more akin to what they did last time, which is that the Democrats win the House by three seats, four seats, and that Republicans in random states decide not to seat those congressmen. And we have because they claim that the mail ballots were fraudulent. And to your point about size, that becomes a less doable effort if Democrats end up winning by 12, 14, 15 seats, or 40. Or 40. Yeah.
- [19:59]
David Frum
So here's the precedent that is really analogous. In 1984, there was a contested race in Indiana where the two candidates, Republican and Democrat, were dozens of points votes apart. And it was pretty unclear who really had won. And it became a big, big controversy. Indiana seventh, I think it was. And eventually the House convened a special committee to look into it, but the committee had two Democrats and one Republican, and it found for the Democrat, and the Republicans were very upset. And in the end, the court said, we're out of this. The Constitution says the of Representatives is the judge of its own elections. We will not enter into who is right in the Indiana 7th. And effectively the speaker of the House said, I'm seating the Democrat. And Republicans said, you will pay for this someday. And I think that has been sort of in their mind. Indiana 7th, 1984, as the president. But as you say, that would work with two seats or three, maybe four. The Mike Johnson thing of. I'm just not swearing you in when there are 40 people who clearly want. I don't think it works. I don't think the other institutions of American life will abide it.
- [21:06]
Tim Miller
I'm a little worried your house is being robbed though.
- [21:09]
David Frum
We have a number of visiting house.
- [21:10]
Tim Miller
Dogs, so it's fine with me. I just want to make sure you still want to check to make sure you don't have an intruder, your guard dog.
- [21:18]
David Frum
There's a lot of wildlife in this.
- [21:19]
Tim Miller
House right now that brings some people joy. I don't really get it, but I appre, you know, I don't like to yuck other people's yum. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. The holidays are a time for tradition. Some people have many in their family. We're updating ours. We get to stay in New Orleans this year and I'm trying to just jump start some new New Orleans holiday traditions. So whatever they are for you, now is also a time to reflect on what your traditions mean and how you might rewrite them or make some new ones. One thing for some of us might be healthy over the holidays, given the emotional fervor and the memories of holidays past, is to think about whether therapy is something that could be useful for you or a loved one. I was just talking yesterday with one of my friends who was in a group therapy session and going through some issues they were having. We were bouncing it back and forth a bit and I do think that a lot of that stuff that sometimes hangs over us, you get a little extra time to think about it during the holidays. You get more family time, emotions are higher, feelings are higher, and some of it starts to weigh on you a little bit more. And so maybe if that's you, this is the time to think about how therapy could help you with BetterHelp. They've got quality therapists that work on a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the usa. They help you do the initial matching work for you. They have an industry high fulfillment rate. They typically get it right the first time, but if you aren't happy with your match, you can switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. This December started a new tradition. By taking care of you, Our listeners get 10% off@betterhelp.com TheBullWerk that's betterhelp.com the Bulwark I want to go back to the grift. On your show this week you had Will Thomas on to talk about Trump's corruption and the dangers of politicians regulating industries they invest in. When you had done the show, the focus was naturally on crypto, which is where Trump has gained most of his wealth on paper at least so far. During this first year, Obviously, that's an industry that should be regulated more. That's regulated kind of minimally, I believe. Since you've taped, we had another news item that came out. Trump's business, the business that started as Truth Social, which is just basically his blog, and then expanded into crypto. And I think it also streams some, like Don Jr's podcast or something. That business, the podcasting crypto blog business, has merged with a nuclear fusion company. It was a $6 billion merger. Nuclear fusion feels like a highly regulated business. So I think that'd be relevant to your discussion.
- [23:59]
David Frum
The discussion focused on two lines that are convergent. The first line is the way that the Supreme Court has, over the past decade and a half, dismantled American public integrity laws. It is now very, very difficult to convict a politician in the United States of bribery. The Supreme Court has said they've got all these exceptions. If you give a politician money, like cash, and ask the politician, I need you to set up a meeting for me with a regulatory body. This is the actual facts of the most relevant case. I need you to say, I'm not telling you to tell the regulatory body what to say, but the fact that you've made the call gives the regulatory body a pretty clear idea of the answer you want. But if there's no actual order from you to tell those guys to give my donor this, then it's not bribery. So the Supreme Court has created this. If the governor is doing what is his ordinary line of business, setting up meetings, unless there's an explicit corrupt act for corrupt payment, no conviction.
- [24:54]
Tim Miller
Wow.
- [24:55]
David Frum
So that creates both a lot of loopholes in the law. And also, even when people do do things that are straightforwardly illegal, huge evidentiary politic problems, because it very seldom happens that the politician is caught on some kind of record saying, you give me the hundred thousand dollars and I will give you the contract. And let me just make sure that that's in writing so that prosecutors can have it conveniently at hand. The Supreme Court has raised questions if the Gift Act. There's a question mark about it. So public integrity is even before Trump, even before crypto. That was gutted. And a little cynically, I said on the show that the relevant decision here was a 9 to 0 unanimous Supreme Court decision because the liberals on the court want to make it harder to prove crimes generally, and the conservatives on the court want to make it harder to prove crimes against their friends.
- [25:41]
Tim Miller
Yeah, Right.
- [25:44]
David Frum
And so that produced a 9 to 0 majority.
- [25:47]
Tim Miller
And to extent that it was possible at all They've dismantled the Public Corruption Unit. Now this administration has, which has just accelerated this, you know, pre existing problem.
- [25:56]
David Frum
And now you throw crypto in. Because one of the things the Supreme Court is very permissive of is if you're running a kind of business, the politicians can run a kind of business. And the crypto industry, it's a number of different lines of business. But the meme coins in particular, which are what, like trading cards? When Donald Trump put his meme coins on the market in January 25th at $75 a coin, today they are trading at about five and a half dollars. Now, some of the people who bought them, some of the people bought one or two or three, are genuine dupes who've lost money, and they may even be irritated about it. But the people who bought millions of dollars worth of those coins were not dupes. They were looking for a way to give money to Donald Trump personally in a way that would pass scrutiny and maybe protect their privacy, too. So the meme coins were intended to lose value. And it's not Donald Trump who's the only politician who can issue a meme coin. The next governor of California could create a meme coin and find to get money routed to. Anyone who's got an important, powerful job can say, yeah, I'm issuing a meme coin, and you know, it's going to lose 90% of its value in the first six months. But, you know, we'll both remember that wonderful moment we had when you put all that money in my pocket, and maybe I'll be grateful then.
- [27:05]
Tim Miller
On top of that, they released the stablecoin, which is the deal that they're doing with, you know, with like, where the UAE facilitated it. And it's financed from a Chinese guy that's a criminal. Right. It's like the notion there is that we're like pegging this fake coin to the dollar, to real currency, but the idea that a foreign government would look at it and say, I could take something that's actual currency, or I could take the President of the United States meme coin that's pegged to currency. And it's preposterous to think that they're doing that for legitimate investment reasons.
- [27:37]
David Frum
I wrote an article for the Atlantic about the stablecoins because they're more complicated and actually much more dangerous than meme coins are simply a way to do corruption, but they don't pose any threat to the larger economy. Trump gets his corrupt swag. The donors get more, some get duped more, get attention in favor, but there's no systematic risk. But stablecoins, these are seriously, seriously dangerous. Because what a stablecoin is, is a bank deposit. You give the stable coin issuer $100, he gives you the coin, he gives you a promise that the $100 will be available when you want it. If you've seen It's a Wonderful Life, you know, any institution that takes deposits is at potential risk because as George Bailey says, My $100, it's not here in the till. It's in Fred's house, it's in George's house. Well, the same thing happens with Stablecoins is the money is not actually at hand. Now, it's invested supposedly in treasury bills and other things, but they're not quite as liquid. And the thing that prevented the kind of bank run you saw in its wonderful life was the combination of strict regulation and deposit insurance. And deposit insurance is paid for. And it's not a trivial payment. Banks pay tens, hundreds of millions of dollars a year for their deposit insurance. A stablecoin is a bank deposit without proper regulation and without deposit insurance. So the reason that stablecoins are a competitive business is you say, look, what if you were allowed to take other people's money and not pay the insurance premium? Wouldn't that be more profitable? I think it would be. I think it would, yeah. Do you eliminate my most important cost? Yeah. But then there's a problem. What if they want the money back? And what if stablecoins get big and they become like as happened in 2009 when this problem appeared in money market funds? People want their money back, the money's not there, and the government of the United States is on the hook. One of the things that the Trump people kept saying, they passed a law called the so called Genius act, very ironically named law, but they said, there's no public money involved here, don't worry, there's no deposit insurance. The government is not on the hook. But if the failure is as big as it's likely going to be, of course the government is on the hook. Of course the government's on. The hope is you cannot have billions or trillions of dollars of deposits not be refunded. That would be the end of the world.
- [29:46]
Tim Miller
The one caveat I guess I would give to that is that I don't know that the UAE is going to want their money back. I think that they're probably getting other stuff. So some of the other purchasers of the Trump stablecoin might be a different deal.
- [29:58]
David Frum
Well, the stablecoins are especially Attractive to criminals and terrorists because again, we don't want to go maybe too far down this rabbit hole. But if you're Hezbollah, if you're Hezbollah, it's quite hard to get into the US banking system if you want to keep your money in US dollars. That's difficult. Banks are supposed to know their customer. They're supposed to file all kinds of reports. The stablecoin allow people who want to hold wealth in dollars, and there is trillions of dollars of dirty money around the world that wants to be in dollars, allows them to hold their money in dollars without going through all that scrutiny. And one more thing about the stablecoin companies. All the big stable coin companies are domiciled outside the United States. They're in El Salvador. I think tether's in El Salvador. This is a who against US Regulation, against US Know your customer laws with other people's money. All of it purporting to be a refundable deposit, but in fact at risk. And it's just a time bomb ticking, waiting to blow up.
- [30:52]
Tim Miller
Just one more thing on this. No thoughts on the President of the United States being the majority shareholder of a nuclear fusion business? Because that's true. That is a true sentence as of yesterday.
- [31:03]
David Frum
Yes. Well, there are important regulatory concerns here, like nuclear. Yeah, nuclear energy. I'm a big believer in it.
- [31:12]
Tim Miller
Same, but.
- [31:12]
David Frum
But it's got obvious safety hazards. And there used to be an elaborate system of controls and inspections to make sure that nuclear power plants were run safely. And if the President has got his wealth tied up, I have no idea of the science of the risks of nuclear fusion as opposed to fission. I presume they're significant. And given what Doge has done to every other executive thinking part of the US Government, what has happened to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission? How intact is that?
- [31:42]
Rocket Money Advertiser
Think about the last time you had to cancel a subscription. There was probably some waiting on hold, some guessing at your password, some mind numbing small talk, and maybe after all that, you still weren't able to cancel it. Good news, it doesn't have to be this way. Thanks to Rocket Money. Rocket Money tracks, manages, and can cancel your subscriptions for you. When you connect your account, you'll see a complete picture of all of your recurring subscriptions all in one place. Rocket Money organizes your subscriptions by due date and notifies you when something is coming up, so you'll never be caught off guard when you get charged. If you see a subscription you want to cancel, Rocket Money simplifies the process. Instead of waiting on hold for an hour. You can cancel it right from the app. Rocket Money will even try to get you a refund for the money you spent on subscriptions you forgot about. Stop wasting time trying to cancel subscriptions the hard way. Make your life easier and go to RocketMoney.com cancel. That's RocketMoney.com cancel or download the app from the Apple app or Google Play stores.
- [32:43]
LifeLock Advertiser
Tis the season for identity theft. This time of year most of us are checking off our holiday gift lists. But guess what? Identity thieves have lists too. And your personal information might be on them. Protect your identity with Lifelock. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss by yourself even if you keep an eye on your bank and credit card statements. If your identity is stolen, your own US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. And all plans are backed by the million dollar protection package. The last thing you want to do this holiday season is face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or other financial losses from identity theft all alone. Make this season about joy, not identity theft. With Lifelock, save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code iheart or go to lifelock.com iheart for 40% off. Terms apply.
- [33:44]
Tim Miller
I wanna go on to some foreign policy stuff. Well, I guess dealer's choice. You had some thoughts about Japan you mentioned to me beforehand. I also wanna talk to you about the Venezuela potential war. Where do you wanna start?
- [33:53]
David Frum
Probably we should start with Venezuela because it's more urgent. Although the Japan thing is one I'm more worried about. Through 23 and 24 a lot of Republicans, not just Trump. Actually Trump was one of the more cautious. Vance DeSantis were calling for military action inside Mexico against the Mexican cartels. Rockets, Seal Team Sixes, naval blockades. Ron DeSantis idea the Mexicans fended that off by essentially appeasing Trump. Trump that they have opened their skies to American drones and they've let the United States conduct all kinds of operations and surveillance operations inside Mexico. We'll see whether they allow military operations, but they've bought quiet. But the energy that makes the Trump people want to do something violent is still there. And so it's fixated itself on Venezuela. And it's not quite clear what the goal here is, what the plan here is. There are no allies, but there's clearly a lot of aggression looking for an outlet. So far it's found small boats, but it seems to be that they want even more.
- [34:51]
Tim Miller
I don't Know, maybe Argentina or the new president of Chile. We've got a couple of right wing governments now down there. One of them will be for it. I'm just being to make a point. It's crazy. It remains unclear to me who besides Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller are actually for this. And even our old friends in the neocon world who maybe would have been for this in a different thing, who are more amenable to Trump than we are, like National Review, Commentary, some of those sort of folks, they're criticizing this. Like, who is for this?
- [35:18]
David Frum
I remain that kind of interventionist. And the Maduro government is not only oppressive and cruel and dangerous, but it's also taken one of the most potentially prosperous countries in the world, certainly in South America, and reduced it to beggary and driven a quarter of the population into refugee status. So if you had a reasonably normal administration that would say, look, I'm standing here with the President of Mexico, with the President of Colombia, Venezuela's neighbor and the largest receiver of Venezuelan refugees, the President of Brazil, and we're putting together a multilateral force that will not only remove Maduro from power, but that will oversee free and fair elections afterwards and make sure there's some kind of order. And the face of this occupation will be South American. So this is not American imperialism, of which so many have fresh memories. I could be sold that project.
- [36:04]
Tim Miller
Okay, all right, now we're talking. Now we're talking.
- [36:08]
David Frum
Maybe there's a resolution by the Organization.
- [36:10]
Tim Miller
Of American States, but not Gollum, Stephen Miller deciding he wants to do it just so that he can do the Alien Enemies act and deport as many Venezuelans as possible. Because that seems to be what's really happening, right?
- [36:19]
David Frum
When the American troops went into Grenada in 1983 under Ronald Reagan, there were 1,900Americans there. There were 300 from Jamaica, Barbados and I think Trinidad. And the reason was not that the United States needed that extra increment of Jamaican firepower. It was to say to the Grenadians, your neighbors are here too, that we are showing a decent respect. And we know that every island in the Caribbean has unhappy memories of American action. So we wanna reassure you that we are acting in conjunction with others who are in your situation and that you will retain your sovereignty and independence after this liberation action.
- [36:54]
Tim Miller
This is one where I kind of don't know how this plays out. Do you have any thoughts on the next few weeks? I mean, I've been kind of surprised. At first I thought this was a little bit of Marco Sable Rattling and again, some excuse making for Stephen Miller to do some deportations and that Trump would eventually taco like usual. But that feels not right anymore.
- [37:13]
David Frum
But what's weird about this is they have pulled together an enormous array of military force into the area. And you read these things like the largest deployment since the Cuban missile crisis. The President is asking for options. Wouldn't you have asked for options before moving all these ships and troops? The idea that they're sort of winging it, even now they don't seem to have a plan. Look, there's no staff process. There's no National Security advisor of the United States who's running the interagency process, who's doing the diplomacy? There's no one. And it just seems to be a series of, of ad hoc actions by different parts of the federal government with no clear plan, at enormous cost and at enormous hazard. And while Venezuela is probably not a very credible military opponent, I don't know that they would be able to resist. There will be costs. There will be costs in life. There'll be costs in Venezuelan life for sure. American life, possibly huge costs in money. And there's no approval by Congress. There's no statement to the American people. There's no buy in. And there are no regional allies.
- [38:10]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And unknown costs, unintended consequences. JVL did newsletter yesterday that folks should read if they want more on this, where he took your point about Maduro and it's like, Maduro's a bastard, but this is crazy. He wrote that Trump's bleed about this is the single stupidest and most irresponsible presidential statement in the history of foreign policy. I defy you to find something dumber. Maybe somebody found something dumber. But just the notion that he's going to saber rattle and be like, hey, we got an armada. We've surrounded you. Give us your oil with no plan. No, I mean, it is. It's just. It's truly moronic.
- [38:42]
David Frum
Colombia was a reasonably stable democracy from the 1950s until the 1990s, but it has not been a stable democracy now for close to 30 years. So there's a lot of institutional damage. What's the plan to reconstitute a democracy? They're capable of it. They've done it before. They're damaged and much of their population is it. And Trump's idea seems to be either Maduro coughs up the oil or we get the next Maduro in line. And the United States would be committing military resources on a big scale to bring another dictator to power in Order to get oil.
- [39:13]
Tim Miller
And then we're going to take their oil. So they're going to have no natural resources and money to try to rebuild their economy and the democracy. It's nonsensical.
- [39:22]
David Frum
Well, one more thing about that. So I'm a veteran of the W. Bush administration and all the.
- [39:26]
Tim Miller
The commenters are aware, we still hear about it from time to time.
- [39:28]
David Frum
Okay, so one of the big left wing complaints about Bush was he went to war in Iraq for oil. I remember having this discussion with so many people in those days, which is nobody goes, if you want oil, you buy it. There's lots of it. And if you conquer a country, you don't get the oil for free. You still have to pay for it. Because it's not just like lying there on the ground like pebbles. It's a product of enormous investment. And the capital has to have a return. You have to pay the sovereign. Proceed. And I just had that argument so many times in 2003, 2000, it would be crazy to go to war for oil. No one would do something that dumb. And now the President is saying, you know, we should go to war for oil. You want oil? There's a global glut. The United States is not the world's largest producer of oil, oil and gas, and I think the world's largest exporter of gas. And there's lots more. There's no shortage. So the idea you'd go to war to get, it's just, It's.
- [40:21]
Tim Miller
I was gonna say as stupid as the idea was then, it's exponentially stupider now. After the natural gas and shale revolution.
- [40:28]
Martha Stewart
You really want to be better with your finances. You try to put money away in savings. You look for deals. You wrote out a budget once a long time ago. You still overdraft from time to time, and you still have debt. The truth is, managing money is not easy. But Rocket Money can help. Rocket Money shows you exactly what you're spending every month. From there, the app helps you make a budget that meets your financial goals. The app even gives you real time alerts when you're about to go over your budget, so you don't spend too much time with Rocket Money. You can also see all your subscriptions at a glance and cancel the ones you don't want right from the app. Rocket Money can even try to get you a refund for some of the money wasted. Plus, you can use the smart savings feature to start putting more money away. Rocket Money analyzes your accounts to determine the optimal time to stow away Cash without going over your budget. Our members report that the Rocket Money app save more than $700 a year. Getting better with money doesn't have to be a pipe dream. Rocket Money can make it a reality. Go to RocketMoney.com cancel or download the app from the Apple app or Google Play stores.
- [41:29]
LifeLock Advertiser
Tis the season for identity theft. This time of year most of us are checking off our holiday gift lists. But guess what? Identity thieves have lists too. And your personal information might be on them. Protect your identity with LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss by yourself even if you keep an eye on your bank and credit card statements. If your identity is stolen, your own US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. And all plans are backed by the million dollar protection package. The last thing you want to do this holiday season is face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or other financial losses from identity theft all alone. Make this season about joy, not identity theft. With Lifelock, save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code iheart or go to lifelock.com iheart for 40% off. Terms apply.
- [42:29]
Tim Miller
To Japan. I want to hear your concerns about Japan nuclearizing.
- [42:33]
David Frum
Okay, so there was a little story unsourced that an advisor to the Prime Minister of Japan, an unnamed advisor, had said that Japan should consider getting a nuclear weapon. Weapon. Now, Japan is eminently capable. They have nuclear industry of their own. They could, they could have a weapon in a very few weeks or months if they wanted one. They have all the know how, they have all the material. They forwent this because of their own history and because they relied on American protection like so many people. The Japanese view is it's better to have a world with fewer nuclear weapons than more our trustworthy allies. The United States have hoisted their nuclear umbrella over us. They are deterring the other nuclear powers in our region. We don't need the moral hazard of this. We don't need the odium of it and we don't need the cost and trouble. But we do it if we ever had to. But one of the costs of Trump making America so unreliable is that every country has to think we can't trust the Americans anymore. And they did this not just once, but twice. So this is obviously a recurring risk that they will abandon the world or do something selfish and imperialistic. They're talking about waging war on NATO ally Denmark to seize Greenland. Maybe that will never happen, but they're thinking about it. Someone is drawing up papers right now for a US War on Denver.
- [43:43]
Tim Miller
And what are the chances? Are you sure? 82 year old dementia riddle. Trump won't do that. Is that a 2% chance? Is it 8%? It's a lot higher than it was before. It's not zero.
- [43:51]
David Frum
And we know that they're thinking about abandoning Ukraine. So if you're a European, if you're Japanese, if you're South Korean, if you're Taiwanese, you have to think all of these countries could have a bomb in a few months or years if they wanted one. I worry that one of the costs of the Trump presidency is it's going to be one of the greatest nuclear proliferation events in world history. And not with underdeveloped countries like India and Pakistan who had their own agendas, but with former US Allies who have said we thought we could trust the Americans and now we see we cannot.
- [44:19]
Tim Miller
That's a dark irony because it was one of the things when you said earlier that the one unifying thing of Trump his whole life back to the 80s, is his love of tariffs. He also was an anti nuclear person back then in his pre days. That was just one of the shticks he did to get attention. And so it would be a great irony for him to be the one that's the cause of that. The other thing is that in the way that Trump is erratic about all of this and so that's concerning, right? It's like you can't, you know, you have to, you have to game out the options of 81 year old Trump decides he wants to do something crazy to stand to power. The Vance element of it also is relevant because you look at his successors and you think, man, they might not be as crazy as him, but in order to appease his people, they might need to feel like they're more ideologically America first and that we might not be able to rely on them for, for kind of a related but different reason.
- [45:07]
David Frum
And Vance seems, who is obviously much more intelligent than Trump and much more consistent and hardworking and more ideolog has really talked himself into a position of America should not be keeping the peace for other countries. And America didn't do this as a favor to other people. America did it because after two world wars, the United States realized the world is not so big. America is very big. If there are major wars in other places, America will be drawn in and that will be really expensive. So for an American point of view, you want to prevent war and the way you prevent war is to make sure that all of the world's or almost all of the world's most advanced, most sophisticated, most militarily capable countries are allies of yours. The idea that Germany doesn't have a big army and Japan doesn't have a big navy was not some mistake made in 1945. You guys, you are so good at consumer electronics. Your cars are. Why don't you focus on that and leave the army? Leave the army and the navy to us. We'll protect you. You won't need one. And your French and Korean neighbors will feel a lot better if you focus on what you do best and let us do what we do.
- [46:15]
Tim Miller
I want to just really quick talk about immigration because you've talked about this quite eloquently in the past. I just want to hear your riff because I guess we were on with Nicole maybe a couple weeks ago with the economic side of the immigration choices that this administration has made this year. Katherine Rampel, my colleague, posted something, I guess it was last night about just the crazy impact on the construction industry and how nobody's pushing back. She said that she called the national institution from home builders, which has been a source of her over years, so it's not like a cold call. And they refused to, to give a comment to her about this. My buddy up sent me a text that he had dinner with a guy that's a big home builder who had been a Trumper who is apoplectic about the state of affairs, who now has to buy Ubers for all his staff to get to their work sites because they're all afraid, even the ones who are illegal. Just wondering what you kind of make about the state of play there on the economic side.
- [47:03]
David Frum
Well, if I remember these figures right back when they were telling figures, it was estimated that about a fifth of the construction workforce nationwide was here, here without status. But in the really hot housing markets, California, Florida, it was more like 25% and sometimes 30%. And there's specialties, especially roofing and drywall, where it can be close to half the workforce in a state like California, a state like Florida. So these kinds of crackdowns really have an impact on the housing market. Now because Trump is driving so much of the economy into recession, the shortage of housing is not as painful. Painful it has been projected. I don't think we have the final figures on this yet, but on the present trajectory, 2025 will be the first year since the first census in 1790, when the population of the United States is smaller at the end of the year than it was at the beginning.
- [47:50]
Tim Miller
Crazy.
- [47:50]
David Frum
Look, I come at this as someone who's definitely more immigration restrictionist than many people were in the Biden years. But if you're an immigration restrictionist, you have to be very clear eyed. It's a cost that immigration is a source of economic benefit. It has other costs associated with it and your mileage may vary. But the question is, do you want to capture all the economic benefits or do you want to even at the risk of the social harms, or do you want to reduce some of the social harms by reducing some of the economic benefits? But this idea that J.D. vance will say, well, we'll make housing cheaper by driving out all the immigrants the United States needs to build, they're building the housing. They're not just buying the housing, they're building the housing. And this is a single entry, bookkeeping entry. And meanwhile, there are all kinds of industries where labor is going to be scarce again. Again, the magnitude of the economic slowdown masks this to some degree. But the idea that you're doing both an immigration shock and a trade shock at the same time and trying to make up for it by cutting interest rates, that's a formula for a recession plus inflation at the same time.
- [48:49]
Tim Miller
I want to lump two things together that I would be remiss not to mention in the Trump megalomania category, before we end the one substantive announcement from Trump's speech earlier this week. I should have mentioned this when we were talking about. It was the the Trump Patriot dividend, which has turned out to be fake. The checks for $1,776 are actually reallocating things that Congress had allocated, which was subsidizing housing for service members. And then Trump has also officially renamed the Kennedy center, the Trump Kennedy Center. So thoughts on either or both?
- [49:21]
David Frum
Well, he's replaying Greatest hits. It was one of the things he did in the first Trump term that was disgusting and odious and un lowercase, our Republican, but that worked was that he put his own signature on the COVID relief checks that had never been done before. Every instinct of a Democratic republic is, you know, these are not gifts to the people from the President. He's not a Roman emperor distributing largesse. This is your money. And the reason it's signed by this obscure figure, the Treasurer of the United States, is to depoliticize it. But it paid off. It really did seem to do him a lot of political good. So he's got that same trick in mind. But because there is no congressional Authorization. He either has to spend the money illegally, the way the farm money is being spent illegally, without an appropriation or authorization, or he has to take it from some other fund that he's got, and that's what he's done. And then we'll have an interesting question. Are military people sophisticated enough to recognize that the reason they're not getting the bathroom in their military housing upgraded next year, as they were supposed to, is because Trump took the money to give it to them in the form of cash, which is taxable, unlike the bathroom.
- [50:20]
Tim Miller
Which was not taxable on the Kennedy Center. The this is happening right now. His name is now going on the building. I wonder if we can bulldoze it like the East Wing. Is that a wrong impulse that I'm looking at this picture of the Donald Trump Kennedy center, and I want to bulldoze it like the East Wing.
- [50:37]
David Frum
Now, one of the things that people like you and me get often asked is, is there anything positive you can say about President Trump? I realize after today, yes, there is. He really loves musical theater.
- [50:46]
Tim Miller
He does. He's an old queen. He is a Broadway queen at art.
- [50:50]
David Frum
He really loves it, and he wants to be a peaceful of it. It's illegal. Just as renaming the department. The Department of Defense was named by a congressional statute in 1949. The President cannot change it unilaterally. And the fact that so many people chose to go along with this absurd practice, you know, why not call it the Department of Booze? That might be even more accurate. Again, the Kennedy center was a creation of Congress, named by act of Congress. Trump can't change that. But we're so used to the law being violated in ways big and small. This one can be undone.
- [51:20]
Tim Miller
It's gonna feel petty. All of this stuff is like, well, could consume another president. You know what I mean? Maybe he knows that and I don't know.
- [51:28]
David Frum
Yeah, okay. So here's the serious point. I think I've wrestled with this point with you before, is should the next president, assuming there is a more normal president at some point in the future, is the right attitude to move on or undo? And the Biden impulse was mostly move on on. Treat Trump as an aberration where his crimes were undeniable, try to get some other part of the government to focus on it. Biden clearly preferred to keep the federal, the Department of Justice away from Trump prosecutions. They were not very upset that Judge Eileen Cannon kept delaying and delaying. I think that suited Biden, too. Was that the right call? I think it was from the vantage point of 2021, it was defensible. From the vantage point of 2029, I think it will be harder to do. And let me introduce the last thing thought. People who have a political science background may remember a problem called the Prisoner's Dilemma. So the prison, there are two prisoners, they're in separate cells, and they said, look, if you both keep silent, you get a light punishment, but if. If one of you defects, he gets away with it and the other is punished. And they end up. The result is that both of them squeal on each other and they both get punished. So what is the solution to the prisoner's dilemma? In the early days of the computer era, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto called for papers, and he said he was going to create a. A sort of mock computer universe, and he was going to play the prisoner's dilemma over and over and over again to find the most stable answer. And this is a long buildup, but the winning entry was a strategy called Tit for Tat, which was cooperate on the first move. On every subsequent move, do what the other guy did. If he cooperated, you keep cooperating. If he punished, even if it seems irrational, you punish. Because over the long haul, if you have the reputation for. If you cooperate, we'll cooperate, but if you. You defect, we'll punish you. It can't be the rule that Republicans get to break every norm and Democrats have to tidy the game, the room.
- [53:15]
Tim Miller
Up afterwards, bulldoze the Kennedy Center. Sounds like David Trump's on board with me. I like that. Tit for Tat. Final topic. You worked with Rob Reiner on some political activism in 2017. Obviously just a horrific tragedy, and I was just wondering if had any parting thoughts about it.
- [53:31]
David Frum
I got to know him a little bit and we became quite friendly. Not close friends, but I gave a dinner party in D.C. for Rob Reiner in 2018. I looked it up, and among the guests was J.D. vance and Usha Vance, who were then the bright hopes of reform Republicans. So I'm unearthing the records of that event for to use in a future this memoir I keep working on. But Rob Reiner was just such a kindly, generous gentleman. He has strong views, and those sometimes could get in the way of appreciating his artistry, but his artistry at its peak was incredible. We watched Spinal Tap again, my wife and I, the other night, and, I mean, it's as perfect as it was the day it was made. It's terrible, and there's an irreducible minimum of human tragedy. There will be people born with mental problems. Some of them will be violent. With all these billions of people on the planet, there's an irreducible minimum. And all the rest of us can do is try to be decent. Decent. And the leaders of society are there to remind us, even if you're tempted not to be decent, that this is the way to behave. And when the utmost leader of the utmost society says, this is my moment to be a real dick, what hope is there for anyone else?
- [54:41]
Tim Miller
That's sick. It's really sick stuff. David Frohm, appreciate your wisdom as always. Everybody else, I got a little Christmas present for you. Is for like 15 years I've been toiling on what I believe is the best Christmas music playlist that exists in the world. And so we'll put that in the show notes here for everybody. And if you don't like it, that's okay. My taste isn't to everybody's. You know, my father just wants Nat King Cole and that's cool. There's Nat on there. I have a more diverse taste. But everybody, I hope you enjoy that. We'll have a couple shows next week before the holiday. Stick around for that. David Frum, appreciate you. Happy holidays to you.
- [55:18]
David Frum
Merry Christmas to you. Bye bye.
- [55:19]
Tim Miller
Yeah, everybody else will see you on Monday with Bill Kristol.
- [55:22]
Martha Stewart
Peace.
- [55:23]
Tim Miller
Rudolph waking up in the road dude dripping off his red nose. Blue and black tire track torn through a beautiful dome. Lead a scene of lightning mcqueen black down at full speed. How many roads must a man walk down Till he learns he's just a jerk who flirts with the clergy Nurse till it burns. I wouldn't be in the seminary if I could be with you if I could be with you. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
- [57:19]
LifeLock Advertiser
This time of year, most of us are checking off our holiday gift lists. But identity thieves have lists too, and your personal information might be on them. Protect your identity with LifeLock. LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second second. And alerts you to threats you could miss if your identity is stolen. Lifelock will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Make this season about joy, not identity theft. With LifeLock, save up to 40 your first year@lifelock.com iheart terms apply.
- [57:49]
Martha Stewart
The holidays are about giving something truly special. I'm Martha Stewart, and I believe the best gifts aren't just beautiful, they're useful every single day.
- [57:59]
David Frum
Day.
- [57:59]
Martha Stewart
Lenox has brought timeless beauty and lasting quality to our tables for generations and their Lenox Spice Village is the perfect holiday gift for someone you love or for yourself. It's more than a spice rack. It's a charming collection of hand painted houses that turn ordinary spices into extraordinary experiences. Imagine cinnamon from a tiny Victorian cottage or oregano from a pastel townhouse. Suddenly, a simple meal becomes a moment to savor. Because spices can be more than ingredients, they can inspire memories, warmth, and joy all year long. Give a gift that lasts beyond the holidays. Discover the collection@lenox.com SpiceVillage AI agents are.
- [58:49]
David Frum
Everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U B R-I K.com.