Michael Weiss and Jonathan Cohn: Animal House at the Pentagon

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast: Michael Weiss and Jonathan Cohn – "Animal House at the Pentagon"

Release Date: June 26, 2025

Hosts and Guests:

• Tim Miller – Host
• Michael Weiss – Emmy-winning editor of The Insider
• Jonathan Cohn – Contributor and author of "The Breakdown" newsletter

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1. Celebrating Michael Weiss’s Emmy Win

The episode kicks off with Tim Miller congratulating Michael Weiss on winning an Emmy for The Insider’s joint investigation into Havana Syndrome alongside 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel. Weiss humorously remarks on not receiving a physical statue but gaining a crucial data point for Wikipedia, emphasizing the symbolic victory over tangible rewards.

Notable Quote:

• Tim Miller [01:48]: "You were made to be rechargeable."

2. Havana Syndrome: Unveiling the Truth

Michael Weiss delves into the latest findings on Havana Syndrome, asserting that recent intelligence confirms the victims were indeed struck by a directed energy device, debunking earlier theories of sociogenic or psychosomatic origins. He highlights an internal NSC meeting where key intelligence members validated the targeted attacks, implicating a foreign state actor—likely Russia’s GRU unit 29155.

Notable Quotes:

• Michael Weiss [03:31]: "There is evidence that has now come through to the IC... a foreign state actor... is responsible for doing this to American servicemen and women abroad."
• Tim Miller [06:43]: "I gotta get Mark on the pod now. I owe him one."

3. Assessing the Pentagon’s “Hex” Operation Against Iran

The conversation shifts to the Pentagon’s recent bombing of Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, dubbed “Hex” by President Trump. Michael Weiss provides a nuanced analysis, suggesting that while significant damage was inflicted on Iran’s centrifuges, the complete obliteration of the nuclear program remains uncertain. He criticizes Trump’s oversimplified portrayal of the operation’s success and underscores the complex intelligence landscape that now shapes future military and diplomatic strategies.

Notable Quotes:

• Michael Weiss [11:26]: "It's very likely that Fordo has been damaged to the point almost of disrepair, it's not operational."
• Tim Miller [19:10]: "Have you seen anything?"

4. The Strained Relationship Between Trump and the Intelligence Community

Weiss discusses the deteriorating trust between President Trump and the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He points out that Trump’s skepticism towards his own intelligence agencies undermines national security efforts and fuels conspiracy theories within his base. This mistrust complicates coordinated responses to threats and diminishes the credibility of official assessments.

Notable Quotes:

• Michael Weiss [17:46]: "The IC will be completely and utterly discredited again..."
• Tim Miller [21:35]: "Now you're saying."

5. NATO Dynamics and European Defense Spending

Jonathan Cohn and Michael Weiss explore the recent NATO meetings, highlighting the tension between the U.S. and European allies over defense spending. They critique Senator Lindsey Graham’s attempt to impose stringent tariffs on Russian imports as part of a broader reconciliation bill, noting that the bill’s initial drafting was flawed and would inadvertently penalize European nations striving to reduce their dependency on Russian energy.

Notable Quotes:

• Jonathan Cohn [41:01]: "He’s got an 84 Senate member veto-proof majority on board to pass this thing..."
• Michael Weiss [47:10]: "The defense without flattering data."

6. Reconciliation Bill: Healthcare Cuts and Congressional Challenges

The episode extensively covers the Republican-led reconciliation bill aimed at imposing substantial cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Jonathan Cohn explains that the bill seeks to remove a trillion dollars from federal healthcare programs, which would result in approximately 11 million Americans losing health insurance and numerous rural hospitals facing closures. The discussion highlights the parliamentarian’s recent ruling that significant portions of these cuts cannot be included in the bill, forcing lawmakers to either overrule the decision or scale back their plans.

Notable Quotes:

• Jonathan Cohn [58:55]: "A lot of them are going to struggle. We’re already seeing rural hospitals closing."
• Tim Miller [65:01]: "It really is."

7. Impact on Americans and the Healthcare Landscape

Cohn emphasizes the tangible effects of the proposed healthcare cuts on everyday Americans, particularly low-income and working-class individuals who rely heavily on Medicaid and Obamacare for their medical needs. He shares personal anecdotes of individuals facing increased healthcare costs, loss of coverage, and the dire consequences of reduced access to medical services.

Notable Quotes:

• Jonathan Cohn [59:03]: "Some of them are going to just go into deeper financial distress and some are going to get sick and die."
• Tim Miller [66:19]: "That’s really what we want, we want to make it as hard as possible for people to get health care."

8. Legislative Hurdles and Future Projections

The hosts discuss the legislative roadblocks ahead for the reconciliation bill, contemplating whether Republicans will attempt to override the parliamentarian’s decision or modify the bill to include fewer cuts. They anticipate further complications and potential delays, acknowledging that the rush to pass the bill may result in inadequate scrutiny and public awareness of its provisions.

Notable Quotes:

• Jonathan Cohn [73:02]: "If you work in government... you have to put up with these sort of critical and in some cases, severely skeptical questions."
• Tim Miller [70:34]: "Is that a good assessment?"

9. Closing Remarks and Future Discussions

Tim Miller wraps up the episode by highlighting the significance of the reconciliation bill's impacts compared to other political issues, urging listeners to stay informed through Jonathan Cohn’s newsletter, "The Breakdown." He emphasizes the importance of understanding the bill’s ramifications on healthcare and the broader socio-economic fabric of the nation.

Notable Quotes:

• Tim Miller [73:55]: "It's one of these things where... it might be the thing that ends up affecting people's lives the most directly."
• Jonathan Cohn [75:19]: "Line two, your second line, simplified."

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Takeaways:

• Havana Syndrome: Recent intelligence confirms targeted attacks using directed energy devices, implicating foreign state actors.
• Pentagon’s Operation Hex: Significant damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities, but full assessment pending; Trump’s portrayal may oversimplify the operation’s success.
• Intelligence Community Trust: Erosion of trust between Trump and the IC undermines national security and fosters conspiracy theories.
• NATO and Defense Spending: Tensions within NATO over defense contributions; flawed reconciliation bill could strain U.S.-European relations.
• Reconciliation Bill Impacts: Massive cuts to Medicaid and Obamacare threaten millions of Americans, especially those reliant on federal healthcare programs.
• Legislative Challenges: Parliamentarian’s rulings constrain the bill’s scope, leading to potential compromises or delays in passing significant healthcare reforms.

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Final Thoughts: This episode of The Bulwark Podcast offers a deep dive into crucial national security issues and legislative battles that have profound implications for both domestic policy and international relations. Michael Weiss and Jonathan Cohn provide insightful analysis on Havana Syndrome, the Pentagon’s actions against Iran, and the contentious reconciliation bill, shedding light on the complexities and consequences of these developments.

Transcript

[Tim Miller]

Ben hadn't had a decent night's sleep in a month. So during one of his restless nights, he booked a package trip abroad on Expedia. When he arrived at his beachside hotel, he discovered a miraculous bed slung between two trees and fell into the best sleep of his life.

[Michael Weiss]

You were made to be rechargeable.

[Tim Miller]

We were made to package flights and hotels and hammocks for less. Expedia, made to travel.

[Michael Weiss]

Get more than you expect with the $5 meal deal. Part of new McValue 5 gets you a McDouble or McChicken and a small fry and a small drink and a four piece McNuggets.

[Jonathan Cohn]

Woo.

[Michael Weiss]

New McValue at McDonald's.

[Tim Miller]

Prices of participation may vary.

[Michael Weiss]

McDouble meal, $6 in some markets for a limited time only.

[Tim Miller]

All right, everybody, we got a double dip for you. Today we are going to get nerdy. We've got my friend Michael Weiss on foreign policy and Jonathan Cohen talking about the breaking news happening on the Hill with, with regards to, you know, whatever, we're calling the bill, the reconciliation bill, the big turd, the big ugly, you know how it is. So I'm excited. Stick around for both. Up next, Michael Weiss, hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We are welcoming back one of our faves. He's the editor of the Insider, which just won an Emmy on Wednesday. Wednesday, along with 60 Minutes, which still existed last year, and Der Spiegel for their joint investigation into Havana Syndrome, which is associated with brain injuries and such. We're talking about that in a second. It's Michael Weiss. What's up, man? Congrats. Do you get the hardware? Were you enough involved to have an actual hardware?

[Michael Weiss]

I was talking to the Spiegel guys today and I said, you know, we don't get to keep the statue, but at least we get the data point on our Wikipedia pages, which in this day and age, you know, I'll take it, right?

[Tim Miller]

You should get a fake statue. I think I would get an imitation.

[Michael Weiss]

Gold wrapped in chocolate or chocolate wrapped in gold. Yeah, that's the statue I'll get. Yeah, it's cool. No, we didn't. I had no idea we were even nominated until very late last week and then thought, whatever. And Michael Ray, the producer of that segment, messaged us last night and it was just a photo of him holding the Emmy.

[Jonathan Cohn]

So.

[Michael Weiss]

So I'm like, oh, okay. It's a nice way to come home.

[Tim Miller]

The birds are awake. They're congratulating you.

[Michael Weiss]

Oh, you can Hear them now?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, the birds are awake.

[Michael Weiss]

I thought we had them covered.

[Tim Miller]

The listeners love your little menagerie in the background. It brings a little joy in the darkness. I've got to do one thing, though. Can we just do. We have so much news to cover. But since you got the Emmy for Havana Syndrome coverage, I'm like, I'm a little bit of a tin pot conspiracy theorist on Havana Syndrome. So can you give me the one paragraph on it? Where are you add on it?

[Michael Weiss]

Well, I'll give you some news, actually, which hasn't been reported yet, which is even better than the one line anti conspiracy theory preci. As the Biden administration was turning off the lights in the White House, they had a meeting at the nsc at which Maher Vitar, I think the number three guy under Sullivan was there with some other members of the National Security Council invited. Five very well known within the community, the intelligence community, victims of ahi, including Mark Palmeropoulos, who's a good friend of mine.

[Tim Miller]

Love Mark.

[Michael Weiss]

Yep. A guy called who's in the media as Adam or known as Patient Zero. He was one of the first victims hit in Havana, Cuba. And the NSC meeting, they were brought into the Situation Room and told you were right, quote, unquote.

[Tim Miller]

Really?

[Michael Weiss]

Yes. And I can tell you not only that you were right, meaning you were hit by a directed energy device. This is not some sociogenic or psychosomatic phenomenon. There is evidence that has now come through to the ic, including new collection which substantiates the fact that possibly a foreign state actor, no points for guessing which one is responsible for doing this to American servicemen and women abroad. And more to the point, some of the members of the National Security Council at that meeting drafted an op ed for the Washington Post which was cleared and ready to go. The title of it was We Believe Them. Them referring to the victims.

[Tim Miller]

Why?

[Michael Weiss]

And at the last minute, Jake Sullivan spiked that op ed from being published.

[Tim Miller]

I think Jake wants to go on the pod, so that'd be a great question.

[Michael Weiss]

You'd have to ask him. Yeah. There's more to come on this, including things that are kind of kicking around in insider editorial chats. New evidence that we've compiled, I mean, our investig well over a year and we basically attributed or implicated. I should say I'm going to be very conservative in my judgments here, my intelligence assessments and because I know we're going to be talking about that in a minute. GRU unit 29155, which is sort of the Russians assassination and sabotage squad they were responsible for poisoning Sergey and Yuliya Skripal, blowing up ammunition and weapons depots across Europe as far back as 2011 in Bulgaria and then the Czech Republic a few years later. And we just exposed them as having had a hacker department that nobody knew about, which was pioneering the kind of hybrid warfare schemes that are now just everywhere and doing it in Ukraine. So not only hacking into Ukrainian critical infrastructure networks, but recruiting fifth columnists on Telegram, paying them money to firebomb the home of a Ukrainian minister, or Daub graffiti on the walls of Kyiv, basically suggesting that the government is collapsing and the only salvation is Russia. They were doing this before the full scale invasion. So 29155, their remit is explicitly kinetic. They're not doing pure espionage. So if they come to town, they might be there to do reconnaissance and they might be there to kind of get a lay of the land. But that means something is going to go bump in the night, right? So that, that itself was very indicative to us that if they're in the places where these victims were hit, and we, we managed to find two victims who could positively identify known members of unit 29155 in the vicinity where they were. One was Frankfurt, Germany in 2014, the other was Tbilisi, Georgia just a couple years ago. That indicates that there's, there's some there there. So put a pin in this because I assess with medium confidence that there is going to be more coming to light, both at the governmental level, but also in the media level in the near future.

[Tim Miller]

All right, well, we keep an eye on this. I'm disappointed. I'm in the market for a conspiracy theory I can really kind of just dig into because conspiracy theories serve you well in the podcast space. You know, I mean, Joe Rogan is crushing. You know, there's a lot of people who do very well there. And unfortunately, I'm, I, I kind of, I'm kind of a conventional wisdom type guy, you know, I think. Which is limiting my ceiling a little bit.

[Jonathan Cohn]

So.

[Tim Miller]

So I'm in the market for conspiracy theories, but I'm happy for that reporting. And for Mark, it was that so much they disbelieved. There was a, I feel like an extended group. Like there was the core five people where it was like something was wrong here. And then there was people who were like, I think I have it too. And that, I think, is what led to me to the tin pot conspiracy.

[Michael Weiss]

And believe me, you know, coming at this blindly, if all I had to go on were the messages I received on my Proton mail. Since I published that investigation, I would definitely be more inclined to suggest that this is tinfoil hat material. Mossad is zapping me with death rays in the streets of Chicago, this kind of thing. But I just want to emphasize, not everybody who thinks they've got ahi, which stands for Anomalous Health Incidence, has got it. The subset we're looking at, it's very small. Half a dozen victims. We have examined their medical records. They were all diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries. We have done extensive interviews with them, including with Mark. Know their backgrounds, know where they worked, know what they were doing, even if they were under diplomatic cover. Nudge, nudge. And these are not people that just simply concocted a fairy tale, you know, in order to. For what? To maybe eventually down the line, get the US government to pay them $100,000 when, you know, if they're high ranking CIA officers abroad, when they retire, they stand to make orders of magnitude more than that going into the private sector. And many of these people were so badly hurt that they became medically retired. They cannot function day to day in office jobs. Some of them wear weighted vests because they have vertigo. Some of them, including Adam patient zero, is legally blind in one eye. Some of them have service animals to get around. I mean, it's not a joke.

[Tim Miller]

I gotta get Mark on the pod now. I owe him one. I gotta get Mark on the pod. All right.

[Michael Weiss]

You should get Mark on the pod. Yeah, I mean, he's been doing yeoman's work, kind of advocating on this issue for a long time. And as I said, don't take my word for it, Biden's nsc, you were right. And he tweeted that. Actually, Mark last night, alluding to this meeting that was had, which nobody was meant to report on, but there you go.

[Tim Miller]

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[Michael Weiss]

I mean, look, I think it's likely that they inflicted severe damage on the physical facilities of Iran's nuclear program. If you watched the chairman of Joint Chiefs Kaine today, his press conference which followed Hex, that's sort of, you know.

[Tim Miller]

We got a highlight reel from Pete's coming up here in a second.

[Michael Weiss]

I mean, it's just like, it's like Animal House has taken over the Pentagon. It's great. No, Kane actually went through a very meticulous point by point with video PowerPoint explaining how these massive ordnance penetrators work and why it would not necessarily reflect the extent of the damage underground. Looking at satellite footage alone, right. There is very all likelihood that all the centrifuges at Ford O were completely wr wiped out. I mean, these things spin so fast. They are in such a sensitive environment that even taking out the power generators, this is David Albright's hypothesis, you know, American physicist who studies this stuff more closely than almost anybody, even taking out the power generators and literally forcing the centrifuges to stop spinning at such a high speed. Eventually what happens is they, they hit these resonances and then they crash against the wall and are destroyed. Right. So it's very likely, I would say, Fordeau has been damaged to the point almost of disrepair, it's not operational. However, the things that we don't know and the things that are going to take time to kind of piece together are, you know, where is the highly enriched uranium that even JD Vance alluded to possibly having gone missing? One thesis is that it is actually buried under the rubble in Fordo or in, you know, in other nuclear facilities that were similarly bombed, not just by the Americans, but also by the Israelis in a, you know, before that 10 day long campaign. And, you know, a lot of this is going to depend on signals intelligence. So what the US and its allies, including the Israelis, are collecting from the Iranian side, keep in mind, the Iranians are doing their own battle damage assessment. They don't necessarily know how badly their, their program has been degraded or destroyed. So this is all happening in real time. Right. And you have Donald Trump now in a, you know, sort of desperate mode to get the intelligence community to ratify his sort of shoot from the hip, shall we say, bombastic comments about, you know, Fordeaux being completely, quote, obliterated. He's coming out and actually disclosing classified intelligence again, compromising the Israelis the way he did in his first term in that famous meeting with Lavrov in the Oval Office about, you know, an imminent ISIS plot which was uncovered by the Israelis and passed to the Americans, which Trump then told the Russians about. He said that the Israelis have assets in place on the ground in Iran. Now that's not such a surprise or mystery. How is it that, for instance, I've.

[Tim Miller]

Been able to figure that out from New Orleans.

[Michael Weiss]

Yeah, I mean, the Israelis kind of came out and said we had a three story, or the Iranians, I think came out rather and said there's this three story drone warehouse in southern Tehran operated by Mossad. But how the hell did that get built without people in place? Right, so you've got now Barnea, the chief of Mossad Saying that there were, quote, hundreds of Mossad operatives on the ground who will remain in Iran for the foreseeable future. Which is also kind of a bold statement designed to psychologically vitiate the Iranians, make them go crazy with counterintelligence and paranoia, which they're already doing. They're arresting hundreds of Iranians they accuse of espionage. I'm sure some of those people, most of those people, in fact, are probably innocent. But the point is there was such a high level of infiltration by the Israeli side that there will be, not in the next hour or even days, but weeks and months to come, a much better assessment of the state of this program. But the fact remains, these massive ordnance penetrators were built for a single purpose, which was to take out Bordeaux in the event that the United States had a military option that it was going to prosecute in Iran. So I'm a little bit skeptical of people who are saying, well, Trump is saying X, therefore Y must be true. No, we find ourselves in a situation. And I tweeted about this. This is a guy who has spent a decade plus trying to convince the American electorate that the US Intelligence community is fatally compromised, deceitful, ideologically motivated, and nothing that comes out of their mouth can be trusted. He would rather take the word of Vladimir Putin about what the Russian special services are doing than listen to his own CIA, nsa, and odni. Now, all of a sudden, he finds himself in a situation where he needs this intelligence community to come out and confirm what is probably true, that the US Military inflicted a great deal of damage on Iran's nuclear program. But lo and behold, his electorate, or at least the MAGA constituency, thinks everything out of the IC is bullshit. And, you know, here you have Tulsi Gabbard, who was famously anti intervention, testified before Congress that Iran was not that close to developing a nuclear weapon. Its program had advanced, but is still a ways away now, completely reversing herself basically for job security reasons. I mean, she was.

[Tim Miller]

And she's been banned from. There's a Senate hearing on this today. Exactly where they're sending Hagseth and not Tulsi.

[Michael Weiss]

Right. So, I mean, can you blame people for being a little bit skeptical that maybe she's not telling the truth? And also, John Ratcliffe, the director of CIA, puts out a statement, official CIA statement, saying this program has been severely damaged. Okay. But then he personally tweeted tweets from his own Twitter account. Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, this is North Korean levels of lick spittle personality, cult behavior coming from professionals whose one job is to be completely dispassionate and analytically rigorous. Right now they are becoming PR secretive agents. Yes, exactly. So this is the frustration. Those of us who've been saying this is actually how intelligence gathering works as opposed to what crazies on the far left and the far right have been saying, whether it's about Russian interference in our elections or hacking operations or indeed Havana syndrome and the stuff that I've spent my career working on now we find ourselves saying, well, this is your bed that you made for yourselves. Now you'll have to lie in it. No one's going to believe a word out of your mouth.

[Tim Miller]

Here's a question, and I was talking about this with JVL last night, is the other element to this is now, what do you make of this? Actually, I'll just put it as a question. Are the US And Israel now kind of at cross purposes about the intel assessment? Because frankly, I've been talking to a lot of military experts and the Iranian nuclear program could not be completely eliminated just from air campaigns. And that was just the assessment that everybody had across the aisle. You could. Right. Injure it, you could delay it. Right. Like, but you couldn't obliterate it just from an air campaign. And so Israel, who has an acute security interest here, Right. In the way that we don't, even if you're even Ted Cruz, is like on Fox being like, they might bomb Los Angeles. Okay. I don't actually don't think that's. That's from a movie. That's not real. So Israel, which has an acute security interest in making sure they don't continue to expand the program, will be incentivized to want to potentially do more, you know, military action as new information arises. Meanwhile, now, in order to, you know, run cover for Trump's bombast, like the US and our interest is now towards like, concocting intelligence to make it seem like everything is, everything is dandy. Doesn't that eventually create some issues? What do you think of that?

[Michael Weiss]

Yeah, it does. And you know, it's not even that the IC is necessarily concocting.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Michael Weiss]

Scenarios this might be credible, this might be rooted in very good human and second. But nobody's going to believe it because it is being framed as just a public relations exercise. You know, the reason this is happening, and let's be clear, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which I'm being generous when I say this is sort of considered the redheaded stepchild of the intelligence community. I mean, There's a reason Mike Flynn was the head of DIA at one point, right. They came out with an early preliminary assessment, graded, quote, low confidence, that said that. Actually, you know, we kind of nicked it. But we only set the program back a couple of months.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Michael Weiss]

Cnn, New York Times, Washington Post, they all ran with this, as any reporter covering national security would do. If I got my hands on a document or I was read by a source, this is an IC finding, I would report it because it's newsworthy, it's in the public interest and to the credit of these journalists, because Trump is now going after them hammer and tong, demanding Natasha Bertrand be fired from cnn. They did frame it correctly. They said, look, this is a low intelligence assessment. It's early days, there's going to be more as BDAs come in, et cetera, et cetera. But what happens is, and a lot of this falls to sub editors and just the nature of a 24 hour, digitally driven news cycle. You read a headline that says, U.S. intel says Ron program still doing dandy, not knocked out. Just a few months. And you know, to the layman, that sounds like, well, this has just been a complete anticlimactic disaster. I mean, we went to war with Iran and didn't even accomplish our objectives. No, again, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. It all depends on what comes later. Now, the Israelis, who, as we've discussed, have a very extensive and sophisticated intelligence gathering program such that they have infiltrated the Iranian regime, and I would rate the Iranian intelligence service probably second in the region, at least up until recently. You know, they have two interests now. One, what are the facts? What actually happened? Because as you point out, this is an overriding national security concern for themselves. Two, how can we help craft the media narrative to back up Donald Trump and what he's trying to do, which is to suggest that a military option was successful, and it's very difficult to parse, you know, the facts from the bullshit.

[Tim Miller]

When we're getting facts and when we're getting. We're getting Donald Trump. Exactly.

[Michael Weiss]

I mean, a lot of this will come out eventually.

[Tim Miller]

It also is kind of one of the weaknesses of having just like an insecure, obliviating idiot as the president, right? Where it's like, and we're gonna get into this in the NATO stuff, right? If, like, countries didn't feel like they had to rub Donald Trump's belly to make him feel good to get America to be nice to them, then maybe we'd be getting more accurate, straight information from Countries that are allies rather than, you know, sucking.

[Michael Weiss]

And, you know, Trump has also made himself a hostage to fortune. So he goes in with a 30 minute military operation, comes out. I mean, he's, you know, I know everyone wants to call him daddy, but if anybody you should be calling Daddy, it's the B2 bombers. I mean, I've never seen such sort of pornographic exaltation in military hardware in my life. I mean, everybody's like, oh my God, these planes are amazing. You know, they're built for its purpose and they've done it. And the pilots, oh, the pilots, you know, they're, they're like pole dancing inside the cockpit of the fucking plane. I mean, it's, it's just, it's obscene. Right, okay, fine. So he gets his bright shiny moment and then he's like, mission accomplished, we're all done here. Well, what if it wasn't accomplished at least to the satisfaction of what he believes is necessary? Does that mean you're going to do it again and thus contradict everything you've just said? And it puts the Israelis in a bind too, because if they feel there is a need for further military action, either renew the aerial campaign or a ground operation. I mean, their plan B going forward from even before this, I mean, they planned for this for 20 years. Their plan B, in the, in the event that the United States did not do what it's just done, was send in a commando team with sufficient air cover, which the Israelis had established with air supremacy after 36 hours of bombing Iran, and try to take out Fordow from within. So, you know, you mine the place. You go inside, you just blow the whole thing up. They, if they have to do that. Then again, nobody will ever believe a word out of the US Government. The IC will be completely and utterly discredited again, except maybe this leaker from the DIA or the nsc, whoever, or probably more likely a congressional staffer who got the DIA assessment, who leaked it up, will be down, black will be white. And the conspiracy theory that Trump has been pushing for so many years will sort of become a self fulfilling prophecy. Right? The IC is now fatally compromised. And this is going to have detrimental effects not just on Israel, Iran, but on other things like Ukraine, Russia, China, Taiwan, shenanigans that the North Koreans could get up to. I mean, you name it, right? So he's sort of put himself in a box here and it's going to be very difficult for him to struggle his way out.

[Tim Miller]

Get more than you Expect with the.

[Michael Weiss]

$5 meal deal part of new McValue 5 gets you a McDouble or McChicken and a small fry and a small small drink and a four piece McNuggets.

[Jonathan Cohn]

Woo.

[Michael Weiss]

New McValue at McDonald's.

[Tim Miller]

Prices of participation may vary.

[Michael Weiss]

McDouble meal, $6 in some markets for limited time only.

[Jonathan Cohn]

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[Tim Miller]

You've referenced it now as, I believe, Animal House and pole dancing. And so I think we just got to give the people what they want. Pete Eggseth had a press conference this morning that Donald Trump called one of the greatest, most professional, most confirming in quotes, unclear why press conferences he has ever seen. And so I want folks to judge for themselves a little bit. Here are a couple of clips from Pete Hegseth this morning.

[Michael Weiss]

How many stories have been written about how hard it is to, I don't.

[Jonathan Cohn]

Know, fly a plane for 36 hours?

[Michael Weiss]

Has MSNBC done that story?

[Jonathan Cohn]

Has Fox?

[Michael Weiss]

Have we done the story?

[Jonathan Cohn]

How hard that is?

[Michael Weiss]

Have we done it two or three times?

[Jonathan Cohn]

Let me read the bottom line here. President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history. And it was a resounding success, resulting in a ceasefire agreement and the end.

[Michael Weiss]

Of the 12 Day War.

[Tim Miller]

It's like a combo between an executive producer at Fox yelling at his underlings combined with Sean Spicer, like a little Sean.

[Michael Weiss]

What's also funny in Cain's presentation, I mean, this is a very serious guy. This is accomplished military officer, despite the.

[Tim Miller]

Fact that Trump refuses to call him by anything except Cain.

[Michael Weiss]

Well, he calls himself that, to be fair. But you can see the desperation for that sort of cinematic Hollywood quality because he goes, and I just let it be known that in the Air Force base in Missouri where these planes took off, there is no volleyball tournaments and no football on the beach. It's like, okay, so now we're talking about Top Gun, which if you recall, I mean, was basically the greatest product ever produced. Soft power exercised by the military industrial complex. Not Air Force, by the way, Navy. But so, like, you know, they wanted this thing to end with you know, a shirtless Val Kilmer high fiving Tom Cruise on a beach saying, I'll be your wingman any day, man. You know, like that's how this is supposed to go. It's all tv, it's all spectacle, it's all pageantry. And people are like, why is he beating up on bb? Why is he so upset on the tarmac? Headed off to the Hague NATO summit a couple days ago, you know, saying the Israelis and the Iranians don't know what the fuck they're doing.

[Tim Miller]

It's because messing with the script.

[Michael Weiss]

Messing with the script. This was not the Hollywood ending, right? Don't screw with my ceasefire. My perfect, beautiful ceasefire. You know, season two's cliffhanger is not yet like, don't, don't, don't get ahead of yourselves here. This is a guy, look, he's, he's a product of television and the tabloid press controlling his own narrative since he was, you know, outer borough real estate developer desperate to make the show in Manhattan right for him. Geopolitics and foreign affairs is the same, is no different. If it's not sort of tidally written up like a Netflix series, it's just, it's not worth it. So anybody who's going to spoil his pageantry is going to come down. He's going to come down extremely hard on it, be it the Israelis, the Iranians or whomever.

[Tim Miller]

You know, I was young, Bluto. What were the characters names in Animal House? I wasn't really a big Animal House man. Blutarsky. Blue Tarski, I think.

[Michael Weiss]

Blue Tarski, Yeah. I've watched that movie so many times and it's actually based on my alma mater, so I should know this.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, well, here's Blue Tarski. That's a big fail for you, Michael Weiss.

[Michael Weiss]

It's a huge.

[Tim Miller]

One more clip from Blue Tarski. He's yelling at his former. I guess maybe a sorority sorority girl. That didn't give him the attention he wanted. Let's listen. There were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance. Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?

[Jonathan Cohn]

Of course. We're watching every single aspect.

[Michael Weiss]

But Jennifer, you've been about the worst.

[Jonathan Cohn]

The one who misrepresents the most intentionally. What?

[Michael Weiss]

What the President says.

[Tim Miller]

I'm familiar about the ventilation shafts on Saturday night. And in fact I was the first to describe the B2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy. Jennifer Griffin throwing down at her former colleague there. It's easy.

[Michael Weiss]

Fox News reporter, superb reporter. By the way, who's had to push back against her own.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe the only good reporter left over there.

[Michael Weiss]

Honestly, she's brilliant, and he's attacking her. I mean, again, it's playing the man, or in this case, the woman, not the ball, as they say, Right. If you work in government, especially if you work in the Pentagon, and you're waging war, which usually tends to go sideways a bit, or maybe more than a bit, you have to put up with these sort of critical and in some cases, severely skeptical questions. And this guy just doesn't want to hear it again, where's my high five? On the beach, Jennifer, you know, I just spiked the ball. You know, where's my, hey, bro, good shot like that? That's what this guy is desperate for. He doesn't want to hear, gee, maybe, you know, some highly enriched uranium went skedaddling in the back of Toyota Hiluxes at some point. It's just not the script.

[Tim Miller]

He's very emotional. He's very emotional and defensive and sensitive. We do honor the pilots here at the Bulwark. They did great work, and we do honor our servicemen and women. I want to offer you just kind of a biggest picture view of this. Got some feedback yesterday from a valued confidant. I've been deeply torn about the whole thing, you know, and at times I've been wanting to. Look, I don't like the Ayatollah. I don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I don't particularly think it was an acute national security concern for us in, like, the short term, it was, like, an urgent matter. But at the same time, I've been, you know, even though Pete doesn't want to admit it, like, they've been getting credit. Like, people have been, you know, saying this was a good mission, heck of a job. The feedback I got was that, like, really, in the grand scheme of things, yes, it was successful. The narrow element of did bombs hit building and did the building have bad material? Was kind of a, yes, that's good. Is Israel safer than it was two weeks ago? Yes, which is good. That said, looked at it from another way, wasn't completely successful. And it can't be. You can't just take out Iran's nuclear system from the air. They lied about it right off the top. Israel did most of the heavy lifting here. And, like, we did the one thing they couldn't do. There wasn't really a great threat to the US Acutely. And now you could argue maybe the threats are higher. You're already seeing this, they're having to take some of their immigration goons at the FBI and redirect them back towards terror threats. Trump doesn't have any interest in the long term goals that might make the region safer. He's not, he doesn't want freedom for people in the Middle east like he, he's happy to have other autocrats running places. And so at that biggest level, like, fuck this, no, it was not a success. What would you say to that framing of the situation?

[Michael Weiss]

Again? You know, my objective here has been very narrow, which is I want to follow the reporting and I don't want to speculate or even offer any kind of editorial comment. I don't know if this is going to pay off in the long run and nobody does. And the thing that bugs me is everybody who is extremely sure that Israel and the United States were not going to go to war with Iran and then they did, then became extremely sure exactly what Iran was going to do in response. Right, right. And you know, I was hearing doomsday scenarios. World War III is going to break out. And what did the Iranians do? You know, they rocketed our air base in Qatar, giving the Qataris and the United States advance notice. So we had cleared out most of our personnel and most of our hardware and everything was intercepted. It was, it was a damp squib exercise designed basically to show their people to save face internally. Because this regime has been, I mean, eviscerated. You know, I think that the one takeaway I would, I think I'm okay in making now is if there is a positive outcome of all of this, it has to demonstrate that a regime that has been built up both in its own internal mythology and frankly speaking, in the minds of Western military analysts and subject matter experts for decades as an impregnable fortress, an empire in the remaking. You know, Qasem Soleimani, and I was susceptible to this too. Qasem Soleimani, he was a superb intelligence officer and military commander. And he did build an incredibly effective proxy apparatus across the region. His death, which happened again, Donald Trump bombed him and took him out when nobody thought anybody, the United States would ever take out the Quds Force commander. I think lead was the first domino to fall and to show that actually Iran is quite hollow and it's quite weak. And obviously October 7th and the sort of multi theater operations that the Israelis have waged not just against Hamas in Gaza, but most specifically Hezbollah in Lebanon, I mean, they neutered Hezbollah such to, to such a degree that Hezbollah came out Repeatedly and said, we will not defend Iran in this war because they did not come to our rescue. When Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General, the entire upper echelon command structure of Hezbollah and then famously with the pager, Mossad, military intelligence, pager explosions, you know, took off the balls of, you know, the middle cadres of Hezbollah. So Israel has, in the last two and a half years, essentially chipped away at the IRGC's power projection project and really demonstrated in a way that the emperor has no clothes. Now, that doesn't mean that Iran is not a threat. And there's lots of things they can do.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, just really quick on the Israel thing though, because I guess that is the point I was trying to make is that what really this was, was Donald Trump watching his stories and seeing that Israel had been very successful at this.

[Michael Weiss]

Correct.

[Tim Miller]

And now coming in and being like, I want a bit of the credit now. And it's kind of like, well, coming.

[Michael Weiss]

Back to the sort of Hollywood. Yeah, the Hollywood or TV metaphor. I mean, he saw like a fantastic season one series and he wanted an executive producer credit on that. And the Israelis, their purpose in going to war with Iran. I wrote a piece about this. It was one, first and foremost to try and degrade or destroy Iran's nuclear program, but also to take out their ballistic missile capacity, eliminate all air defense systems, which they've more or less done. I've seen different projections or assessments that anywhere between 50% and 2/3 of Iran's missile launchers have been destroyed in this 12 day campaign. That's huge. Right, because that's the other. Their conventional capability was seen to be quite formidable up until recently. But the second order priority for the Israelis was to telegraph to the United States, come on in, the water's fine. You can do this too. We've cleared the path for you. Which is basically what worked. It was so tantalizing a prospect to Donald Trump that all he would have to do is drop half a dozen bombs and go home. That they played him sort of magically in that way.

[Tim Miller]

We'll see if they can keep doing that. I think that, I guess that's my point is that that prospect becomes potentially a little more challenging depending on what happens inside Iran in the next little bit.

[Michael Weiss]

Yeah, but look, I just want to also emphasize, I'm kind of with you on, well, what is the immediate threat to the United States with the state of Iran's nuclear program as it was prior to two weeks ago? One thing I would push back on is, and we get this wrong. A lot, a lot of the commentariat in the United States sees Iran as the best friend we just haven't made yet. Right. Much like a lot of the commentariat in the United States sees Russia as the best friend we just haven't made yet. I just want to remind people Iran has done some pretty horrific things, including, I mean, one of the IRGC generals that the Israelis assassinated was in charge of the Hezbollah project to blow up Jews in Argentina in 1994. The EMEA cultural center bombing, it's pretty horrible, right? I mean, they were also in Japan.

[Tim Miller]

So it's probably easy to target him. He's probably walking pretty slow.

[Michael Weiss]

Yeah, a lot of these guys are, you know, sort of graying manes of the Islamic Revolution. Right. But they're hard to replace for that reason because they have so much experience. Leave aside what they've done to Israelis, to Jews, to Americans, what they've done to other people in the region, including Sunni Arabs in Syria, I mean, without Hezbollah on the ground, Bashar Al Assad's bacon, I mean, he would have been cooked in 2023, 2024, right? So Iran came to his rescue on the ground. Russia came to his rescue in the air. You see how that worked out in the long term after October 7, when again, Israel completely destroyed Hezbollah, ran bombing Campaigns galore for 10 years inside Syrian airspace. Again, another piece of conventional wisdom was the Syrian regime has the most formidable defenses in the region. If you want to make an Israeli military officer laugh, tell him about Syria's formidable air defenses. That was their backyard for 10 years.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Michael Weiss]

And you know, internally, inside Iran, what they do to their own people is pretty horrific. Right. So I, I have. I shed no tears for seeing IRGC personnel wiped out. I shed no tears for seeing Iranian ballistic missiles destroyed. I think, yes, a lot of sort of variables and to coin a phrase, unknown unknowns going forward. But again, it is a very useful exercise, especially for intelligence gatherers, to see how Iran is able or unable to fight a conventional campaign against a peer adversary, or in this case, I would say a much more superior adversary, which is Israel. And I think that was part of the sort of exercise here for the Israelis to demonstrate to the world this is not a powerful, strong regime anymore. They are at the most vulnerable strategically at their weakest that they have ever been since 1979. And, you know, okay, maybe that was worth the price of admission alone.

[Tim Miller]

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[Michael Weiss]

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[Tim Miller]

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[Michael Weiss]

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[Tim Miller]

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[Michael Weiss]

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[Tim Miller]

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[Michael Weiss]

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[Tim Miller]

Moving on to NATO really quick with the NATO meetings, there are two things I want to talk about. One is related to this in the Middle east, what are my takeaways? And I understand that there's not an unlimited number of patriots in the world. Patriot missiles. There are hopefully an unlimited number of people who have patriotism in their heart, but not an unlimited number of Patriot missiles in the world. But watching how easily we rebuffed the fake Iranian attack in Qatar and Bahrain, my initial response was, again, it's like, well, weren't those resources better served in Ukraine? Why aren't we helping Ukraine more? Why aren't we helping Ukraine more? Russia seems to me to be a more acute threat than Iran. Neither of them are particularly, but there's a war happening in Europe, on the European mainland, where Russia took out a passenger train earlier this week and a hospital and a school. And at NATO, Trump, I guess, express, it's always like Trump expresses openness to everything. If you're ever like, will you consider this? He says yes, no matter whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. But he did express some openness to providing air defenses to Ukraine. Have you learned anything from the NATO meeting? Is there any potential cavalry coming for Ukraine?

[Michael Weiss]

Okay, so here's the sort of most optimistic gloss I can give you. Number one, let's start with Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal's big bunker busting.

[Tim Miller]

The most optimistic gloss you can give me starts with Lindsey Graham. That's not encouraging.

[Michael Weiss]

So this is sort of at Lindsey Graham's expense, but the ending is a little happier than it might seem. He's been going on and on about this bill which would impose 500% tariffs on any country that imports Russian oil, gas uranium or petroleum products for months now. Right. He's got an 84 Senate member veto proof majority on board to pass this thing if it's up for a floor vote. The House usually follows the Senate in this regard. Why hasn't it been put up? Right. And so the conventional wisdom would have you believe what's. Because Donald Trump does not want any. It's true to a degree. Donald Trump does not want any sanctions and he's been very clear about that. And it's why Marco Rubio publicly says no sanctions, but privately tells everybody we need sanctions on Russia. Right. The other reason though, and here's where sort of the nitty gritty of congressional sort of bureaucracy doesn't really come out in the Western reporting, is that the bill was drafted horribly and it was so broad in scope that it would be unenforceable. And more to the point, it actually penalizes European countries that agreed with us when we imposed our sanctions policy to wind down their dependency on Russian energy. So instead we're going to beat up the people who said we agree with you. It's just going to take us time to kind of get our house in order and become energy independent and put sanctions on them, which makes no sense, especially at a time when the US European divide is widening and the Russians are exploiting that chasm. Right. I mean, their messaging now is not that the United States is evil, it's that the Europeans are fascists and oh, Russia, we are the great ally of the United States, including defeating fascism. Why are they doing that? Because they see that NATO, that transatlantic relationship is kind of, it's on the skit right now. There is an effort to rewrite the Graham bill and tighten it up and make it actually not just enforceable, but really crippling to the Russian economy. More to the point, if that thing does pass, and again, it's veto proof. So even if Trump says, I don't like it, well, too bad you've got enough senators who go with it unless he really applies the pressure and threatens to primary them up. But 84 is a lot. Right. If it passes, it puts page any notion of a U.S. russian reset or rapprochement or I think more ambitiously strategic realignment with Russia, which has been the real danger. So let's see, for me, I'm probably less than 50% this thing would get done, but there is a sort of more nuance here than perhaps comes out in the reporting. The second thing I would say is speaking of this divide between the US And Europe, I don't like it when NATO Secretary General calls Donald Trump Daddy. Okay. I especially don't like it when the White House tweets, daddy's home.

[Tim Miller]

Just really quick, just for people who did not. Because I didn't see. I was not watching the fucking live press conference. And so I was like, why did the NATO Secretary call Trump daddy? And Trump was doing the stupid thing that he's been doing where he's like, Ukraine and Russia are like two kids fighting on the playground.

[Michael Weiss]

No, no, no. Israel, Iran.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, sorry. This time it was Israel, Iran, there were the two kids fighting on the playground. Yeah, well, same. Same metaphor he's used. And it's like, sometimes you gotta let him fight it out, you know, and let them blood each other up a little bit. And then Rudo is like, well, no, sometimes Daddy has to use stern language and tell him to stop.

[Michael Weiss]

Daddy. Yeah. I was like, you know, dude, you're from the Netherlands. There are places in the red light district of Amsterdam where you can work through some shit where you don't have to be referring to the President of the United States as Daddy. But now the White House is just taking this up. They're tweeting this out.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe the Dutch. The Dutch house are so weird, what they're eating. You know, it's like. Like you. I mean, there, there are two things that I don't like in this world, which is that people that are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch, you know, they have a weird culture and it might not. It just. It might not have translated right. Daddy might have a different meaning.

[Michael Weiss]

Well, yeah, I think there, there might be a bit of a disconnect in sort of Dutch to English there.

[Tim Miller]

Psychosexual element.

[Michael Weiss]

Yeah. I mean, the Dutch language to begin with is. Is sort of a. Somebody invented it at 3 o' clock in the morning with Pete Hegset drinking. Yeah. No, we have an unserious problem. We have an ein serious problem when the Secretary General of NATO is calling the President of the United States daddy. However. However, look, let us say again, I want to inject a little nuance here. Has it been the case that other allies in NATO have not contributed their fair share to defense spending? So the benchmark was, I think, 2, 3% of your GDP has to go to defense. Donald Trump came in and arbitrarily raised that threshold to 5%, pulled it out of his ass. But all of a sudden, everyone at NATO has affirmed that's the benchmark we want to reach. Except the Spanish.

[Tim Miller]

Except the Spanish.

[Michael Weiss]

No they're socialists. And I was just in Spain and I can tell you.

[Tim Miller]

And Trump also still doesn't understand how the system works. He keeps being like, why won't Spain pay the 5%? I'm like, it's not dues. Like a country, it's not dues, but.

[Michael Weiss]

Anyway, it's a guideline, not a requirement. But the fact that they've all committed to do this, the fact that across the board, European allies are spending more, I mean, Germany is now Scholz, when the full scale invasion came out, he gave this speech known as the Zeitenwende speech or the Turning Point speech. And it was all sort of smoke and mirrors because Scholz was terrified of Russia and terrified, frankly of his own policy toward Ukraine, which was actually robust security assistance. The Germans have given more to Ukraine than any country in Europe, and it's not even close. But in comes the new chancellor, Frederick Mertz, who's actually putting some flesh on the bones. And Zeitgen Winde is now a thing. Germany is set to spend, I think it's 3.5% by 20. Just in a couple of years time, They've committed another $8 billion to security assistance, or 8 billion euro to security assistance to Ukraine for 2025. Merz is serious about German national defense and also recognizes the threat posed by Russia. This is all to the good. So if coming away from the Hague is flattering daddy and patting him on the head and saying, without you and without your brilliant bunker busting bombs in Iran, we'd all be nuclear ash and we'll do whatever you want. And if that gets the Europeans not only to spend more on defense, but also more critically, Europeans spend more on.

[Tim Miller]

Defense without flattering data.

[Michael Weiss]

Well, you would think, man, you would think. I mean, I don't know the energy.

[Tim Miller]

I was looking for to shout out the Dutch, did you see the Queen of the Netherlands, like, mocking his mouth movements? Yes, I'll put a little link for people who need a little joy.

[Michael Weiss]

But also just as a sort of conclusion to that, if it also keeps Trump happy with respect to the transatlantic relationship. And he said, I think at one point I came here. Literally before he arrived in the Hague. He was asked, would you enforce Article 5? And he was sort of like, no, no. Or there's multiple interpretations of Article 5. No, there's one interpretation. An attack on one is an attack on all. We come to collective defense. Now he comes away saying, well, the scales have fallen from my eyes and these freeloading welfare queens of Europe have flattered me and Polished my throne and praised me to such a degree that suddenly I might actually come to their defense if they get attacked. You know, it's not great, but given the low threshold for good news these days, it's not a bad result either. And it's cringe to watch this. Nobody I know in the Nats tech world likes to see the Europeans kowtowing and basically treating Trump like the sort of authoritarian dictator who has led Europe to war time and time again. But they understand that unfortunately right now, Europe has not got. Not because of a lack of economic capacity, but political will. Has taken a long time for the Europeans to get to sort of see the future here. They have not got the ability to stand on their own two feet just yet. So they have to keep the United States sweet, if only to receive weapons from us, to buy weapons, which they can then donate to the Ukrainians, and also to make sure that the messaging on NATO and Article 5 is good.

[Tim Miller]

Are we giving patriots to Ukraine?

[Michael Weiss]

According to Trump, he is looking into trying to find more. They're few and far between, honestly. This is the problem. We are looking to source them from other countries such as Israel, because, you know, these batteries are hard to find, so it is tough. But. But keep in mind, too, just one, one last point, if I may. Trump is dazzled and completely impressed by the military genius of Israel bombing Iran and taking out their aircraft and air defense systems and ballistic missile launchers in Iranian territory. Less impressed by Ukraine going into Russia with FPV drones and taking out Russia's fleet, or at least part of Russia's fleet of strategic bombers. So it's the same principle, kill the archer instead of shooting down the arrows. But when Ukraine does it, it's a no, no. When Israel does it, it's. I got a piece of this action myself. Right.

[Tim Miller]

Very last thing. Are we going to have an Abraham Accord expansion? Why do I keep seeing tweets about that?

[Michael Weiss]

Witkoff is teasing it. My guess, you know, they're trying to work something with the Saudis. They're trying to work something with the Syrians, to be honest. I mean, you know, if the former lieutenant of Al Qaeda in Iraq recognizes the state of Israel before Saudi Arabia does, I will. I mean, yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Okay.

[Michael Weiss]

Welcome to the Middle East.

[Tim Miller]

We'll keep an eye on that. Michael Weiss, thank you. As always, appreciate Your judiciousness, your 1980s movies references, and we'll see you soon.

[Michael Weiss]

Thanks, man. Anytime.

[Tim Miller]

Everybody stick around for Jonathan Cohn.

[Jonathan Cohn]

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[Tim Miller]

All right. He writes the Breakdown newsletter for the Bulwark. It's new. You better be getting it. It is extremely valuable. It makes me smarter. He also has books which include the Ten Year War, Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage. It's my newish colleague, Jonathan Cohn. How you doing, man?

[Jonathan Cohn]

Hey, I'm just trying to keep up with everything and decide if I have to republish the book on the 10 year war as like the 18 year war, the 20 year war, I guess we'll see.

[Tim Miller]

It shows the limits of creating names such as this. The President has decided the Israel Iran war is the 12 day war we were just talking about. That might turn out to be a little longer than 12 days. We'll see how it goes. And you and Trump have very little in common, but in this case, maybe you might be learning a lesson together.

[Jonathan Cohn]

Yeah, not that much in common, but hey, I'll take a lesson wherever I can get it. So there you go.

[Tim Miller]

One of my favorite quiz questions to ask my MAGA family members or friends or whoever people I encounter is what is a trait that Donald Trump has that you would want your child to emulate? You have two children. Can you answer that? Do you have anything? Do you have a single trait of Donald Trump's you wish your child would you emulate?

[Jonathan Cohn]

Oh, boy. Trait Donald Trump that I. This is hard. I will say this. I think something he does well as a politician, which is probably a good thing in life, which is if he's intent on doing something, he doesn't let people dissuade him that easily. I mean, I think in the reality that we live in, I'd prefer people dissuade him from most of the things he wants to do. But that ability to kind of block out the noise and believe that you're doing the right thing and pursue it I think is a valuable quality. And I frankly wish more leaders who I do like and agree with had that quality. So there you go.

[Tim Miller]

Self confidence, self confidence. There you go. You can put up a little something in the bathroom, in the guest bathroom. That's like a little affirmation about Donald Trump that your children can admire. I'm sure they'll be very excited to hear this clip. All right, you have a newsletter out this morning called the Big Beautiful Rush Job about the bbb. You write that the goal is to start the voting process this weekend and get a bill on Trump's desk by July 4th. That's eight days from now, not nearly enough time for Republican lawmakers to figure out exactly what's in the bill. Feels like we've been here before, and that was complicated, kind of as you were publishing by this rule from the parliamentarian that says that some of these Medicaid cuts don't fit within the rules, which we can get into a lot of nerdy stuff about what the, what the Senate could do about that. But I guess just talk about the difference between Obamacare and this, because Obamacare kind of had a reputation for getting rushed. We got to pass the bill to see what's in it or whatever the famous Koop Pelosi quote was. Talk about the comparison between that and the degree with which they're trying to jam this through.

[Jonathan Cohn]

Yeah, I mean, there's that famous Pelosi quote that always comes up in these discussions. And people are like, look, they secretly passed Obamacare. They crafted it behind closed doors. Nobody knew who was in it, which could not be farther from the truth. They spent a year debating that bill. There were long committee hearings in five, five congressional committees, hundreds of hours of testimony, days and days of floor debate in multiple stages. It was all sort of on the front pages, debated for months. And for better or worse, a lot of the stuff that was said about the bill was wrong or was exaggerated. But there was a lot of discussion.

[Tim Miller]

The death panels. Did the death panels ever come?

[Jonathan Cohn]

Well, no. We may get some now. So stay tuned from this bill, this Republican bill, for better or worse. The process took a long time to the frustration, by the way, of the Obama White House. I mean, Rahm Emanuel was like, tearing his hair out because it was taking so long to get this bill through. And there was like, these long negotiations. The Finance Committee, the quote that Pelosi gave that everyone used was basically she was saying, look, there's been so much controversy, so much misinformation. When you're finally done with this bill, people will see that what we're actually doing doesn't match up. There are no death panels to take that example. So that was, you know, a year and what are we doing here? So it was go back to Memorial Day, weekend, the week before Memorial Day, when the House passed their version, they literally got language out. They put the language of the final language of the books. They were negotiating quietly what they were going to do, and they put it on a Sunday night. And then I can't remember if it was Thursday or Friday, they finally voted. But five days. Five days for a massive tax cut, huge cuts to health care, cuts to food assistance, by the way, ripping out a generational investment in clean energy along the way, just for kicks. And now we're over in the Senate and they're doing the same thing. We don't have final language yet. Forget the Congressional Budget Office trying to do an assessment of it. And they're talking about recording. This is Thursday. They wanna have a vote over the weekend. I mean, that is just bonkers. And of course, if you go that quickly, of course the public's not gonna understand what's in this bill. Of course people aren't gonna have time to analyze it. And honestly, I'd be shocked if most of the senators and representatives voting on this really know in a kind of deep way what's in this bill.

[Tim Miller]

So let's zoom out and then talk about, like, what is in the bill. And then we can kind of get into the parliamentarian and the wrangling.

[Jonathan Cohn]

It's like super complicated bill by design. Like, they've, what they've done is on the certain terms, you know, this in terms of what they're doing to healthcare, they've packaged all these, you know, provisions, these targeted things that sound super complicated. You know, repeal the Medicaid eligibility rule and, you know, change, you know, you don't need to know any about that. There's like a really simple way to think about what this bill would do, which is it's going to take a trillion dollars out of government health care program. So a trillion dollars out of Medicaid and out of the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, it's going to take a trillion dollars. That's a lot of money. You know, people, you don't know your budget figures. Trust me, that's a big, big chunk of money in the federal budget. And because they do that, a lot of people are going to lose health care. There's an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. 11 million people lose health insurance. On top of that, we have millions more who are going to have to pay more for health care because they're going to have to pay higher premiums in Obamacare. They'll have higher cost sharing. And this is going to hurt people. We can argue about any of the individual changes here. This is a good one, this is a bad one. This one won't be so bad. There's room for debate on all this stuff. But when you take that much health care away from that many people, they're going to suffer. They're going to have higher bills. We're talking about a lot of low income people, working class people, some middle class people. They're going to have trouble paying their rent, they're going to have trouble paying their grocery bills and they're not going to be able to go to the doctor. And some of them are going to just go into deeper financial distress and some are going to get sick and die. Like a lot of reporters, I've been spending a lot of time interviewing people about this. Just this week I was interviewing a woman from Pennsylvania. She's a home care worker, right. She cares for an elderly woman who can't get around. She cooks, she moves her on the bed, she lifts her into a wheelchair. She makes $14 an hour. Okay, $14 an hour. She can't afford health insurance so she relies on Medicaid. She also relies on food assistance. And by the way, Medicaid pays the agency for the care for the elder that then pays her salary. You cut Medicaid and it affects her. She's going to feel it. She's in her 50s, she's got a shoulder thing from all the lifting. She's got some cardiac problems and maybe she can find a free clinic. She can get the basic care, but she can't get to the cardiologist, she can't get to the orthopedist. Best case scenario, she's in a lot more physical pain at her work. Worst case scenario, she can't work.

[Michael Weiss]

Worst.

[Jonathan Cohn]

Worst case scenario she gets a heart attack, something awful and she dies. And that kind of thing is going to happen. I mean that is what we're talking about with this bill.

[Tim Miller]

We've talked about this last night in the next level. I don't really understand why they're doing it. I just don't. Can you make heads or tails of this? And I know you've just been like, I guess, let's put it this way, there are the people on the Hill. The congressional guys will have their own self identity. Maybe they just think government should be smaller so therefore any cuts. Or maybe they, they feel guilty about how bad this is going to bust the debt. So they feel like they got to do something to save face. That's all kind of psychological analysis. The analysts you Read the conservative analysts. What is the defense? I can't even find a compelling defense of doing it the way they're doing it. Have you seen anything?

[Jonathan Cohn]

Yeah, there is. There is. So I mean, I want to acknowledge there is a principled conservative argument. Right. And I respect people come out and make these arguments. I think it's important, important to argue these things in American politics. And they would say putting these money, these programs in general aren't that efficient. We could spend our money better, we should have a smaller government, we need lower taxes, it's better for the economy. And they think maybe there are trade offs, maybe some people lose healthcare, it's worth it in the end. I don't believe that. But that's an argument we can have and we should have. And that's why we have two parties to make these arguments. In addition to that, there is a more detailed analytic argument that's been put forward. There are some think tanks out there that have been making these arguments that basically say, look, there's a lot of fraud, there's a lot of people on these programs who don't deserve to be on these programs. They don't really satisfy the eligibility and there's waste and abuse and that these changes in this bill are going to cut down on them. It will get rid of the people on Medicaid or on Obamacare who don't really qualify but are getting in because they've managed to deceive somebody. And then there's a separate argument about the work requirements is a sort of second set of arguments which is that the we think we should condition health benefits on work and the work requirements will do that. And those are sort of the two big arguments. I mean, there's others, but I'd say.

[Michael Weiss]

Those are the two big ones.

[Tim Miller]

I guess my point is that unlike some of the other big changes that have been made, if you just go back through, go back to. I'm trying to think of another unpopular thing that I was for on the conservative side, the Social Security privatization plan. How about this? The Social Security privatization plan had a lot of, you know, very serious economists, think tank folks who were excited about it and like made the case about why this would be better for the budget long term and why it'd be better for people. There are a lot of people on the Hill, though. Like, that is not really the case here. Like you really have to kind of dig through for people. Do you feel that way or am I just missing it? Is it somewhere outside of my bubble? I don't see anybody that's like super excited about this. There are people that are really excited about the fantasy that it's only waste, fraud and abuse. Like, that's what I keep seeing, like is the defense of it. It's, oh, we're just getting rid of the waste, fraud and abuse. Like, that's not true. So what about I get defense on the merits of, of the actual program?

[Jonathan Cohn]

I think you're, you're mostly right in picking up on something real here, which I think speaks to the way this debate has evolved, which is you kind of go back 20 years, 25 years in the healthcare debate. Republicans versus Democrats did a lot of really heavy hitter kind of economists and analysts, people, places like American Enterprise Institute, who they would Advise, like John McCain when he ran for president, for example. There's some very formidable conservative health care economists on that side of the aisle. Thing was those conservative economists, a lot of them, I think of one woman in particular, her name was Gail Walensky. She just passed away like a year ago. Really brilliant woman. She actually ran Medicare and Medicaid under Bush 1, so under Bush 41. And really formidable. The thing was like, she didn't hate. She wasn't totally against government health care and she. Government playing a role in healthcare. She didn't want to screw the uninsured. Right. I mean, she thought we should do something to cover people. She just had a kind of more conservative spin on it. And I remember when they got to the Affordable Care act debate, I remember interviewing her at the time. She's like, yeah, I don't like. I think it's too much government regulation, spending. But okay, put me in a room with a liberal economist. I bet we could figure something out. Well, no space for that in the Republican Party of Donald Trump and maga. They just want nothing to do with this stuff. And so most of the really sort of serious. Who would have been serious conservative intellectuals on this 10, 20 years ago, they're not in the Republican Party anymore. They're not welcome in the Republican Party. They're either on an island by themselves or a lot of them have started advising Democrats. I know this all sounds vaguely familiar. There are exceptions. There's this one think tank called Paragon Institute, which is run by a guy who was a top healthcare advisor in the first Trump White House, Brian Blaise, very serious guy, knows what he's talking about as much as any person or think tank. They've been responsible for putting out the material on this. So he's there. There's a handful of other people you can find in some of these groups. But for the most part, the really serious people aren't part of the Republican universe anymore.

[Tim Miller]

All right, Congrats. Brian Blasey, PhD. I'm just checking him out. Nice haircut. I want to talk about two more things, Father. The, the real effects of what you expect based on kind of what we know about the bill now on people, and then kind of this parliamentary debate that's gonna be raging over the next few days. So just unlike the primary and secondary effects, and you mentioned the anecdote of the woman, what exactly are the programs and the impacts that people are gonna feel?

[Jonathan Cohn]

So, I mean, the biggest cuts in this bill are to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. And there's sort of two kind of sets of really big. So one is a kind of. There's a lot of new rules and new procedures for what you need to do to sort of qualify and stay eligible for these programs. Right.

[Tim Miller]

More paperwork, which is great. Which is very conservative.

[Jonathan Cohn]

Right, Right.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, you know, anti abundance.

[Jonathan Cohn]

It really is. But that's sort of the point here, is that, you know, sort of the theory of the, oh, we have all this waste, we have all this fraud. We need to really carefully screen every single person and make them file their income every month, et cetera, to sort of make sure that we're not getting somebody who doesn't belong on the program. And you can do that. And look, there are, I mean, any large program, there's people who aren't eligible for various reasons, and certainly there's a good, smart way to avoid that. But what they've done here is basically say we're just going to throw up a lot more paperwork, put all these more procedures. And we know what happens because we've tried this before and it's obvious if you've ever had to deal with a government agency, you know how this works. It's just so easy for errors to come up. The agencies are underfunded, so they can't deal with problems as they come up. Think of who you're dealing with here. You're dealing with a sort of population. It's probably a lot of people, seasonal workers. They have trouble getting documentation to show that they're working. You have a lot of people, maybe they don't have great access to technology. They don't know how to use technology. Especially as you get to older cohorts, the polite word in the policy world is friction. We put friction in the process of getting on these programs.

[Tim Miller]

That's really what we Want, we want to make it as hard as possible for people to get health care. That's great, right? More friction in the process. Yeah, got it.

[Jonathan Cohn]

Literally that's what we're doing here. And then there's like straight up cuts. I mean this doesn't get enough attention because we've all been. To the extent that people are paying attention, we talk about the work requirements or whatever. They're actually like just straight up cuts. Especially when you get, you see a really in the Affordable Care act part where they're sort of changing the sort of the standards for what insurance has to cover or how much assistance you can get through a tax credit, the formula is tweaked. Again, it's one of these things that if you look at it, you have no idea. But it's going to mean if you're a kind of working class, you buy coverage through healthcare.gov and right now with your tax credit, you're spending $200 a month or something on your insurance. Well, now you're going to go ahead and to get that same insurance you'd have to pay more or you can keep paying the $200, but suddenly you're going to discover that your copay at the pharmacy is double what it was and you scrub that. So that's the primary effect of the.

[Tim Miller]

Other thing you said. The way the formulas work there also changes formulas for the states in a big way. And that is like why you see a lot of like the rural hospitals like freaking out. Because like that is another, I think, real like tangible impact potentially that folks are going to feel. Because if there's different formula going to these like states and the states are getting less money, well, you know that that's going to come out of something.

[Jonathan Cohn]

Yeah. And the rural hospital pieces, I mean there's a reason we keep hearing about it in the news. It's rural hospitals, just the finances of rural hospitals. It's really tough. It's tough to make money as a rural hospital. They really become dependent on Medicaid. Depending on how these cuts go through, a lot of them are going to struggle. We've already had rural hospitals closing. You're going to see more rural hospitals closing. I think this is so important because it shows how even if you're not on Medicaid, even if you have good employer insurance, how this can affect you. So imagine you live in rural Nebraska or Louisiana or Michigan, where I live, and let's say there's no high upper peninsula. You have one hospital in like a 50, 60 mile radius, right? So your Upper Peninsula, Michigan will do my state. Your Upper Peninsula is the winter, and you're pregnant, you're due, and suddenly you got to go in three weeks early. You're in labor, and it's the snowstorm, and now the hospital that was there isn't there anymore. They don't do maternity services, let's say, or whatever. So you can have the best insurance. You can be very well off. You can never touch Medicaid or Obamacare. Doesn't matter. You still got to drive in a blinding snowstorm 60, 70, 80 miles, which is probably not what you want to be doing when you're in labor, or especially if. Hopefully not, but you're in some kind of distress. So this affects everybody, even people who aren't dependent on. On these programs.

[Tim Miller]

Our minds go to these totally opposite places. You're in the Upper Peninsula, it's a snowstorm. I'm thinking that you're down in the bayou rain, and it's like, you gotta try to get up to houma. You're down there in meadow. Anyway. Yeah, that's ugly. All right. So the news this morning was essentially. How do I explain this in a way that takes out as much jargon as possible in order to pass this thing with only 50 votes, because there are only 53 Republican centers, you can't have the 60. You can't overcome the filibuster. You can do that through the system called reconciliation. Most of the big budget and tax bills that have been passed, like in my adult life, have come through reconciliation. And reconciliation comes with certain rules about what can be included in it and what can't. There are also some rules on how much can add to the deficit. This is a little bit easier to get around. So there's a parliamentarian in the Senate that kind of looks at it and is like, well, this can fit in reconciliation. This can't. But there's some news this morning. The parliamentarian essentially said that big part of these Medicaid changes cannot be included in the bill, which means that the Republicans are either gonna have to say, fuck you, parliamentarian, and vote to over overrule them, or some of these cuts won't be included in the bill, which maybe creates political problems. Is that a good assessment?

[Jonathan Cohn]

That was a really good explanation. Better than probably what I would have come up with, but yeah, I mean, basically.

[Tim Miller]

So what are the parts that are then now going to be debated over, as far as you can tell?

[Jonathan Cohn]

So there was a piece last night, a big piece that got cut out, which was. I'M not even going to try to explain this one. This one, literally, when I wrote about this, I had to put it. And I just finally gave up and I put it in a footnote because it was so complicated. And the footnote was like, I think broke the record for longest footnote in the history of bulwark footnotes.

[Tim Miller]

All the good stuff is in the footnotes on the bulwark. Just a little.

[Jonathan Cohn]

Read the footnotes. Yeah. But I'll just say it has something to do with something called cost sharing reductions. And if you really care about it, just Google it and parliamentarian, you can read all about it. But it knocked out about 150. Well, I don't know the exact number because as always, these things, they don't say this thing is out and this is how many dollars you lose because it's not always clear. It's one to one, but it could be like $100 billion, maybe more. And then this morning there was a whole list of pieces they knocked out, the single biggest, one of which was a change to something called provider taxes, which is the thing you were referring to a little while ago, which has to do with how states get money from the federal government and that budget gimmick they've traditionally used to get a little more. I spoke to some budget analysts this morning. As this was breaking. Their feeling was you put those two together, you're looking at somewhere between 250 to $400 billion in cuts that just got taken off the table. Now, again, what do they do? Do they just overrule the parliamentarian? I think Trump, just like five minutes before I got on, I think said, like, can you believe the parliamentarian? It's the deep state. Whatever. I think Thune, who's the majority leader in the Senate, has already said we don't want to overrule the parliamentarian, although they did it once already for something unrelated a couple weeks ago with the California environment overriding a California rule on emissions and cars for pollution. So they could overrule it. They could not overrule it and try to reword. It's a lawyerly thing. So you can try sometimes to restructure, reword the provision so that it can get the okay, they can look for other cuts. Or here I'm just going to throw this out there as a wild idea. They could just not cut Medicaid as much. I mean, that's possible.

[Tim Miller]

Well, that'll be something to watch. So of the total amount of cuts, it's what, like a third, essentially.

[Jonathan Cohn]

I mean, it's a lot, right? I mean, we're talking a trillion dollars in total cuts to healthcare, roughly. So if you're. Yeah. I mean, you're somewhere between a quarter and 40%, maybe. And again, we'll see. It always takes a few hours for everyone to figure out the numbers, but at least based on what we last heard. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

All right. We'll keep monitoring it. If they just kind of jam this thing out over the weekend, we will keep everybody posted. But it's one of these things where. And your newsletter kind of framed it like this about how TV news has not covered this as much, given the real impact it's going to have on people as compared to some of the other things in the craziness of our political world right now. And part of it is just because of this. This stuff is very complicated. Right. It's complicated to do. But of all of the stuff that Trump is doing, it might be the thing that ends up affecting people's lives the most directly. So. So we're gonna keep working on it. Jonathan's covering it. Read his newsletter and we'll be talking to you soon. All right, thank you so much to Jonathan Cohn and Michael Weiss. We will see you all back here tomorrow. We've got another doubleheader tomorrow. It's gonna be a good one. Stick around. We'll see you then.

[Michael Weiss]

Listen to her how.

[Jonathan Cohn]

Let you go.

[Michael Weiss]

Heading into twilight spreading out a wingsy.

[Tim Miller]

Night.

[Michael Weiss]

The deck shoving in the overdrive.

[Tim Miller]

You never know what you can do.

[Jonathan Cohn]

Until you get outside.

[Tim Miller]

The board. Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

[Jonathan Cohn]

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