← The Bulwark Podcast
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- [00:00]
Michael Weiss
Foreign.
- [00:13]
Tim Miller
Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We have a double header today in segment two. I'm going to play the interview I did yesterday on a substack live with Karine Jean Pierre. She's got a new book out called Independent. Gets a little spicy, so stick around for that. But first, one of our faves is back. He's a contributing editor at New Lines magazine and a reporter for the Insider, a Russia focused media outlet. He's got a substack called Foreign Office. He's written some books. It's Michael Weiss. What's up, man?
- [00:42]
Michael Weiss
Hey, man. Good to see you.
- [00:44]
Tim Miller
Good to see you, too. The birds.
- [00:45]
Michael Weiss
The government shutdown. The birds are silenced. I told Katie, don't worry. It sounds menacing when I say it like that. The birds have been silenced, but no, they're not.
- [00:55]
Tim Miller
Squawking crows have been silenced. Murder on the dance floor. Okay. Yeah, happy. Government shutdown. The. The. The TSA situation is getting bleaker and bleaker in New Orleans. I don't know. I don't know about everywhere else, so we'll see how long it lasts.
- [01:08]
Michael Weiss
But not as bleak as the east wing of the White House. Geez.
- [01:13]
Tim Miller
What'd you think about that?
- [01:14]
Michael Weiss
Just a little bit on the nose for symbolism.
- [01:17]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [01:17]
Michael Weiss
Bit on the nose for symbolism, I'd.
- [01:19]
Tim Miller
Say, you know, more on that.
- [01:21]
Michael Weiss
He said he wasn't going to destroy anything, but there you go. I can't wait to see this ballroom. Christ, it's going to be like the Overlook Hotel.
- [01:28]
Tim Miller
What is? The view from abroad. What do you think the diplomats are thinking about the wrecking ball going through the White House? It's a little ominous.
- [01:36]
Michael Weiss
Yeah. I think they probably would have reckoned it'd be the Russians or the Chinese to do something like that at this stage. The Brits are kind of like, probably feeling a slight twinge of jealousy that they don't get to do it again because they were the last ones to do it. And, you know, I mean, apparently now we're just giving away real estate to people who speak the language of the metropole. So I guess we can all rejoin the United Kingdom if Donbas is going to Russia. Right? Like that. Them's the rules. I don't make them. I just. I just repeat them. So maybe it's time to. To rejoin the United Kingdom.
- [02:09]
Tim Miller
Nice transition. Speaking of the rules, the state of play in Russia. Trump is so schizophrenic on this. Yeah, well, in some ways, he's schizophrenic. In other Ways he. He always lands back his cozy initial position of. Of beating a Putin file. But I want to read to you yourself the Michael Weiss summary of the state of play. So to get people up to speed in an efficient manner, it was, I guess, earlier last week, Trump dangled Tomahawks to Ukraine Tomahawk missiles, which would have been an escalation of our support for Ukraine. Putin then called him, muttered something about Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to Wyckoff. Putin also called to Trump, said he would meet in Budapest. The Tomahawks have been untangled. Putin and Wyckoff told Trump that the Donbas should be given up, as you just mentioned. Trump asked Zelensky about that. Zelensky said no. Trump back down. The us, eu, UK and Ukraine all maintain the need for an immediate cease fire. Russia said no. Rubio and Lavrov's preliminary discussions went nowhere. Their meeting was canceled. Budapest is now a maybe. So there you go.
- [03:09]
Michael Weiss
And that's since Thursday. Right. Like this carousel of kind of hyped and also kind of terrifying nonsense now seems to be sort of slowing down. And we're going back to the initial position, which is nothing has changed policy wise. False expectations of some dramatic Trump pivot to Ukraine also turned out to be dashed and overly optimistic.
- [03:37]
Tim Miller
And those expectations were kind of sincere. In Europe, though. Is that your sense? Like, they thought. They thought that Trump was having a temper tantrum and it was going to work out in their favor? I think, yeah.
- [03:45]
Michael Weiss
I mean, the Europeans never miss an opportunity to feel dejected and disillusioned by a man who in the past has told them that he hates them, thinks they're a bunch of freeloaders, and that America is not going to come to their support militarily should they be invaded. I don't know what it would take for the Europeans to kind of get out of this perpetual courtier mode or spiritual guru mode they find themselves in. But they seem to think he was sincere. The Ukrainians absolutely thought he was sincere. I was talking to a senior Ukrainian intelligence official who said weeks of preparation went into the Zelensky meeting to come to D.C. it was all about Tomahawks. And nobody saw this Putin phone call coming. Nobody. Except, of course, Steve Witkoff, who I think had every interest in trying to bait Trump with another possible magnificent, immediate peace deal. So to put things in perspective, we've seen this movie before. This is exactly what happened before the Anchorage summit. Witkoff went to Moscow, he talked to the Russians, he completely misread The Russian position, which was they absolutely want Donbas, but that's kind of a starting point for them. Give us the territory that we have been unable over the course of 10 years, off and on, to capture militarily. Let's get it diplomatically, and then let's have some serious discussions about the root causes of the war. NATO expansion, demilitarizing Ukraine, regime change, and we want the whole country, but let's not put it quite like that. And in exchange for that, there was some confusion as to what Witkoff believed the Russians were prepared to do with respect to these two other oblasts, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which Russia does not fully control, controls less of Kherson than it did in the LATTER Part of 2022. And was it a question of Russia withdrawing from places they have occupied in those regions? Or as it seems more likely now, based on the readout we're getting, were they offering to simply not occupy the parts that they have not occupied and basically give Ukraine territory that Ukraine already controls? Right. Like this is basically what the Russians have dangled. So Witkoff came back and told Trump they just have to give up Donbass, meaning the Ukrainians. And Putin's prepared to swap some territory again, territory that Putin does not control. Witkoff according to Zelensky said. And this is by way of pressuring the Ukrainians. Well, you know, in Donbas, they all speak Russian anyway. And by the way, they speak Russian in Kyiv, too. So I guess there you go. I mean, this is a slippery slope to what the Russians are really up to. And therefore also Russia has incorporated Donbas into its constitution. So, like, you can invade a country, take it over militarily, kidnap its children, throw everybody into prison, torture, rape them, and then as long as you write in your constitution, this is ours now, I guess, legally and certainly in the mind of an outer borough real estate developer who's clearly making a fortune doing diplomacy in the Middle East. And no doubt, I would love to see the reporting that is going to come out on what the Russians have offered Steve Witkoff and his crypto kid in exchange for some kind of grand bargain. This is apparently statecraft 101 in the United States now. So the Ukrainians said, absolutely not. You have to understand, Donbas is one of the most militarized places in the world. They have spent a decade turning this into kind of a citadel region.
- [07:17]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [07:18]
Michael Weiss
Slavyansk and Kramatorsk. If you go back to 2014, 2015, there were pitched battles for the Ukrainians to capture these territories back from the Russian so called separatists. They're not giving it up. And one of the reasons they're not giving it up is if the Russians take these areas, they become that much closer to taking other areas and basically launching what will be an inevitable attack on Kiev at some date in the future. So, you know, Zelensky gets into apparently a shouting match with Trump in the White House. Trump says, I don't care, give up Donbass. I'm tired of looking at maps which have places I've never been to and I can't find on maps that I'm tired of looking at. You know, he just kind of gets exasperated and the Ukrainians say we're not going to do this. And then Trump backs down. Right. Like the fact that Zelensky told Trump no and Trump accepted it, I feel like is sort of a lead that's been buried in all of this. Like the Ukrainians who were famously.
- [08:09]
Tim Miller
Why do you say that?
- [08:10]
Michael Weiss
Well, because it shows that there's actually limited amounts of pressure and limited leverage that the United States with this president can wield here. He cannot basically put his finger on a button. And all of a sudden a region in Europe, home to upwards of 300,000 people on the Ukrainian side, the areas that have not been taken by Russia will be transferred to somewhere magical place. Internally displaced within Ukraine or better yet, externally displaced. So another refugee crisis bleeding into Poland, Romania, Hungary, which is supposed to be hosting this summit. I mean, it's magical thinking, right? And the Ukrainians are quite right to say, we cannot do this. So he just kind of, he wilted like a salted snail. And then publicly, and this was interesting, right? If you look at what happened in February, that famous two minutes of hate that he and Vance unleashed on Zelenskyy, it was a public.
- [09:04]
Tim Miller
Have you said thank you once?
- [09:05]
Michael Weiss
Exactly. It was a public humiliation. Public abasement. All of this is transpiring. Last week, privately, as reported by cnn, the FT and others publicly, the press conference was a little bit awkward because Tomahawks he essentially ruled out. But at no point did he say publicly they have to give up Donbas. And then when he posted on Truth Social, he did not say they should give up Donbas. Now this is a man who's not very good at restraining his ID or keeping that which he is privately seething about from public viewership. And yet in this case he didn't really make a big deal about. This is what the Ukrainians have to cede. So I'm reading this as yet again, Donald Trump, in spite of his desperation to be crowned, you know, Prince of Peace, King of America, shit dropper extraordinaire on the no Kings protesters. He actually is, he's getting kind of tired. You know, he's getting, he's sort of a no energy Trump, to be honest. He is. He's trying to bully the Ukrainians, but he's not doing it with the vim and vigor that he did eight months ago. And then the Europeans just completely closed ranks, as is their want. So they're courtier to Washington and they're kind of triage surgeons or specialists to Ukraine. They always tell Zelenskyy, don't worry, we got this, we'll take care of it. We've got your back. And lo and behold, today it was reported by cnn, Lavrov and Rubio. It's also very interesting that Marco Rubio was running point on this thing instead of Wyckoff. The Ukrainians were quite happy to see that as the case. Lavrov and Rubio had a really bad discussion. They were supposed to meet. That meeting is off. And now it is expected that Rubio, Again, this is CNN's reporting, will tell Trump not to go to Budapest. So this whole summit may never come to pass. And yet here we are, you know, again, kind of like completely frazzled, stepping out of the halfway house of American insanity, saying, well, wait a minute, we were all expecting Trump to, you know, unleash the Tomahawks, and now we're going back to this. He's a Russian asset kind of thing. Well, actually, no, it's just he's trying desperately to force the Ukrainians to do that which they will not and cannot do, and then he just climbs down. And the Russian position as of today, as of always, is a maximalist one. No ceasefire along the contact line. Right? This is the us, uk, EU and Ukrainian position, and it has been for months. The Russians continually say, nyet, they want to litigate root causes. Putin wants to talk about Ivan the Terrible's land reforms for three and a half hours before they get into it over a bowl of goulash. I mean, it's, it's, it's all kind of just come to nothing. And, you know, I keep telling people that the, the greatest kind of asset that Ukraine has, and I'm sorry to put it like this, but the greatest asset they have is that the Russians always shit the bed, even when they have momentum, even when all Putin has to do is pick up the phone and get Trump on The on the line and whisper sweet nothings into his ear and suddenly he is completely, you know, awestruck and infatuated with the Russian claim. Apparently he was calling it not even a war, but a special operation, which is just straight up Kremlin propaganda. Even when they've got that going for them, they still can't get what they want, fundamentally.
- [12:22]
Tim Miller
Yeah. We don't hear that much from that Putin call, though. It's like the Zelensky meeting. You have all this readout. I guess it's because Ukrainians are leaking to the ft. I would assume people on the Ukrainian side are trying to pressure them and.
- [12:34]
Michael Weiss
It'S in their interest to do that because the more they can say, this is a five alarm fire, Trump is ready to, you know, do a fire sale of our country immediately. You get media scandal and pushback and the White House has to walk it back. And Trump on Air Force One said, I never said that. I'm all about a ceasefire. Great. You've locked him into this position publicly now. Right. So that's clever by the Ukrainians to do that.
- [12:57]
Tim Miller
But we don't exactly know what's happening on the Putin calls, which is always. Which is always a mystery. And I guess we only know in the sense that Trump gets off the calls and starts sounding like Putin all of a sudden.
- [13:06]
Michael Weiss
Exactly. The generous gloss that I can make of that. It's not very generous, but it's the best case.
- [13:13]
Tim Miller
What is like, he's always like this about every situation, or the last person that called him, he starts talking like them?
- [13:18]
Michael Weiss
Well, not quite, but it's, it's. He has long had a deep abiding affinity for Putin. Putin is the kind of authoritarian and strongman that Donald Trump would like to be. You know, Donald Trump is sort of the Timu Putin Putin has over the last 20 years.
- [13:35]
Tim Miller
Timu, like the. The Chinese.
- [13:37]
Michael Weiss
Yes.
- [13:38]
Tim Miller
Clothing, download cloth.
- [13:41]
Michael Weiss
Putin can deal with his enemies by harassing them, imprisoning them, or poisoning or assassinating them. He has no political opposition left of which to speak. No viable one anyway. Legislative and judicial checks on his power. Give me a break. I mean, those have long been gone, right? I mean, Trump sees in Putin much as he sees in Xi, and to some extent Orban too, a kindred spirit. And Putin is able to somehow have this mesmeric hold over him and tell him, even when Trump has lately been saying, both publicly and privately, the opposite of what Putin tells him. Whatever Putin tells him, he regurgitates. So I'll just give you a little piece of reporting, which I think is of note. I had a meeting in D.C. with a U.S. official who I was saying, look, how bad is it? And the line I got was, actually, it's not that bad. It's the war. You don't see is the US Is still very much involved in Ukraine. This was coming off the back of other FT reporting suggesting that US intel was being shared with the Ukrainians for the purposes of their deep strikes on Russian energy, which has chipped away at the Russian economy, which is a good thing and which is something that Donald Trump avows to want. You know, this is why he said.
- [14:54]
Tim Miller
I heard Doug Burgum kind of mention this and brag about this the other day. Like, there are just these, you know, like, little pockets within the administration of still kind of anti Russia.
- [15:02]
Michael Weiss
Yes. And there's a COVID side to things that for understandable reasons, doesn't get out there. But also, I had heard that Ratcliffe, en route to Alaska, was sharing credible, realistic intelligence on the battlefield with Trump, showing him that for every square kilometer of terrain the Russians take, they lose X number of hundreds of soldiers. And Trump was getting kind of like almost erect listening to this, because, you know, he likes even countries he's not fond of, like Ukraine. He likes to see these sort of upended expectations. He likes raw demonstrations of power. He likes spectacular acts. I said recently he's not fond of war, but he likes acts of war. This is his shtick, right. I'll bomb Iran and then call it quits. Right. I'll kill Qasem Soleimani and call it quits when the Ukrainians do spiderweb and take out Russian strategic bombers, or when they blow up oil refineries and export terminals. He likes it. He thinks it's cool. So that's how they've been playing him. But again, Putin just literally phones it in, has to pick up the phone, and we go back to this sort of starting position.
- [16:09]
Tim Miller
Just really quick, you mentioned something that piqued my interest earlier about the Wyckoff, and obviously Wyckoff is just running this huge crypto scam and is involved with the Trump kids and the Wyckoff kid. They're on business together in the Middle East. But you said it was in his interests to, you know, kind of whatever, push Trump towards the Russian line here. Like, did you mean that in an economic sense or just in a, you know, he wants to get a deal done sense?
- [16:32]
Michael Weiss
If we want to be polite to Trump, I think he's aware that there's not much money to be made from Russia. Right. Economic relations between the United States.
- [16:39]
Tim Miller
Witkoff could still make a pretty good bag for himself and his family if he wanted to.
- [16:43]
Michael Weiss
Though Witkoff's family and Trump's family could make a lot of money themselves, either through overt deals or things under the table. I mean, this is how the Russians go around bribing their way in as a form of political warfare. But beyond that, I think it's more. It's this sort of saintly penumbra of peacemaker that he seems to be completely obsessed with. Right. He'll tell you he's the most deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize. Why did they give it to this Venezuelan dissident he's never heard of? But, oh, by the way, she was very nice about me. Oh, and I don't want the Nobel. I mean, he's the easiest mark from a psychological perspective, if you're, you know, you don't have to be a KGB case officer, which Putin was to know which pressure points to play here.
- [17:26]
Tim Miller
Right.
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Michael Weiss
And indeed, on the call, I would imagine. And Trump even said to some extent that Putin was just flattering the shit out of him, saying, you know, you have brought peace to the Middle East. You have done that, which we have all aspired to do for centuries. And meanwhile, the subsequent tweet or truth social post to that, to Trump's readout of his call with Putin was, what, telling Hamas to knock it off with the execution of Palestinians because otherwise the cavalry will roll in. So it looks like peace in our time has been deferred somewhat. Witkoff, last I checked, is on a plane with Kushner and Vance to try and put out fires in Israel because this whole deal seems to be deteriorating, if not unraveling. So he's high on his own supply, and he genuinely thinks he can, with the stroke of a pen, just make this all go away. But it's a lot more complicated than that, and he should know that by now. But he's a child. He doesn't. You know, he has an infinite capacity for forgetting what he learned only a week ago.
- [18:23]
Tim Miller
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- [20:23]
Michael Weiss
Well, admitting that you know, they, they tried to liquidate the leader of the Russian opposition. That that's kind of a top line or marquee disclosure coming from a he's from the FSB second service which is kind of, you know, engaged in domestic surveillance among other things, or the chibbying of dissidents as they did in the the former Soviet Union under the kgb. But another interesting disclosure that he made was the referendum in Crimea. Remember one of Wyckoff's other Kremlin concocted talking points is well they had votes and they all wanted to join Russia. Fedatov was saying actually no, I mean the FSB was taking people at gunpoint around, telling them to vote to separate from Ukraine and also telling them you're going to join Russia one way or another. If you vote yes, great. If you vote no or don't vote at all, your name is going to go on a list. That's not a nice thing. Right? So here you have, I mean, from the horse's mouth, an FSB operative admitting that there has been no exercise of popular will. There has been no democratic plebiscite anywhere in the occupied territories of Ukraine. It's all being done with Russian coercion.
- [21:35]
Tim Miller
I also liked this. You shared a tweet from one of my favorite congresspeople, Anna Paulina Luna. Oh, God, who's a maga? Luna, if you will. She posted this. My office just received word from the Russian embassy that the ambassador from Russia to the US Will be hand delivering the Russian government's findings on who assassinated JFK to my office.
- [22:00]
Michael Weiss
I mean, what a way to give Florida strippers a bad name, man. You know, it's like Russian active measures are not. You know, I'm sitting at my computer, I've got a bunch of translated KGB training manuals which I'm going to bring out on my sub stack and with essays by people who have been studying the Soviet secret services for years. And, you know, you read about all the intricacies and all the kind of elaborate schemes that the Soviets cooked up to snare people, to dupe people, to inveigle and influence people, and now all of this stuff is literally being tweeted in real time. I mean, these are the Russian active measures of a subreddit. It's so naked, it's so farcical, it's so absurd. I mean, so what happened here? She was earlier talking about how she's going to have a meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, who's the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund and one of the most kind of outspokenly, kind of cartoonishly dancing Russian operatives when it comes to the war in Ukraine. I mean, he's just. He cannot stop tweeting. And what is he tweeting? He's QAnon posting, right? He's telling Elon Musk we should build a tunnel between Russia and Alaska. You know, he's tagging companies that he's kind of scheming with on this, on. On the sly, no doubt. Not even on the sly anymore. I mean, just out and playing slide. And so he's this MAGA congresswoman who apparently Donald Trump is quite taken with. I mean, no doubt the former stripping bit on the CV played a role in that, but he's quite taken with her. And Demetria says, let's have a meeting. And so she tweets out, I'm going to have a meeting with Dimitriev. She gets pushed back. She doesn't understand the pushback. And she's telling everybody, you're all children. And the adults are in the room. Here she is literally being led by the nose by a Russian influence operation. And then it culminates with, I love this. The Russian ambassador to the United States giving to her an otherwise anonymous congresswoman from Florida, essentially the KGB file on the JFK assassination. Right? It's like, what's next? You know, like, here's what the Russians thought about Roswell, New Mexico. Like, you know, let's all look over here and not talk about the war in Ukraine. It's this kind of sub literate, you know, bargain basement, low iq, so. And we're all kind of just falling for. I mean, to me it says more, way more about America and how Russia holds us in, in such low regard that they're doing these things in plain sight now. They just don't care. Right? It's like whatever we can do to kind of get the base all sort of jazzed up. And, you know, it's almost Steve Bannon's line. Flood the zone with shit, right? The Russians are flooding the zone with shit and talking. Oh, this is all about peace. No, it's not about peace. It's about getting a war of conquest accomplished without the use of tanks and soldiers and bombs. Because you've tried that and it's failed, right? You want the American president to certify your occupation, your Anschluss in Europe, right? And they're telling us this. I mean, that's the thing. They're telling us this. And we're gonna. Oh, okay. Well, that sounds fun.
- [25:06]
Tim Miller
Well, yeah, I mean, Anna Paulina was just interested. She's just asking questions. She just wants to know a little bit more information. And maybe just asking questions, maybe the Russians will be the one that will elucid the truth about the JFK assassination. Y'. All, the headlines are chock full of news about data breaches and regulatory rollbacks that are making all of us vulnerable when it comes to our private information. But you can do something about it. DeleteMe is here to make it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online. Delete Me does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. It Sends you regular personalized privacy reports showing you what they found, where they found it and what is remove moved. This is obviously something that's a big problem for me. I'm still dealing with these fucking spam emails from the email spam attack that I got hit with a couple of months ago. Things just still pop on through no matter how much I unsubscribe for everything and hit the report spam button. But Delete Me has been easy to use as far as preventing future such attacks. Easy to sign up for, Couldn't recommend it more. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your delete Me plan and you go to go to www.joindeleteme.com bulwark and use promo code Bulwark at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to www.joindeleteme.com bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout. That's www.joindeleteme dot com bulwark code bulwark back to the Middle East. That deal you mentioned earlier, how's the ceasefire holding up? What's the state of play in Israel?
- [26:45]
Michael Weiss
I believe it would be called sort of precarious at the moment, or, you know, there are signs of alarm and ss, gravely concerned, has set sail. I mean, you know, as I mentioned, Hamas kind of crawled back out of its tunnels when the IDF pulled back and are reasserting control over the parts of Gaza that they're meant not to have control over, executing people they see as collaborators or people who have opposed them, which has certainly earned the attention and ire of Donald Trump. There was some kind of skirmish yesterday. Hamas opened fire in the IDF. The IDF bombed, killed, I think, upwards of 40 people, including, I'm sure, Hamas. It certainly seems like it's fraying at the edges there, if not falling apart. And I think the main imperative of the US now is to try and get Netanyahu from going all in again.
- [27:39]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [27:40]
Michael Weiss
That's basically what they're out there. In fact, Steve Witkoff's son, Alex Witkoff, was tweeting this just today in opposition or to contradict somebody who had said the opposite.
- [27:53]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [27:53]
Michael Weiss
And he's talking about how precarious or sort of tenuous this whole thing is. I mean, look, I didn't think this was going to hold. I kept completely quiet when it was announced, even though obviously we're all very happy the hostages were released. That was something that Israelis were demanding for a long, long time. And I will say this, and I do think it's true. And Anschel Pfeffer, who's a biographer of Netanyahu, a very good Israeli reporter, also pointed this out. Donald Trump was able to do something that I think other presidents have not been able to do just by sheer force of will. And the fact, frankly, that he has kind of got a finger in every pie here, Right. He has been bribed by every Gulf regiment and his people. His envoy certainly has. If you read the reporting on the Emiratis and the Qataris paying off basically the Witkoff clan and the Trump clan. So they're kind of on the hook. He's very close to Erdogan, the Turkish president, and was able to wield some leverage there to get him to put pressure on Hamas. And of course, I think nobody can claim that he hasn't had Israel's back. I mean, bombing Iran was the first time in American history that the United States joined Israel in an active military campaign in the Middle East. Right. So he's basically done what Netanyahu has wanted. So he was able to use that to his advantage to say, now you have to do this. Right? So, okay, I can give him credit for that. But then when he comes home and says, peace in our time, besides the.
- [29:24]
Tim Miller
Corruption part, yeah, we can give him.
- [29:26]
Michael Weiss
Corruption, but peace in our time, you know, sort of ticker tape parade. I deserve a Nobel. Not only is it too soon to tell, but there are a lot of indicators that that was never, ever going to be the case, that this was not going to hold. Now he's saying he's got a list of Arab regimes that are ready to send troops into Gaza to go after Hamas. I would love to see this list and I would love to see these Arab countries basically say that they're about to do this.
- [29:53]
Tim Miller
Right? Yeah.
- [29:54]
Michael Weiss
Because time was it was going to be a coalition of European, Western countries that were going to go in and, you know, turn Gaza into beachfront property. It's going to be the next Miami Beach. Right. Color me skeptical that peace is going to break out in the Middle East. I spent a long time dealing with this region and studying it, you know, so. And, but unfortunately, unfortunately, and here I have to be critical of my own so called profession. I think the way the media frame this, this kind of unprecedented, historic thing only put wind in his sails and gave him this kind of inspiration to think I can just wave my magic wand on Ukraine, Russia and make that go away too. And we are where we are now as a result of this.
- [30:36]
Tim Miller
Speaking about hand in pies, there's one other pie over there he's got his hand in. You didn't mention, and that is Saudi Arabia. MBS will be coming to America. No word on whether Candace is going to undertake. You know what I've been hoping that she would the transvestigation into him. You know, I just kind of, I want her to expand into the Middle East. You know, she's looking into European leaders and whether they might be trans. And I'm kind of intrigued by what's.
- [30:59]
Michael Weiss
Happening is MBS said to be trans.
- [31:01]
Tim Miller
I mean, I just, there have been some scuttlebutt about intersex with mbs, but I don't know anything and I wouldn't want to say that publicly, but I'm just, I'm hoping that encouraging Candace to look into the possibility of intersex versus micropenis.
- [31:14]
Michael Weiss
I could see Louis CK's next stand up act right now in Riyadh here. This is true. I mean, come on.
- [31:19]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it's same. So anyway, he'll be at the White House November 18th, which is, I don't even know really what more to say about this. We've all known this, but it's, I mean, at this point he's just completely welcomed into the community of nations and Western nations and the murdering of journalists and other things don't matter anymore.
- [31:39]
Michael Weiss
Well, no, he's got Kushner on WhatsApp. I mean, this is how deals are getting done in the region. Right. And I don't think it's a coincidence. You know, Kushner and witkoff were on 60 Minutes last weekend. They're the ones that kind of orchestrate this. And what kind of financial schemes are happening in the background? I mean, Kushner in bed with the Saudis for what's the video game company that I think they're acquiring or purchasing? You know, it's just, again, it's all baksheesh which leads to some kind of diplomatic breakthrough. But if it's leveraged on corruption, you can be sure that the longevity of these things is only as good as the corruption is maintained. Right. Like we're not having treaties signed, we're not having actual facts on the ground change necessarily. I mean, yes, the release of hostages, I'm not trying to diminish that. That's an extraordinary thing and it should have happened a long time ago. But you know, who is going to keep Gaza from descending back into chaos?
- [32:44]
Tim Miller
Who is going to Tony Blair and MBS.
- [32:46]
Michael Weiss
Tony Blair.
- [32:47]
Tim Miller
Tony Blair and MBS. Yeah. MBS will get an F1 track and Tony Blair will have a fiefdom of some kind. Who knows?
- [32:54]
Michael Weiss
And I mean, look, you know, I will say this. One of the things that I think the achievement of the Abraham Accords allied and it's a good thing when countries normalize with a country they have been at states of war with or don't recognize has a right to exist. Right. And generally I think that's a good thing. However, the forfeiture of the importance of a Palestinian state, which was kind of eclipsed by the Abraham Accords, I always thought this is going to be a problem in the future and it will continue to be a problem. You can't bribe and blackmail and engage in acts of corruption to get out of stateless people in the region. A cause for which has been a galvanizing one for innumerable countries and now a cause that has galvanized the American population to such a degree that support for Israel has not collapsed, but certainly been lowered to a degree that, you know, is unprecedented. That's going to have to be addressed at some point. And it's not about building hotels, you know, along the Gaza seashore. Right. It's.
- [34:00]
Tim Miller
It's.
- [34:00]
Michael Weiss
There's going to have to be an actual state in place. And, you know, the Israelis don't want to do that now for reasons that I think everybody can understand, which is the trauma of October 7th. Right. This is going to be multi generational. The idea foreclosing on the idea that we can ever trust the Palestinians to have a state because it will happen to us again. So these are very thorny questions I don't see many answers for, but I do see a lot of pageantry and a lot of headlines being written as though everything is okay now.
- [34:29]
Tim Miller
It's not the birds. Ceasefires over as well. They're back at war. We appreciate their. We appreciate their trip.
- [34:35]
Michael Weiss
I got my earbuds in.
- [34:36]
Tim Miller
Yeah, no, they sound great. We love it. We need it. We need it. Kind of some uplifting, you know, kind of sweet, sweet tweets and sounds in our background in this moment. Really quick in our hemisphere. Before I let you go, I'm just curious your. Your thoughts on the state of play with regards to potentially our regime change, war in Venezuela, and the fact that we're just like randomly eating boats out of the Caribbean. The Colombian president has said that we killed a fisherman. Colombian fisherman. There's been some conversations about whether some of these people on the Boats are from Trinidad. Two of them survived. And unlike how you would treat an enemy combatant or the deadliest drug traffickers in the world, as the administration has claimed that these people are, we've just returned them, repatriated them to Venezuela. I had an email this morning from somebody who's had some experience in this world, you know, saying like the drivers of these boat, like it's not, it's not like all the gang all gets on the boat together. You know, it's like, it's usually like there may be a cartel member on the boat, but there's also, you know, some local person that they hired, paid a couple hundred bucks, local fisherman, local boat. Right. And so, you know, what we're doing is pretty, it's pretty crazy. Just in the micro with the bombing of the boats, but also like what the plan is for Venezuela remains a little unclear to me. I'm wondering what your thoughts are.
- [35:52]
Michael Weiss
Little Marco gets his Bay of Pigs and baby, he's earned it. You know, I just. Look, I read in the Wall Street Journal today that there had been some debate about his ongoing rivalry with Rick Grinnell, he of the Kennedy center and its anti woke arts programming, who was running point with Maduro trying to come up with a diplomatic solution for this froidure with Venezuela, which has been long standing. But it seems like Rubio has won that debate and he's running point on all Western HEM stuff. Right. Maduro's a dictator. He stole the last election. I think he is illegitimate. I am also extremely, extremely skeptical and wary of the use of American covert action, particularly in this hemisphere because, well, you can open a history book and read all about it, but it doesn't usually go well. And the indicators are that we're sort of creeping up to this point. Right. B52 bombers is a show of force and also collection. CIA has been sort of activated to do things that we'll probably read about in the New York Times in six months or a year. I don't know what the end game here is. Well, obviously it's regime change or getting Maduro out and allowing an actual democratic state to emerge. But how is the United States aiming to do this and how many ways can this go sideways? I'm not sure. I don't have much clarity on that. But the fact that Rubio, that his currency has gone up is interesting. I mean this was sort of the neocon candidate in the primary in 2016.
- [37:31]
Tim Miller
Well, he, he did not get, this is worth reminding people, he did not get the VP slot and Maybe there are other reasons, but one of the reasons he did not get the VP slot is because Tucker Carlson told Trump that if he picked Rubio as vp, the Deep state would kill because Rubio was a Deep state neocon operative. That's what Tucker told Trump and Tucker told Donald Trump Jr. And I mean, I can't get in Donald Trump's addled brain, but apparently based on reporting that word of caution is part of the reason why it's JD Vance and not Marco. And so it's pretty notable that he now is controlling big parts of the foreign policy. So I don't. Maybe there is something to this Deep State conspiracy.
- [38:12]
Michael Weiss
I mean, I mean, Rick Grinnell is sort of like failed theater kid, angry.
- [38:18]
Tim Miller
Fox News pundit Rick Grenell is just incompetent. And the Rick Grenell is a buffoon. He's a buffoon. Yeah. And he's also really unpleasant to be around. So I think that's probably less about ideology and just more like, I don't want personality.
- [38:31]
Michael Weiss
Right.
- [38:31]
Tim Miller
In my meetings.
- [38:32]
Michael Weiss
But I think what's interesting is Rubio gets to sort of assert his worldview without pissing on the corn flakes of people like J.D. vance or other sort of invested ideologues in this administration who come from an isolationist background. Right. Or at least not yet. We don't know what the sort of happening behind closed doors, but the reporting suggests that he and Vance are kind of okay with each other for now. Until there's a power struggle post Trump. I will say the Ukrainians are much, much happier. And I am much, much happier to have Rubio run point on the war than witkoff or certainly J.D. vance.
- [39:10]
Tim Miller
Low bar.
- [39:11]
Michael Weiss
It's a low bar. But, you know, like, remember Rubio in the US Senate for 14 years was a Russia hawk. Right, Right. When we did our investigation into Havana Syndrome. That's not a segue, by the way. I'm just mentioning it as a data point. He wrote a letter, co signed a letter with a handful of other US Senators basically saying this shows that there is credible evidence. And the IC has been, you know, obfuscating about this anomalous health incidents and we should get to the bottom of it and wink, wink, we know that Russia's behind it. So Rubio is not a babe in the woods when it comes to Putin or Kremlin designs on Europe, NATO and the rest of it. And indeed, I mean, if he's having these kind of tete a tetes with Lavrov and they're going sideways very Quickly, that suggests that he's sticking to his mettle. Publicly, of course, he espouses the Trumpian view that we all want peace and all the rest of it, but privately, who knows what he's doing? But that said, the Western hem thing is kind of fascinating. I mean, we have at least outwardly said that we are now kind of. It's this sort of grand American recessional, right? We're pulling out of the world. We're not pulling out of Europe entirely, but more or less telling them they're on their own and we might not be there to have their back should they find themselves at war with you know who. And it's all about kind of, of consolidating our Turf in a 19th century kind of way. And I think for him, this is a great opportunity. I mean, he's the son of Cuban exiles. Makes no mystery about what he'd like to see happen in Cuba and some of these other left wing autocratic regimes in South America. So I think he's sinking his teeth into it as best he can. And Trump is all for it because going after narco terrorists is part of the MAGA mission, right? Keep the drugs out, keep migrants out. So I think Rubio's managed to kind of thread that needle. A foreign policy that is grounded in a kind of domestic urgency. Right?
- [41:07]
Tim Miller
No doubt. Mike Weitz, I went long. There have been more drips and drabs on the Havana syndrome in your reporting. We'll do it next time that you're with us. And I'll put a link to that latest Wall Street Journal piece on it. And folks can go back to your last time here. We kind of talked about that. But before I lose you, I must ask you. You took your daughter to her first concert. It was chapel roan. And I want to know what Michael, not your daughter. I want to know what Michael Weiss's favorite Chapel Round song was.
- [41:30]
Michael Weiss
My Kink Is Karma with By a Mile.
- [41:33]
Tim Miller
By a Mile.
- [41:34]
Michael Weiss
And that was the best. But that was the best performance she did all night.
- [41:38]
Tim Miller
That song, My Kink is Karma.
- [41:41]
Michael Weiss
It's a great song. It's very hooky and appropriate for you. Well, I mean, it's about schadenfreude. I mean, it's romantic schadenfreude, but believe you me, I experience schadenfreude on a daily basis. I just opened my Twitter feed. So My Kink is karma, too, I guess you could say. No, she was a great. It's a great show. But I have to emphasize this. It was not the show where she denounced ice. It was the day afterward. So before I get the trolls coming after me for certifying this, we do ICE denunciations here.
- [42:12]
Tim Miller
So it's okay.
- [42:12]
Michael Weiss
Okay, yeah, but. No, but Julia, my kid, it was her first concert ever and she loved it, so it was well worth it.
- [42:18]
Tim Miller
I love that. All right. I appreciate you, my man. We'll be talking to you again soon. All right?
- [42:22]
Michael Weiss
Yep, you got it.
- [42:23]
Tim Miller
All right. Up next, Karine Jean Pierre.
- [42:24]
Musical Guest / Artist
Foreign.
- [42:43]
Tim Miller
Hey, everybody, we are live on substack for the Bulwark here. I'm excited to welcome somebody that you've saw on your TV a bunch in 20, 23 and 24. Her name is Karine Jean Pierre. She was press secretary for Joe Biden. She's got a new book out tomorrow called A Look Inside a Broken White House. What's going on, girl? Good to see you.
- [43:03]
Karine Jean Pierre
Yeah, good to see you, Tim. Thanks for having me. It's been a while, I think, I don't know, maybe even pre Covid. I'm trying to figure out what's going on.
- [43:10]
Tim Miller
It has been a minute. Probably an MSNBC green room somewhere, I think would have been. Would have been it. So it's good to see you. Yeah, you were always busy. I swung back a couple times, the White House, but never, you know, you had briefings to get to, a lot going on. I want to get into the book, obviously. Obviously much to discuss, but we're just coming off this weekend of public action and protests with the no Kings rallies. And I think it's interesting backdrop to you kind of doing this tour and talking about the book and talking about the importance of fighting Trump's assault on our democracy. So I was wondering what you made of it. I'm sure you're busy. I don't know if you got out to one of them, but I just wonder what you think.
- [43:46]
Karine Jean Pierre
I thought it was fantastic. I think it's exactly what we need in this moment where our democracy is under attack every single day. It's walking into an authoritarian regime because of Donald and the fact that it was the third one and it only grew by millions or more than millions or what? You know, it grew. It didn't. People are even more engaged, even more getting involved. It's pretty amazing to see just across the country and 7 million people saying, no, this is not who we want to be or who we are. There are no kings here. We gotta fight for our democracy. We have to fight for vulnerable people. We don't want this anymore. This is not what this country should be is all about. It is. Really gives me some comfort in this time of fear. And one of the things that people need to know and understand is when it comes to authoritarianism, when it comes to fascism, dictatorship, chaos is connected to that. And chaos also brings fear. And where we are in this moment, we cannot be fearful. We need to be fearless. We need to show up because they want us to be silent, want us to be quiet. And so what I saw this Saturday, this past weekend, was really wonderful to see because it means that people are not staying quiet, and they are going to stand up and speak very loudly about this moment.
- [45:17]
Tim Miller
What have you thought about the first 10 months of the Trump administration? Has anything surprised you? Is there a particular action they've done that you think is the most acute rallying point?
- [45:27]
Karine Jean Pierre
Well, Tim, they were pretty clear. Project 25, as you know, right? I mean, you've talked about it. They were not ashamed of it. Last year in 2024, they leaned into Project 2025, anti DI, going after federal workers, government, the institutions that hold us together, throwing out the rule of law. Everything that they were very clear about doing, they're doing. And in rapid speed. That's probably the only thing is, like, the rapidness of the speed that it's happen. But we saw the first Trump administration, and that was a more of a culture war. And then what we see now is more, okay, we know exactly what we want to do. We've been watching the Biden Harris administration. Now we want to turn everything around, undo items that are really. Or policies that were really pertinent and important to people who are vulnerable, who need certain help and policies that. That we were putting forth, and they're just undoing that. And it is incredibly frightening. But that's the point. That is the point of what they've been doing this past 10 months.
- [46:38]
Tim Miller
All right, so let's get to the book. Why write this? You don't have to. You know, a lot of things you could do. You know, I could have gone. I don't know. I don't know. Jay Carney went to do PR for Amazon. You know, you could. You could have an MSNBC show maybe. You know, like, there are things you could have done. You didn't have to write a book, do it.
- [46:54]
Karine Jean Pierre
And I appreciate that.
- [46:55]
Tim Miller
So why'd you do it?
- [46:56]
Karine Jean Pierre
I could be a mom. Right. And I am. But. So I think everything that I just laid out, Tim, it's scary. These are unprecedented times. And I know we've said that before, but we just Talked about the last 10 months of this administration, what's been happening. And I will add, when I came out of the administration after January 20th with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I, I was hearing from people. People were coming up to me and some of them were crying, they were fearful, they were scared. And they were saying to me and asking questions, what are we going to do? What's happening with the Democratic Party? Why is no one fighting back? Why weren't they prepared? And that was the part of the catalyst of me wanting to write a book now as a private citizen, trying to give voice and saying the quiet stuff out loud and give a roadmap for Americans out there who are trying to figure out how do we get our politicians, this political party, to actually wake up and be held accountable as well. And this two party system isn't working. It's not working. And we need it to work in order to have a functioning democracy.
- [48:11]
Tim Miller
Look, I'm with you on the need to fight and people needing to fight harder, doing it outside the construct of the Democratic Party. I'm curious about why you felt you need to do that. Obviously, I left a party once, so I know a little bit about this. I left a party though, you know, based on substance, based on the person that took over the party, did not represent my values, thought he was a danger to the country. I've got my complaints about Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer and the Democratic leadership. Of course, I got some greats on Joe Biden, which we'll talk to about in a minute. But like, you know, I mean, none of them are existential complaints. And so I'm wondering why you felt the need to, to shed the party label.
- [48:48]
Karine Jean Pierre
So here's the thing. Unprecedented moments need unprecedented actions. I truly believe that. And as a black woman who was obviously part of the Democratic Party, and I'm speaking for myself here, and again, I'm trying to start a conversation, which is kind of the whole point of the book, but black women have been the backbone of the Democratic Party. Black women have been on the front lines of the Democratic Party. And what I have seen over and over again is that for the most part, in large part, we are left out of the process or we are forgotten. And I have my queerness too, which is very important to me. And I feel like groups who have stood by the party leadership get forgotten and are not included. And so I think it's important to speak loudly about that and, but not just that. I want them to work for my vote. I want them to know, no, I'm not just going to sit here and be part of the base or whatever you think, whatever it is, that however they see black women, I want to actually stand outside of the two party lines and speak up and push from where I am. I think I have an opportunity to do that coming from my background, coming from working in the democratic party for 20 years. And. And the system should not be about parties. It should be about people, people power. And that's what I'm trying to push. And at the end of the day, a conversation is starting, a conversation is having. People are asking me, and I'm doing the interviews with you about why am I doing this? And I get to lay that out in my own way and again, say the things that people are saying privately, out loud.
- [50:36]
Tim Miller
A couple of things I want to get to, but let's just talk about, you know, being a black woman and feeling like, you know, maybe black women, the base of the party, aren't being heard. And obviously, Kamala Harris was. Ended up being the nominee for the Democratic Party, a black woman, last time. She also has a book out, two books happening right now, 107 days. In that book, she talks about how she felt like she was sidelined by your big boss, really by Joe Biden, a lot of times wasn't set up to succeed in her role as vice president, and. And point some fingers at others in the Biden administration about that. I wonder what you made of what Kamala's book within her book and what she said about that in particular.
- [51:14]
Karine Jean Pierre
So I want to first say that I admire Vice President Kamala Harris. I think she is a force. Her leadership, certainly in that 107 days was so impressive, and she did something historic. And I will always admire that and appreciate that. And I think it's important that she wrote this book. It's important that we hear her side of the story and her truth. I will say, as you just stated in your question, as a black woman myself, I know I understand what it could feel like when you are undermined. I think I talk about my own experience in the book. I don't think I do. I talk about my own.
- [51:50]
Tim Miller
Yeah, we're getting to that. Don't worry.
- [51:53]
Karine Jean Pierre
In the book. So I understand how she feels and how she felt. I could only speak for my portion of what I did for the president, which is. And there, you know, you can just watch my briefings at moments where I really felt it was important to defend her, to really talk about her record and to lay out why she was an important partner of the president. And that was something the president wanted me to do, and that is something that I believed was critical in doing. And so I'm glad that we're hearing from her, and I'm glad that she wrote this.
- [52:30]
Tim Miller
Well, let me just say, though, I. Objectively speaking, she was given a pretty shit portfolio. Let's solve the underlying problems of the migrant crisis. It's like, okay, you know, I mean, that's. That's not exactly setting her up to succeed. And, you know, she says in the book. But I've heard about this before. I interviewed Elena Plot, who covered you guys over at the Atlantic a lot, and she was. She did a profile about the vice president before she'd taken over at Top of the Table ticket, just in her role as vice president, was talking about a lot of the things that she was doing. It was pretty favorable profile. And she said she went to the Biden administration, the Biden team, and asked them some examples of where the vice president had been stepping up, doing great work, and said that she got basically crickets. And she just felt, I think there's a lot of reporting out there that the White House was not really setting her up to succeed. And given the president's age, I think that's like a huge failure in retrospect. What do you think about that?
- [53:26]
Karine Jean Pierre
I can't speak to that experience. I was not part of that particular moment when the reporter asked for more insight and more specific example. I just can't. I think what I can speak to is my role. And what I did and what I did every day at the podium, especially during the 107 days when I was getting incoming on the vice president then obviously running on the top of the ticket and my job, and this is something that the president wanted me to do, was to speak for her, speak, you know, make sure we were defending her and do everything that we can to support her. And that is what I can speak to. That is what we did under my time as White House Press secretary. Again, I think it's important that she wrote this book. I admire that she was able to tell her truth. We need her voice, and we need to hear what her experience is like. I think many people want to hear that, and. And that's really all I can speak to.
- [54:27]
Tim Miller
So I guess just one other element on this that I think you could speak to since you were in there. Right. Like, another thing that, you know, she talks about is essentially that, like, when it comes to the question of the president's age. You know, there was like a lot of pressure to not speak out. I think I don't have right in front of me. She said we were in a trance or something to that effect and that there was a lot of pressure from the president and the first lady to not say anything about this, to just put one foot in front of the other to be loyal to the president. You express some concern in the book about disloyalty to the president. I look back at that and think, man, wasn't there a little too much overemphasis on loyalty to Joe Biden and Biden's legacy and not enough on setting the party up to succeed, setting Kamala Harris up to succeed?
- [55:09]
Karine Jean Pierre
So a couple of things. The loyalty piece, I don't know which part you're saying that I was loyalty to the president. What I have said more broadly, more broadly speaking, in this effort to talk about the broken system, what needs to be fixed? I think the power needs to come out of the White House and more back to the people like this people power that we're seeing. I think that that type our democracy should not be just only in the hands of any president. So that's number one. Number two, I was White House press secretary and I was honored and privileged to have been White House press secretary. It is a job that I think is critical and important to speak on behalf of this president. It is important to be able to share with the American people what we're thinking, what the president think. Thinking is how we move forward when it came. If you're asking me about him deciding to run again, is that where.
- [56:01]
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, I mean, look, I'm asking. These things are all connected, right? Him deciding to run again. I mean, him decide to run again, but also just this idea that Joe Biden and Joe Biden were deeply concerned about protecting his legacy. More than fighting Donald Trump, more than preparing the vice president to be able to fight Donald Trump. And then after he dropped out, I like was just. There's a lot of conversation. I guess there was a lot of conversation. You were press secretary. I'm sure you hear about this, about protecting President Biden's legacy. And I just like, why did we care about that so much?
- [56:31]
Karine Jean Pierre
I have to tell you, Tim, look, the vice president will speak to her experience, and I think she should. And I'm glad that she's doing that. I would disagree that this president was only concerned about his legacy. I think every president cares about their legacy. They want to make sure that it is captured in the best way Possible. That's not unusual. Whether you have a D or are behind a name, I think that's just not unusual.
- [56:57]
Tim Miller
But I mean, what about the story? He called her before the debate to say that people said they're being mean to him. Like, what is happening.
- [57:02]
Michael Weiss
How.
- [57:02]
Tim Miller
What is happening? That is insane. That's an insane thing to do.
- [57:05]
Karine Jean Pierre
Hold on a second, Tim. You're talking about her experience. I can't speak to her experience. I can't.
- [57:10]
Tim Miller
But you were around, though.
- [57:11]
Karine Jean Pierre
Wait, wait a minute. You're asking me a broader question, right? About his legacy. And I'm telling you that that is not, first of all, not unusual. That is not. That was not the focus that I was given. The focus that I was given as, as a person that spoke to him on a daily, spoke for him on a daily basis, was to try to communicate what we were doing on behalf of the American people. And you heard that, you heard that from me when I was at the podium. It was always trying to lay out, here are the policies, whether on the economy, whether on health care, how we're trying to move the country forward. That was my opening. If you think about my opening, kind of part of my briefing was always that how we're trying. It always had the American people in it. It always had how we're moving this forward. It wasn't legacy, legacy, legacy. That's not what we focused on. We wanted to protect. We wanted to protect what Biden had been able to do because we knew that it would affect Americans for generations, and if it was undone, it would have an effect. So that was our focus. Again, what the vice president has said, that's something she can speak to. I can't speak.
- [58:23]
Tim Miller
Okay.
- [58:24]
Karine Jean Pierre
But that is not. Was not my experience when we talk about specifically legacy and what we were asked to do on behalf of this president, it is trying to sell and push forward policies that helped the American people. And I would argue, too, in almost every speech that he gave in 2024, 2023, even during the midterm election, was about democracy, was about protecting our democracy. January 6th and anniversary of January 6th, he would make a speech around there to talk about how. How our country is an experiment and if we do not fight for our democracy every day, we will lose our democracy. He talked about that often.
- [59:09]
Tim Miller
Well, one more thing on the Biden, and I want to get to the rest of the book, but I guess I wonder if you feel this. Some of us feel let down because I don't think that he was able to live up to his rhetoric on that he wasn't capable at his age of making the case from a communication standpoint. There's a lot of the good things he did people didn't know about because he did not wasn't capable of making a vigorous case. Obviously I wasn't capable of making a vigorous case on the debate stage. And now, you know, God love him, we send him our best, but he, you know, has, has cancer. Like the notion that this person was up for being president to 2028, was up for the communications responsibility of this job and fighting. Do you think he could have been president in 2028?
- [59:49]
Karine Jean Pierre
I can't speak to that. Here's.
- [59:51]
Tim Miller
But was he up for it though? I guess I could just. He didn't, he didn't have the vigor for this fight.
- [59:57]
Karine Jean Pierre
We have to rewind the tape a little bit and not be revisionist historians here because in 2023, the winter and spring of 2023, we were coming out a successful midterm elections for Democrats in the sense that we didn't have a red wave and it was seen as one of the most successful. First you lost the House. No, but remember, it was supposed to be a red. I'm not saying we. No, but historically, if you look at other first term presidents, see midterm elections, he. Right. Okay, just follow me for a second.
- [60:33]
Tim Miller
I'm just saying it wasn't that great of a midterm.
- [60:34]
Karine Jean Pierre
That's not what I said. I said it wasn't a red wave. That's what I said. It was predicted to be an awful, awful first term midterms. And it wasn't that. It just wasn't. And the reason why was because Democrats in their districts, in their state were able to tout what we had been able to do as an administrat. And that is also really important. We cannot forget that. Arguably. Right object. Not even arguably. Objectively, this president had a pretty successful couple of years as president and he got that done because of his experience. And now we're still in the spring, the winter, spring of 2023. He was the only person to have beaten Donald Trump. Still is. And people in the Democratic Party leadership in the Democratic Party were actually saying that he should run for reelect. So we have to look at the time when he made this decision. That was the time that he made the decision in 2023, early 2023. And so that is one of the reasons what came to his mind, I believe I never even talked to him about it, but those were the facts that were talked to him about that time. Those were just facts.
- [61:47]
Tim Miller
Being the oldest president in history and having to run against Donald Trump who tried an insurrection. You never talked to him about his age.
- [61:53]
Karine Jean Pierre
I was not part of his political decision. That was not something I did. I talked to. Remember, I've always talk Hatch Act. That was not something I did. I never asked him about. It was his decision to make. He made it. And there were factors. There were factors in the spring of 2023 that made sense for him to make a decision in this way. So that's number one. My job. My job was to speak to what the decision he made in the sense of. In the sense of continuing trying to lift up. Trying to lift up the policies and the legislative wins that we did have.
- [62:30]
Tim Miller
Have.
- [62:30]
Karine Jean Pierre
We did have legislative win.
- [62:32]
Tim Miller
But he didn't talk about them that well. So he couldn't talk about it. He wasn't campaigning that vigorously.
- [62:36]
Karine Jean Pierre
No, no, no, wait. First of all, first of all, you're. He did talk about them. Whether it, it, it broke through or not. He did, Tim. He did talk about.
- [62:45]
Tim Miller
He talked way less to the press than Donald Trump does. Way less. And he wasn't out there at all. He wasn't good off the cuff. He wasn't doing press conferences. Let's just be real. Like he didn't do night events.
- [62:56]
Karine Jean Pierre
But Tim, that's not true. Tim, you're conflating all of that. That's what you're doing. No, you're. First you're telling me he didn't talk well about it. Then you're telling me he didn't talk.
- [63:04]
Tim Miller
He didn't do either. He didn't talk very often. And when he did, it wasn't very good. He sounded very old.
- [63:09]
Karine Jean Pierre
Maybe we weren't paying attention to what we were doing at the White House.
- [63:11]
Tim Miller
I paid attention. I'm with you on the policies. I'm talking about his performance.
- [63:15]
Karine Jean Pierre
The president spoke to the American people a couple times a week. He traveled and did domestic travel and talk directly to the American people. We are talking about a time politically that is incredibly partisan. It is hard, it is hard to break through any messaging. And it was an incumbency as well. All G7, G10 countries had a really difficult time if they were an incumbent getting reelected because of COVID because of the economy. There are many factors that play a part in this, in what happened in 2024. That is just true. That is just fact. The reason he made the decision at the time in 2023, there were factors there that led him to make a decision to run for reelection. It was a different, different time in what he was able to get accomplished. And the midterms, which matter, and him being the only person to have been beaten. Donald Trump, there were factors in that decision as well. Well, so, you know, this is a president that used and used his platform to try to do good, use his platform to make change, and created legislation to do just that. On the other side, you have Republican leadership, Donald Trump, who only puts forth hatred, hatred, divisiveness, Project 2025, which is hurting and hurting vulnerable people. I mean, that's what we have right now. That's the person who is in office right now.
- [65:00]
Tim Miller
I think that's why people are mad. So here's what I think you. I think we can agree, Karina. It's a question of just how to process this. People are pissed that Donald Trump is back in office again. People are pissed. The threat was great. That's what you're talking about. The threat was great. Great. We needed an opposition that was up to the threat. And I think some people are upset at the president. I would include myself among those. Some people are upset about the vice president. Some people are like, you are saying that, like, we needed a broad, the whole party and we needed a broader fight. But, you know, I just think that is like, what is underlying this. It's not like some personal vendetta. Like people are rightly mad because all this horrible shit is happening. And it's like, well, what can we do better now to prevent this from happening?
- [65:42]
Karine Jean Pierre
Exactly.
- [65:44]
Tim Miller
So talk to me about what you're suggesting.
- [65:47]
Karine Jean Pierre
Right. That is the point of what I'm trying to talk about. You're not wrong things. People are upset. People are angry. Millions of people who came out in 2020 to vote for Joe Biden didn't come out in 2024. They stayed home. They were either disillusioned, didn't feel like it was their vote matter, whatever it is, they stayed home. And I think this is the moment now where Democrats in particular here, because I see them as the opposition party, they should be the opposition party. This is a moment to be the opposition party. Especially in the moments where you feel like there's an unprecedented time here. And it is. And so they need to do more. And this is what I'm talking about. When you look at, we just started this conversation talking about the no Kings protest. 7 million people came out, millions more than the last one. But it's only organizations outside organizations that are putting them together. Why do Democrats not do protests like that? And really help infuse and engage and do peaceful protests and show the American public that they're fighting. Why are we not seeing more lawsuits for Democrats? Right. Why aren't we not seeing. I think Democrats should go into a red district and talk to them about the economy. There are things that I think that they can do and really show, hey, we're trying to make a change and do it differently. And right now, what people are seeing, and I know you're saying people are angry, but what I'm also hearing from people that they're angry about is they feel like Democratic leadership is letting go and is giving up on their power. They're acting as if they're powerless when they are not powerless. And so this is the conversation that I'm trying to have. This is what we're trying to figure out, to take that power out of the White House and give it to the people power because our democracy is at stake.
- [67:36]
Tim Miller
That takes me back to this question about becoming an independent again. I understand the critiques of the Democratic Party, wanting to encourage them to do better, but isn't the only vehicle, really politically for stopping Donald Trump right now, aspirationally? Sure, like, maybe in the future we need more parties, but, like, right now, the Democratic Party is the only vehicle for doing it. Isn't it better to work within the system to model behavior for how to fight harder, to give advice to Democrats that will listen? Right. Like, why leave the party when that is the. Sorry to use a pun, but the bulwark, the only political bulwark right now, again, against this regime?
- [68:10]
Karine Jean Pierre
Well, I talked early, early on about being a black woman, being part of the LGBTQ community, and how it feels as if we are forgotten and we are not included in certain major decisions and not respected as being at the front lines. And so I talked about that a little bit, and I think if you look at what's happening with independence right now, it's growing. People do not see themselves in any of the party. Millions of people are saying they don't feel like their voices are heard. Millions of people do not want to affiliate themselves as a D or an R. And that, to me, shows that the system is broken. And it's not about what is easy to do. It is about having those difficult conversations. It is certainly being able to say to the Democratic Party, hey, you know what? You have millions of people here who don't feel seen by either two of the party. And so when the process begins to vote, some of them can't even vote in a primary. Right. The primary process is closed. I think they should see that as this is a problem. This is a problem. So how do we engage? How do we bring people in so that it feels like a big tent party again? And it doesn't. You cannot throw vulnerable communities under the bus and say, you're a big tent party. You can't do that. You can't grow the party if you're not willing to protect vulnerable communities. Communities. And so that is what I'm seeing from this current iteration of the Democratic Party.
- [69:44]
Tim Miller
Who are they not representing in particular? Like what?
- [69:47]
Karine Jean Pierre
I don't think. Well, I told you, like, black women feel like they get left out of the process. I'm a black woman. I can speak to that. I'm obviously. I'm speaking to myself. LGBTQ community feel like they're being left out of the process. I mean, and I don't think they're doing enough for migrants and immigrants. We cannot be throwing vulnerable communities under the bus. There needs to be more that has to happen. The political system isn't working for us. That's what millions of people are saying. And so I believe, using my platform, having these conversations that we're having, having a voice, I can shed light to this. Because at the end of the day, when you think about the system, it shouldn't be about politics. Politics. It should be about people. People should be at the center of this.
- [70:37]
Tim Miller
You. You write in the book. I have to ask this. I just. I have no choice. You write in the book about other. As a person on your team. I do. I don't really. No, I have no choice. Like, it's not like someone else is making me. I mean, like, in my. My nature.
- [70:50]
Karine Jean Pierre
It is my nature as a private citizen.
- [70:52]
Tim Miller
No, I haven't. I have a nature. I mean, it's within my own nature that if you. If you write something this provocative, I gotta ask. Ask about it because I'm. Because I'm a curious. I'm a curious Kitty. You wrote about how there was a person on a team, a senior person, a mentor that you felt like was undermining you. You mentioned it earlier in the interview. You wrote about it. Who are we talking about? What happened?
- [71:10]
Karine Jean Pierre
I'm not going beyond the book, but the reason why I wrote that is, as a first, it is sometimes even the people who are the closest to you really put roadblocks in front of. Of you. And I wrote it to tell my story, to tell my side. You have to know, and I think you know this, Tim. When I was the white House press Secretary. I kept my mouth shut. I didn't leak.
- [71:33]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [71:33]
Karine Jean Pierre
I didn't defend myself.
- [71:35]
Tim Miller
That's true.
- [71:36]
Karine Jean Pierre
And I really just focused on the work and focused on being White House press secretary for this president and what ended up happening. When I was writing the book, as I was telling the story, I also wanted to tell the story what it's like to be a first because I wanted to connect with women who are first with black women, with others who have gone through this process. And so I wanted to be honest about what was going on. It was being written about and I wanted people to hear it from my voice. But I'm not going to go beyond, beyond that story. But I think, I believe that many people who read that piece of that part of the book will understand and it will resonate. And I think they probably feel as if I'm speaking to them. And I want to feel that I, I touched people in personal ways and obviously helped them get re engaged in this process or continue to be engaged in this process as well.
- [72:34]
Tim Miller
Let's have a little fun at the end. You watch this round show of Trump of the Trump press conference's your old job. What's happening now. It's truly unbelievable. They filled the briefing room with hacks and it would be like as if you would have, I don't know, put a couple of the tiktokers from the K hive in the briefing room and have them ask you questions instead of actual reporters. It's worse than that, actually, because at least those people would have been good, you know, honest people with, well, intentions. These guys have, like these horrible far right hacks and apologists for the fascist regime are in there asking questions. A lot of times really stupid questions, really obsequious questions. Like when you, do you have the, do you have it in you to watch this or can you not Can.
- [73:17]
Karine Jean Pierre
You know, I have to tell you, Tim, I have not, I've not watched. I basically, I don't blame you. There are better people than me that can speak to this. I will say this, though, and this is something that I truly believe and I hope that I exemplified that when I was the White House Press Secretary, standing at that podium behind the lectern. And this is something that President Biden wanted, which is to respect the freedom of the press, which is really one of the things that's incredibly important when you think about democracy, when you think about the fourth of State, right, and taking on the hard questions and making sure that the press was able to have a healthy back and forth with us. And I think the freedom of the press, what's so important about that is they're supposed to hold powerful people accountable. And when you remove that, when that no longer exists, it's no longer free, it's no longer part of our democracy. Right. You're talking about a regime, an authoritarian regime. You're talking about fast as about you're talking. They're talking about dictatorship. And so that is something that I think is really sad and unfortunate that is happening. But the freedom of the press needs to be respected, regardless if you agree with them or not.
- [74:31]
Tim Miller
You're kind of missing out, I guess I'm going to tell you should maybe just watch some have someone pull a highlight. Real you can watch for me because it is such a clown show. Okay. Anything we can we close? Something fun or do you have any fun little anecdotes in the book? Something that hit the cutting room floor that you wanted to mention? Maybe something about my favorite friend Ben LaBolt? Some trash talk.
- [74:49]
Karine Jean Pierre
I love me some Ben. Ben. Ben LaBold is the best. He's a. He's a good egg, as my mom would say.
- [74:55]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll leave it with that. A little compliment for Ben LaBolt. Little good luck on the book. Drive it out there, girl. You know it's a grind, so I wish you the best.
- [75:05]
Karine Jean Pierre
Thanks, Tim.
- [75:05]
Tim Miller
Come back and talk to us soon. All right?
- [75:07]
Karine Jean Pierre
I appreciate it.
- [75:07]
Tim Miller
Thanks, Green. Jean Pierre. Everybody else will see you soon. Bye.
- [75:12]
Karine Jean Pierre
Bye.
- [75:13]
Musical Guest / Artist
We broke up on a Tuesday Kiss me out with the rent paid Ruined my credit Stole my cute aesthetic who knew that we'd let it get this bad when it ended it's comical.
- [75:39]
Michael Weiss
Bridges.
- [75:39]
Musical Guest / Artist
You burn a commas real hope it's your turn I heard from Katie you're losing it lately Move back with your parents and take girls with 18 it's hard when you have a meltdown in the front of your house and you're getting kicked out. It's hard when you're drinking downtown and you're getting called out. Cause you're running your mouth oh God. And it's coming around yeah, it's coming around it's coming around oh, God, oh, God. People say I'm jealous but my kink is watching you.
- [76:48]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.