S2 Ep1008: Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Karni: Radioactively Stupid

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast – Season 2, Episode 1008: "Radioactively Stupid"

Release Date: March 26, 2025

Hosts and Guests:

• Host: Tim Miller
• Guests:
  • Michael Weiss – Editor of The Insider, contributing editor to New Lions magazine, former CNN investigative reporter
  • Ben Smith – Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Semaphore, Co-host of the Mixed Signals podcast
  • Annie Carney – Congressional Correspondent for The New York Times, Co-author of Madhouse: How Donald Trump, MAGA, Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby, and a Man with Rats in His Walls Broke Congress

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1. Leaked White House Texts: War Plans or Hoax?

[00:00 - 02:20]

Discussion Highlights:

• Michael Weiss introduces the topic of leaked White House text messages, suggesting they reveal genuine war plans despite the administration's denial.
• Tim Miller questions the authenticity of the White House's claim that the texts are not war plans, highlighting inconsistencies in the administration's stance.

Notable Quotes:

• Michael Weiss [00:55]:
  “There’s no way that this was unclassified data... even more critical than the attack plans themselves is the policy discussion... if you’re a foreign adversary, you absolutely want to know what the back and forth is amongst Trump’s national security team.”

• Tim Miller [02:20]:
  “Imagine if you know, somebody involved in the actual execution of the mission... decides to text the Atlantic the exact timing of when we’re gonna bomb Yemen... What is Pete Hegseth saying about this person? This person is getting court.”

2. Accusations Against Jeffrey Goldberg and Media Slander

[03:19 - 10:22]

Discussion Highlights:

• Michael Weiss delves into Michael Waltz’s accusations against journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, alleging espionage.
• The conversation examines the implications of such accusations on media credibility and national security.
• Michael Weiss emphasizes the authenticity of the leaked communications, arguing against the administration's denial.

Notable Quotes:

• Michael Weiss [04:19]:
  “There is no question mark my mind now that people ought to be fired or ought to resign. But they’re not going to, right? Because that’s just handing a gift to the media and the big bad wolf, Jeffrey Goldberg...”

• Ben Smith [05:00]:
  “How did a Trump-hating Editor of the Atlantic end up on your signal chat?”

• Annie Carney [05:04]:
  “Whether he did it deliberately or... something... is something we’re trying to figure.”

3. Security Lapses and Use of Signal for National Security Communications

[10:22 - 18:45]

Discussion Highlights:

• Michael Weiss critiques the improper use of Signal for sensitive national security communications, highlighting vulnerabilities.
• The role of Tulsi Gabbard and Steve Witkoff is examined, suggesting potential foreign intelligence compromises.
• Tim Miller observes the incompetence and lack of proper security protocols among top officials.

Notable Quotes:

• Michael Weiss [08:20]:
  “This is somebody who has traveled to the Vatican... has connections with Russian intelligence assets... It's radioactively stupid.”

• Tim Miller [11:01]:
  “She looked nervous to me, and she was very uncomfortable... clearly the Director of National Intelligence was on her personal phone also overseas.”

4. Media Transformation in the Trump Era: From Traditional to Hyper-Partisan

[18:45 - 43:52]

Discussion Highlights:

• Ben Smith and Tim Miller discuss the evolution of media in the Trump era, emphasizing the shift from traditional outlets to hyper-partisan digital platforms.
• The challenges faced by mainstream media in retaining credibility and control over information.
• Ben Smith reflects on the necessity for media to adapt to a landscape dominated by digital and partisan outlets, comparing it to the rise of Breitbart under Steve Bannon.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Smith [34:26]:
  “There is really... the conflict between the Trump and the White House press corps... it's very important that the press sort of retain prerogatives and not hand control of facts over to people in power.”

• Tim Miller [36:08]:
  “It's a big warning sign for the left right now... there's now emerging kind of left-wing media ecosystem where you also can do pretty well by not telling the truth.”

• Ben Smith [43:03]:
  “There was a belief among Democrats that the New York Times was Democrats’ partisan outlet... now there's a sense on the left that we need hyper-partisan shows that create a bubble like the right has.”

5. Congressional Dynamics Under Trump: Loyalty and Power Consolidation

[43:51 - 57:41]

Discussion Highlights:

• Annie Carney provides insights into the internal struggles within Congress, particularly how Trump’s dominance has fractured traditional bipartisan efforts.
• The unification of Republicans under Trump’s influence, leading to diminished independent legislative action.
• Examination of Democratic leadership’s attempts to navigate the fractured political landscape, with Annie Carney highlighting Chuck Schumer’s perspective on Trump’s impact.

Notable Quotes:

• Annie Carney [44:29]:
  “The Nepo baby is Gaetz... Matt Gaetz’s father was a powerful Florida state senator.”

• Annie Carney [47:37]:
  “Most of those people left and those who stayed have made the decision that they want to rise and have power in this tribal party... going all in with Trump.”

• Nancy Mace [52:55]:
  “Trump is uniting them... His power over the party is near total. There's no room to end.”

• Nancy Mace [55:21]:
  “They've just ceded their power completely to the White House... the Congress is part of this story.”

6. Concluding Remarks: The Fragility of Current Political Structures

[57:38 - 60:06]

Discussion Highlights:

• Tim Miller reflects on the precarious state of Congress and the overarching control exerted by Trump.
• Annie Carney emphasizes the complete power transfer to the White House, critiquing the lack of legislative action and accountability.

Notable Quotes:

• Tim Miller [54:39]:
  “Well, it's out of touch with reality... most Democrats and voters have come around to the idea that MAGA is bigger than Trump. There's no reverting. There's really no evidence that anything is going back.”

• Nancy Mace [57:15]:
  “Trump is holding it together and no one wants to cross him... They've just ceded their power completely to the White House.”

---

Key Takeaways:

• National Security Concerns: The episode delves into the potential implications of leaked White House communications, emphasizing the risks of policy discussions falling into foreign adversaries' hands.

• Media Credibility Under Attack: The discussion highlights the increasing challenges faced by traditional media outlets in maintaining credibility amidst heightened partisan attacks and the rise of hyper-partisan digital platforms.

• Congressional Fragmentation: Insights into how Trump’s influence has led to a consolidation of power within the Republican Party, undermining traditional bipartisan legislative processes and weakening congressional oversight.

• Evolving Media Landscape: The shift from established media hierarchies to a more fragmented, digital-first approach, with both the right and left developing their own hyper-partisan outlets, poses significant challenges for balanced journalism and public discourse.

• Political Strategy and Loyalty: The episode underscores the strategic maneuvers within Congress to align with Trump’s agenda, often at the expense of independent policymaking and accountability, leading to a fragile and polarized legislative environment.

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Conclusion: In this episode of The Bulwark Podcast, Tim Miller and his guests dissect the intricate web of national security lapses, media transformations, and congressional dynamics under Trump’s influence. Through detailed analysis and expert insights, they paint a picture of a political landscape fraught with vulnerabilities, partisanship, and shifting power structures, urging listeners to critically evaluate the forces shaping contemporary American politics.

Transcript

[Tim Miller]

Foreign hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We're doing something different today. We got three guests, a triple rainbow of guests on the podcast. Remember, it's Wednesday, so you can check out me and JVL and Sam Steinen for Sarah Longwell on the Next level, where we go long on all of the politics and news of the day. But first up, it's our friend Michael Weiss, editor of the Insider, a Russia focused media outlet, contributing editor to New Lions magazine, formerly an investigative reporter for cnn, our unofficial crazy foreign policy correspondent. And we wanted to bring him in immediately because we've now officially seen the text. Michael weiss, are these war plans? The White House is saying this is a hoax. These are not war plans. What do you make of it?

[Michael Weiss]

I mean, you've got the timings of the strikes, you've got the platforms being used. There's no way that this was unclassified data, right? I'm talking to former CIA officers, including a former CIA lawyer who says this is all top secret. I mean, even more critical than the attack plans themselves is the policy discussion, right? Like if you're a foreign adversary, you absolutely want to know what the back and forth is amongst Trump's national security team. So the fact that J.D. vance is a little squeamish about attacking the Houthis because that gives a freebie to the Europeans, those freeloading welfare queen Europeans that he's always on about, that's useful information. Mark Polymeropoulos said to me, if you're a CIA case officer and you obtain this data on an enemy of the United States, you get a medal, right? That's how valuable this stuff is. It certainly looks to me. And again, I've just done some very quick reporting on this thanks to the Atlantic's disclosure. It certainly looks to me like some people went ahead and perjured themselves at Congress yesterday by saying this was all unclassified. Now, it may be the case that Donald Trump has decided to declassify it after the fact. But the chronology of this, you know, what did you know and when kind of thing is gonna be key here. So I don't think this story's going away, Tim.

[Tim Miller]

No, Donald Trump declassified it with his mind, apparently, and there's so much here to go over. But just because the White House is already out this morning saying these are not war plans, they're still dying on this spin. Hill, as you mentioned yesterday in Congress, both Ratcliffe, the head of the CIA, and Tulsi were testifying that this was not classified. Ratcliffe was saying it's pretty concerning the poor memory on the Trump director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He's like, you know, I cannot recall when asked several times, yeah, it's all pretty preposterous. And I just put it in this, in this context. Imagine if you know, somebody involved in the actual execution of the mission, you know, an actual war fighter, to use Pete Hegso's term. Let's imagine this person is a DEI hire. Let's imagine this is a black woman and she decides to text the Atlantic two hours ahead, the exact timing of when we're gonna bomb Yemen, all caps. This is when the first bombs will definitely drop.

[Michael Weiss]

I love that.

[Tim Miller]

And then it leaks. What is Pete Hegseth saying about this person? I mean, this person is getting court.

[Michael Weiss]

Martialed, they're getting fired and they're getting prosecuted. No question. I mean, by the way, I love the Waltz sets the timer for deletion to four weeks. I correspond with my dog groomer on signal and we have a three day time window for deletion. So, you know, Humphrey getting, getting his hair cut is, I guess less sensitive or more sensitive than when and where we're bombing the Houthis. The Trump administration line is very clear on this, right? Deny, deny, deny. Attack, attack, attack. It's kind of the Roy Cohn playbook. There is no question that everybody has egg on their face. There is no question that they realize what a colossal fuck up this is. There is no question mark my mind now that people ought to be fired or ought to resign. But they're not going to, right? Because that's just handing a gift to the media and the big bad wolf, Jeffrey Goldberg, who evidently may have hacked his way. We got Elon Musk, our best man on the case, to figure out if Jeff Goldberg.

[Tim Miller]

Let's actually sit on this. Let's sit on this for a second because I think this is important. Since we talked to Jeff yesterday, since then last night. And again, if anybody that listened to the pod yesterday, had these guys just said, you know what, this was just a total mistake. I meant to put in whatever, you know, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And that was J.C. and I thought I wrote JG instead, who knows? I mean, it would be still a huge egg on your face. But if they had said that these details don't come out today. And what they did instead was crazy. I just want to play the audio of Michael Waltz last night on Fox, essentially accusing Jeffrey Goldberg of espionage. Let's listen.

[Ben Smith]

How did a Trump hating Editor of the Atlantic end up on your signal chat.

[Annie Carney]

You know, Laura, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but of all the people out there, somehow this guy who has lied about the President, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys and gone to Russia hoax, gone to just all kinds of links to lie and smear the President of the United States. And he's the one that somehow gets on somebody's contact and then gets sucked into this group.

[Michael Weiss]

Sucked in.

[Annie Carney]

Have you ever had somebody's contact that shows their name and then you have an. And then you have somebody else those mistakes, Right. You've got somebody else's number on someone else's contact. So of course, I didn't see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. Now, whether he did it deliberately or, or it happened in some other technical mean is something we're trying to figure.

[Tim Miller]

Out, whether he did it deliberately. And that's the national Security Advisor.

[Michael Weiss]

He got sucked in to a signal chat that you have to be added to by a member of the chat.

[Tim Miller]

And then the question is whether he did it to Liberty. I mean, Michael, they think that that is better spin. I guess it's because they're so, they hate the media so much. And like he can't, you know, he's worried that he's going to be accused of being like a secret deep state neocon inside the administration. So that's why he has to do this. But like, that is worse, right? If the idea that it's like, oh, some boomer magazine editor hacked his way into the chat where we planned our bombing campaign. That's their spin.

[Michael Weiss]

Right. So they're accusing him or he is floating a conspiracy theory, a slanderous one, that Jeff Goldberg has committed espionage, which.

[Tim Miller]

Is a crime, very serious crime.

[Michael Weiss]

This is their spin, right. That Jeff is a criminal and that's how he obtained this. But, you know, look, the critical thing here is nobody is disputing the authenticity of these is communications. Right?

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Michael Weiss]

So that we have documentary proof, we have screenshots of the signal checks. So what'll happen now is I hope these guys would be brought back before Congress, before the Senate and grilled and told there is no way that this stuff was not classified. Right. You can FOIA this, by the way now, and if it turns out that Tulsi, Gabbard and Hegseth and Waltz perjured themselves, well, in the long, long ago, Tim, that was a crime punishable by prosecution. I don't think the DOJ and this administration is going to do anything like.

[Tim Miller]

That, but they're worried about Tesla vandals. I want to get your take on one other and maybe some of the folks you've talked to. I don't know if this has bubbled up in any chats you've said, but just me as somebody who's not involved, has never been involved in any military type conversations like this. The Pete Hegseth just kind of tone on this chat really jumps out to me. I mean, on the one just like all caps, this is when the first bombs will definitely drop. Followed by we are currently clean on OpSec, which when there's an unknown number on the online. It's pretty funny as far as incompetence is concerned. But just over and over you know, calling the Europeans pathetic, all cap, saying he loathes them, sharing maybe more information than he needs to with like the Secretary of Treasury, like all the people on this chain being very solicitous. To me, it reads like somebody that like, knows he's in over his head and is trying really hard to demonstrate competence and it totally backfired. But I don't know, what's your sense?

[Michael Weiss]

A friend of mine put it, well, this sort of reads like he's in a direct to video Steven Seagal film where Seagal is spending 90% of the film because he's so obese in a chair, like barking orders. I mean, it's written in crayon, you know, it's like cosplay. It's like, I want to be a military commander. And this is what I've seen in movies and on tv. So it sounds authoritative. Right. I think everybody is in over their heads in this government. Of course, you know, it's sort of a goat rodeo. First of all, let's take a step back here. There's some other contextual things that need to be discussed. Number one, you're not supposed to have Signal on your private devices communicating with other members of the national security team. That's just a cardinal rule. In fact, former CIA people told me that CIA messaged out. Here's what you need to be aware of with Signal and its vulnerabilities. That's one, this idea that Ratcliffe installed Signal on his computer at the agency the day he took the job. No, I mean, this is just insane. Number two, Tulsi Gabbard was abroad when these messages were going back and forth. I think she was in India.

[Tim Miller]

Yes.

[Michael Weiss]

Steve Witkoff, Trump's ENVOY to I guess everything now was in Russia. In Russia with Signal on his phone in Russia at the time that these chats were taking place. Now, if you use WI Fi, if you have Bluetooth turned on in Russia, and you're somebody like Steve Witkoff, whom the Russians are very interested in finding out, who's he talking to and what is the nature and content of those conversations?

[Tim Miller]

I mean, I sense what you'd think the Russians would be interested in that. But since Stykov is saying everything that Dmitry Peskov would say in all of his interviews, maybe they don't really need.

[Michael Weiss]

To work him, but maybe they got some pretty good insights into how to psychologically manipulate this guy as a result of hacking his phone. I mean, everything about this is just radioactively stupid and just the sort of cardinal rules. Do not do this if you are in a position of authority and you have top secret clearance, which all of these people do.

[Tim Miller]

Just real quick on the phone thing. Also, Tulsi. Tulsi's asked about this in the hearing yesterday. Just body language, Tim. Doctor. She looked nervous to me, and she was very uncomfortable. I mean, Ratcliffe was kind of knew their bone. It kind of had a lying smirk on his face a little bit. She looks like she was sweating. And Jack Reed, the Democratic senator from Rhode island, was pressing her on whether she was on her personal phone or not, whether she was overseas. And she was like, oh, well, we need to wait for a review to look at that. And he's like, what is the review like? Were you on your phone or not? And clearly the Director of National Intelligence was on her personal phone also overseas, in addition to Wyckoff being in Russia.

[Michael Weiss]

And I don't know how many devices Tulsi Gabbard has had, if she still has the phone that she had before she was dni. But this is somebody who has traveled to the Vatican, a trip paid for by a foundation headed by a Belgian businessman. Pierre Louvrier, who is a Russian intelligence asset, has literally photographs of him with Igor Girkin, the FSB colonel and war criminal who led the separatist movement in Ukraine during the first invasion in 2014. Right. And Louvrie is like just a Google search of this guy's social mike. Partner and colleague Christo Grozev did a deep dive investigation into him. Is he in the phone, too?

[Tim Miller]

He was like, our sponsor.

[Michael Weiss]

His foundation paid for the trip. This is why she was. The New York Times did a story about she was flagged in her international travel. It's because of that trip. I mean, the Russians are doing all kinds of shady things in the Vatican. Don't ask me why? It's like the new Vienna for them.

[Tim Miller]

It's probably easy to get compromised inside the Vatican, maybe. Why?

[Michael Weiss]

Hey, I've seen Conclave, so I get it. So does she have him in the contact? You know, has he had access to her phone? These are all kinds of questions that, you know, even before you get into a counterintelligence sort of frame of mind, you have to be asking and wondering and. Yeah, she looked deeply, deeply uncomfortable. Her apologists and defenders when she was nominated for this position, their kind of fallback on. Well, no, no, no. It's. It's total. McCarthy is claptrap that she's a Russian asset and she's. This was that. Well, she's just. She's just not very bright. That's why she's regurgitating RT talking points on Syria and all that. Okay, so she's not terribly bright, but let's put her in a position of oversight of the entire US Intelligence community.

[Tim Miller]

The chain begins with Walt asking everybody to add somebody to be a representative for them. On the chain, she puts on Joe Kent, who's this guy that ran for Congress, who's a total kook, who is like, sidling up to White Nationalist Youth. He was begging for the support of the White nationalist Grovers. He's advanced some pro Russian views. He's obviously election denier. They all are. So he's her point person. So it's not like she is nominated somebody who's like an old hand intelligence person to kind of guide her through this. And then you got the vp. You know, when Waltz explains what happens in like a brief summary and the chain, he's like, what are you talking about? Like, he doesn't understand, like, basic terminology. It's really the. I mean, the Keystone Cops is like, too nice.

[Michael Weiss]

The insights that you get from this, apart from, as I say, the policy back and forth, who, you know, who thinks what and the kind of kit that's being brought to bear. Also, by the way, there was battle damage assessment. Right. When was it? Waltzer Hegseth says, you know, the building collapsed and we got, you know, the Houthi missile guys going into his girlfriend. That's easy to piece together, like who the target was. Right. So that's also valuable intelligence. But you just get a sense if you're a hostile state or a foreign adversary, that these people don't know what they're doing and that they're deeply, deeply insecure. Like, in the literal sense of the word, they're easily infiltrated. And that's also, I mean a windfall because then, you know, like, I just have to shadow the National Security advisor or his staff and, you know, get to know these people. And I mean, they've got classified on their, their personal devices. I mean, that, that's great insight into how the United States government is being run. And then, you know, added to which, what, what Jeff told you yesterday, which is that a CIA officer's name was mentioned in the chat. I mean, Ratcliffe's chief of staff, I think it's now been reported. Whether or not that was somebody under cover or it doesn't matter. You still don't do that kind of thing.

[Tim Miller]

We've already accidentally released like the first name and last initial of CIA agents already as part of the DoGE effort.

[Michael Weiss]

Doing the Russians work for them, y'all.

[Tim Miller]

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[Michael Weiss]

Yeah. So on the sanctions side of the ledger, remember Donald Trump said, if Russia doesn't come to the table or abide by a ceasefire, we're just going to sanction the hell out of him. That was his tough guy, his one or two moments of appearing or posturing to. That's a tough guy in Russia. Well, what the Russians are doing, and Putin specifically is doing, is dragging out this process of negotiating a truce, whatever you want to call it, and adding new conditions and caveats to it. So now the Russians are saying, well, actually, in order to get us to do a maritime ceasefire, you have to lift some sanctions on our agricultural exports and also critically reconnect the Russian agricultural bank to SWIFT international banking system. Now, the nice thing about that is that that doesn't get done without the European Union's consent and the EU votes by consensus, and they're not set to vote until the summer, July, August. Right. Just before coming on your show, the European Commission came out and said, no, the only way we amend or change or lift sanctions is Russia full withdrawal from Ukraine. Right. So it's a very strong, solid statement. So the Europeans have to use the metaphor of the hour cards to play here, too.

[Tim Miller]

So if they don't get Swift, what then do they get access to?

[Michael Weiss]

Well, the US can start to lift sanctions unilaterally, but the EU can do secondary sanctions. So it doesn't have the full impact. I mean, if the EU keeps in place its sanctions on the same institutions, that tends to constrain or limit Russia's ability to do business. But to the point that Philips is raising, and I made this point myself, one of the unsung victories for the Ukrainians in the last couple years has been to drive the bulk of the Black Sea fleet out of Crimea, their base in Sevastopol, through drone attacks, missile attacks, including with ATACMs that we've provided them with their own homegrown or homemade Neptune cruise missiles. They've expended a lot of resources doing this. And it's also allowed them to create an alternate route for their own grain shipments. Right. I mean, the Black Sea Fleet imposed a blockade and that completely circumscribed Ukraine's ability to make money by selling its food on the international market. So the question is, if this maritime ceasefire does come into effect, and already there's some, some issues in terms of the readouts on either side and what conditions have been agreed or not, does that mean the Black Sea Fleet is able to return in its entirety to Crimea? Because that furthers Russia's military occupation of sovereign Ukraine? And if the Russians are allowed to do that, well, where does it say that the Ukrainians are able to move their personnel or their military assets to places where currently are not on the battlefield? So yes, it is very one sided. The Ukrainians will say, well, look, the best thing that we can get out of this is fewer restrictions on our ability to export, assuming that the Russians abide by any agreement and don't open fire on our commercial vessels and a cessation of bombings of the port in Odessa, for instance. But the Russians being the Russians, they're going to muck about. They're probably going to use their own commercial vessels to transport weapons and material because they do that anyway. And as far as things going boom, I mean, they can still bomb you and they'll just say, well, that's the Ukrainians bombing themselves, doing false flags and trying to blame it on Moscow. And knowing Donald Trump, he'll probably believe Putin's word over his own intelligence community.

[Tim Miller]

It was interesting. Trump was on Newsmax last night. I'm going to spare people the audio of his voice, but he's talking to Greg Kelly, who's maybe the craziest Newsmax anchor, which is competitive category. And Kelly had a rare moment of lucidity and asked him about Russia dragging their feet. Trump said, I don't know if they are. I mean, I'll let you know at a certain point. But I think that Russia wants to see an end to it. But it could be they're dragging their feet. I've done it over the years. I don't want to sign a contract. I want to sort of stay in the game, but maybe I don't want to do it quite. I'm not sure. Then he goes on to say that he's encouraged by the fact that Russia had surrounded the Ukrainian troops and that they didn't kill all of them and that he gets credit for that.

[Michael Weiss]

Yeah, which never happened. The Ukrainian troops were not encircled in Kursk. The Ukrainian military has been quite clear about this. Our own military has come out and said this is not the case. Our own intelligence community has come out and said this is not the case. But he maintains that this is happening. And the only people who claim that this is happening are the Russians and Putin in particular. Right. And this idea that. Oh, well, the way that Vladimir is thinking is just the way I was thinking as a real estate developer, as.

[Tim Miller]

A shady real estate developer.

[Michael Weiss]

Tough negotiations in the closing room and all this. No, no. And this is the problem with Steve Witkoff. You have these sort of tender headed outer borough, you know, goombas who made a lot of money in developing properties in New York and beyond or the Middle east in Witkoff's case. And they think that they, you know, they have found their equal in a Russian dictator who was trained as a KGB case officer. And, I mean, this is terrifying to me. Witkoff, you know, he sort of reminds me of Armand Hammond, you know, the industrialist, the pharmaceuticals guy in the 1920s who became so besotted with the.

[Tim Miller]

I thought you were talking about Armie Hammer.

[Michael Weiss]

The Armie Hammer is related to that family. Yeah, but these guys were, I mean.

[Tim Miller]

Seriously eating the flesh of the women, though, you know, So I thought I was like.

[Michael Weiss]

His great grandfather was known as Lenin's favorite capitalist. This is the guy who essentially enabled the Soviets and the Cheka, which is the forerunner to the kgb, to do money laundering and to move things into the west when there was no diplomatic reputation recognition. This guy does not have any kind of independence of mind anymore. He is not curious, he is not skeptical, he is not critically minded when it comes to what the Russians are telling him. He goes to Moscow, Putin releases this American schoolteacher as a goodwill gesture and dazzles him, charms him, makes him think that this is his best friend he's been waiting for his entire life. I mean, he's literally said, we have a great relationship. And I think he's behaving and acting in good faith. All of which is not true, of course, but he has convinced himself. And so again, let's go to what the kind of MAGA fallback position is here. People will say, well, yeah, yeah, it's Russian talking points, but he's just being clever. He's flattering Putin to get Putin to do things that we want him to do. Right, this is tough negotiations. No, no, he sincerely believes what he's being sold. And I mean, on whose behalf is he really negotiating? Now he sounds like Russia's special Envoy.

[Tim Miller]

And Putin hasn't given us anything. And this is part of the reason why Trump, I think, has to flatter himself with the idea that he saved the surrounded Kursk soldiers, because it's like we're not actually making Putin give anything up. The Ukrainians haven't gotten anything yet out of this whole deal. So if you create a fake story where you saved a bunch of Ukrainians, that's how you even the imaginary ledger. So just one more thing, there's a kind of a tie between these two stories is the Russians have been supportive of the Houthis. And I do think that that adds to kind of the absurdity of it all that Witkoff was in Russia. So, anyway, close us out on either.

[Michael Weiss]

Of those, not just supporting the Houthis, but providing them with targeting data to go after commercial vessels in the region, according to the Wall Street Journal. So, yes, I mean, Russia has a strategic relationship with Iran, which is the patron of the Houthis, which has armed the Houthis and prop them up. This is the kind of weird sort of dynamic, I guess, that's taking place in Trump world, which is they're very pro Israel, they want to get tough on Iran, threaten to bomb the hell out of Iran's nuclear program, go after Hamas, go after Hezbollah, go after the Houthis, put the onus on Iran. But they don't want to hear that. Doing that sort of upsets the apple cart with their new best friends, the Russians, right? Or they've managed to kind of keep these two ledgers separate. And it reminds me, frankly, of term one, when that great strategic genius, Michael Flynn, I mean, his grand design was exactly this, to separate, to cleave Tehran away from Moscow, and for us to befriend the Russians to do counterterrorism jointly. And we all saw how that worked out. Fundamentally, the Russians don't care that much about their allies and partners. We've seen this now in Syria, right? I mean, Putin kind of shrugged when Bashar al Assad's regime just didn't even crumble. It just evaporated. And now he's trying to do deals with hts, the new government in Damascus, to keep the Russian military infrastructure in place there. So the Russians have no problem throwing their own friends under the bus. They do this all the time. But the biggest strategic objective that they have is to get the United States to do this realignment, right? Abandon our allies in Europe, abandon the Ukrainians, and basically be open for business with the Russians and frankly, invite their intelligence officers back to American Soil, which is what Marco Rubio is more or less saying when he says we're going to start reopening their embassies and consulates.

[Tim Miller]

Well, hopefully they're too incompetent to achieve their goals of a reprochement with Russia. I guess that's the best thing we've got working for us right now. All right, thank you, my boys. I do need to. I should just say my friend Jamie Kirchik wrote a very in depth piece on the Armie Hammer cannibalism accusations, and they were overstated. And I don't mean to kink. Shame on here. So I apologize to Army. Armand Hammer seems like was a little credulous his grandfather, but Army, I think maybe got the brunt of some bad media.

[Michael Weiss]

Well, the whole Hammer family going back in the 20s and 30s, just deeply, deeply compromised by the Soviets. So, yeah, Army, I mean, hey, I thought he was the star in what was that movie that made Call me by your name. Yeah, I thought he was better than Tim Otey, but.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, Michael, you're not gonna be invited back into the pod. If there's any Timothy Slander. No Chalamet Slander on the pod. All right, everybody, that's Michael Weiss. He'll be back soon. Crazy shit's happening every week. Up next, Ben Smith. All right, we are back with my buddy Ben Smith. He is the co founder and editor in chief of Semaphore. He also co hosts the Mixed Signals podcast. I was probably the best guest on that podcast so far. It's had a pretty good slate of guests, though. But I make good pod. Ben, what do you think? Am I on the podium?

[Ben Smith]

You or Anthony Fauci? The listeners are divided.

[Tim Miller]

Me or Fauci? I mean, Fauci has a lot of skills that I don't have and a lot of experience that I don't have. But I think in the podcast space might be the one area where I have podcast and basketball. This wasn't really the topic when we had initially planned plan to talk, but I had Jeff Goldberg on yesterday and we were talking about what he should do.

[Ben Smith]

You're not his lawyer. Was the takeover. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

With the Houthi small group PC chat. But it was worth thinking about. And I think that the fact that he was weighing what to do was evidenced by the fact that he released the text about an hour ago this morning before we're taping. And you had kind of a similar kind of quandary where you were dealing with lawyers and national security officials and classified information when you're at buzzfeed, you're running buzzfee, you guys had the Steele dossier, and you ended up publishing it in its entirety. And so I'm wondering if you have any kind of insight on what Goldberg was going through and how you think they handled it.

[Ben Smith]

Yeah, I mean, I think Jeffrey. I think Jeffrey has a stronger impulse to defer to national security concerns than a lot of journalists do, actually. I mean, I don't think he had any obligation to keep those secrets which had been texted to him. And he was sort of asking the Trump people, like, hey, are you really sure that you want me to release it? Because they were out there daring him to release it. I mean, they were sort of. But they basically put him in a position where they called him a liar and said this stuff wasn't real and wasn't secret. So at some point, you gotta. I mean, there's not really. They were really basically asking him to release it. And I think, you know, the Steele dossier was different in that it was. It was authentic, but we didn't know if it was true. And the debate about releasing that was, what do you do with a document like that where everybody's talking about it? It's being used by the government as kind of a public document, but it contains a bunch of unverified allegations.

[Tim Miller]

The call is easier for Jeff, is what you're saying, because it's verified and true. We know it happened because the building collapsed in Yemen, you know, and actually.

[Ben Smith]

I do think there's a reasonable question to ask often when kind of quote, unquote, national security secrets are declassified, national security officials warn of dire, dire consequences. So you do occasionally see really awful consequences, but more often you don't. I mean, I think 1. You know, WikiLeaks is a really interesting example where there was a lot of warnings about the terrible things that would happen when these cables leaked, and they were very disruptive and I think damaging to American power and prestige. But I'm not sure there was the. That there was a physical danger to people that. That a lot of people anticipated. So I don't know. In this case, I mean, this is very rare that you get something where had it leaked, obviously the, you know, the Houthis friends would have told them, hey, get out of that building. And I think it's not totally clear that didn't happen. Right? I mean, the Houthis friends, the Russians may have done that. We just don't know.

[Tim Miller]

Right. And who knows, like what anti aircraft, like, it could have even been worse than that, like getting out of that building, I guess, conceivably, about the legal aspect of this. And I do, you know, as Jeffrey, you know, was asking me whether, you know, I was the right person to be giving him legal advice on whether or not that he should be releasing these texts yesterday on the pod.

[Ben Smith]

Yeah, the main legal aspect is that no one should take your legal advice or mine.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, no, and I. And I agree, nobody should take our legal advice. But you, like, dealt with all these guys, all these lawyers. I just kind of wondered, give us a little insight into, like, what those conversations were like. It is kind of unprecedented. I. Both of these situations, you talk to experts, but they're like, it's a judgment call. Partly. Right.

[Michael Weiss]

Yeah.

[Ben Smith]

I mean, the tradition in the United States, unlike most countries, is that journalists who have obtained this information in a legitimate way have no legal restriction, no prior restraint, no legal restrictions against publishing. In Britain, for instance, the government will send out these notices to the press saying, you cannot publish this. They can't do that here. And actually, I had an experience that I found very somewhat inspiring back when I was at buzzfeed, where we had a story that was, you know, where the CIA had a really legitimate concern, it was about a Russian defector, really legitimate concern that if we. That if we reported on this person's whereabouts, that would put them in physical danger. And all Mike Pompeo could do was ask me and our investigations editor over for a cup of coffee and make the case to us, and that was it. And you're like, you know what? This is a pretty amazing country where the most powerful intelligence official in the world, all he can do is ask you politely. Like, that is a huge prerogative of the press. Something that we do, I think, take pretty seriously. The Jeffrey takes, I think, extremely seriously. But all that said, I do think there's an always been an element of the government that feels that that's insane, that we should have something more like the European model where the government can just step in and censor the press. And I think that a lot of journalists anticipate that at some point you'll see a national security prosecution of a journalist. You know, usually, I think not over necessarily publishing it per se, but over how they obtained the information in this administration. I mean, when you listen to how the Trump folks talk about the press, I think that seems like a reasonable prediction. It's something people are really worried about.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, as Walter Sobchak said, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint, but we've got A new Supreme Court now. So you do never know. I think that when you looked at the discussion yesterday at the Senate intel hearing, that was, boy, horrible timing for Ratcliffe and Tulsi there yesterday. The Democratic senators asked them point blank about this, and it was notable that they would not say no, he would not be prosecuted for this. Like, there was no defense of the free speech rights of Jeff Goldberg yesterday by the Trump administration, you know, on this point. And so, I mean, it's an unusual.

[Ben Smith]

Situation, right, where you're handed a bunch of classified documents and an unusual thing about the United States where you have no responsibility as a citizen to protect them, to be honest.

[Tim Miller]

What a great country, you might say. Fist bumps.

[Ben Smith]

Yeah, that's what I think.

[Tim Miller]

Flag emoji, fire emoji to the usa.

[Ben Smith]

Exactly, exactly.

[Tim Miller]

I do want to kind of transition this to what we were actually talking about, which is kind of how the media has changed in Trump 2.0 versus 1.0 and how it's matured. I'm wondering what your top kind of insights are on that.

[Ben Smith]

I mean, honestly, I was thinking about that before coming on this show, and I was listening, as I often do in the morning, to Steve Bannon's War Room, which is where I heard you interview Goldberg on Steve Bannon's War Room, because I didn't catch the Bulwark yesterday.

[Tim Miller]

Bannon's a mutual fan of both of us. I have lengthy tribute to your reporter Dave Weigel on a podcast like a week or two ago that I was listening to at an airport. I told Weigel, I was like, you got like a 12 minute ode to Dave Weigel of Semaphore on the Bannon War Room. It's an interesting. It's an interesting show.

[Ben Smith]

Dave Weigel's a great reporter who saw a lot of this stuff coming. I mean, I think Bannon is alert to who sort of understood that populism was a real thing. And he's also. He's very preoccupied with you, you'll be glad to know. I'm sure he'll pick this up and put it on his show. So we'll complete the circle. But I think what that is to say is that there is really, I mean, I think for all the years and years in our whole careers of talking about and being involved in a new media that was rising and changing things, it's here. And I think when you look at the conflict between the Trump and the White House press corps, I mean, I do think it's very important that the press sort of retain prerogatives and not hand control of facts over to people in power. That said, Trump is not the reason that the White House press corps and the Right House Correspondence association, you know, is in real trouble. It's because, you know, it's their organization that's been dominated for nearly a century by these broadcast outlets that no. Are no longer all that relevant and are being replaced by a kind of chaotic new group of digital outlets. And there's no, you know, Trump may have sort of pulled the last brick out of the wall, but he's not the reason that there's a crisis there. The reason is this vast, rapid technological shift. And it feels like Trump was the thing that broke the dam, but he wasn't really the cause.

[Tim Miller]

And it really is different than 2019 at this point. I mean, I was. I've been using this analogy of a 90s movies reference, Elder Millennial now, obviously. So on Men in Black. Remember how Tommy Lee Jones said the real news was the tabloids?

[Ben Smith]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Like, that is kind of, like, true. Obviously, our friends Maggie and John Swan and Caputo, like the traditional outlets are getting scoops, but there are times when you're either listening to Bannon or I was watching the Newsmax interview last night, and Greg Kelly would say something about, like, something that he's hearing and you're like, it's kind of true. Right. Like, at some level that, like, there are certain things that are known and covered in, like, the MAGA media sphere that are a more accurate, like, view of what is happening in the administration than what you see elsewhere, or at least a more influential one. I don't know. What do you make of that?

[Ben Smith]

Yeah, right. No, I think that's. Right. That's who they're talking to and that's what they're watching. I mean, I would say. And that's a source of strength for them. I mean, it does. It's also extremely dangerous for them, I think in a moment, you know, when they're there in this early, they're on this high. They're, you know, in the, in a bubble of self congratulation. And obviously there's a risk when you do that and you don't, you know, you don't take any signal. And I think on this story in.

[Tim Miller]

Particular, in the ridiculous Mike Waltz defense, that maybe Jeff Goldberg hacked the chain. Like, it's just if you would probably have a better spin if you felt like you had a more challenging counterparty.

[Ben Smith]

Yeah. And the coverage in the sort of magazine tends to be like, the White House is Fighting back against this media campaign and the Democrats. And that's all true, but also, like, what happened factually, what's going on here gets a little swept away.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. You were asking Megyn Kelly about this, and I recommend people watch your interview. It was a semaphore conference. Was it a year? Yeah. Yeah.

[Ben Smith]

Our media summit. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

You had a media summit with Megyn Kelly. And at some level, there are points of the interview where it was where you seemed a little scared of her. Like, you were kind of interviewing like, you were like, on this. Like, you're walking down the street and there's somebody that's, like, drunk and carrying a knife and starts yelling at you, and you're just kind of like, whoa, okay, whatever you want, but okay. She was unhinged.

[Ben Smith]

I don't think she was unhinged. I think she maybe not unhinged. She's one of a handful of people who, unpredictable, are extremely capable, sort of like broadcasters who are good at owning people who cross them on air. And I didn't feel that I was necessarily gonna like a shouting match with Megyn Kelly, so I thought it'd be interesting to. She was hinged.

[Tim Miller]

I agree with you. She was not unhinged. I want to correct that. She was just. She was hinged. But she was just gonna say what she said. She could have gone anywhere. She could have. Yeah, she was gonna say what she was gonna say, and she could have gone anywhere. And, you know, it's not like a typical restrained interview. She was unrestrained. Yeah.

[Ben Smith]

I mean, that's her brand and her strength, I would say.

[Tim Miller]

The interesting thing about the interview, though, is, I mean, she's obviously obsessed with her numbers and all this, but she's like. Like my show, her show alone is getting CNN level numbers on YouTube, like everything on the CNN network combined. Combined. And so again, that is a development from Trump 1.0. And it really was just Fox. It was just Fox. And then there are these other little outlets that serve, like the MAGA sickos. They're like very online MAGA people. Right. But now it's changed. The power dynamic has changed.

[Ben Smith]

Yeah. Megyn Kelly, Tucker Bannon's war room drives, like phone calls and book sales, like, whatever. Like the digital media metrics are all kind of nonsense, notoriously. But there are these sort of real metrics, like, can you light up the switchboard? Can you sell books? And that's, you know, those are now increasingly shows, I would say, like this one. And diminishingly, you know, television, broadcast television, I would say with the exception of.

[Tim Miller]

Fox and Nicole, we're selling books on this podcast. That's why Andy's going to be on next. Bye. Andy's books, both of us have gone, you know, have gone way back with Breitbart, as, as you mentioned earlier with, you know, Bannon back when he was at Breitbart. You wrote for Semaphore about kind of the challenges about this, like the growing up, the coming into adulthood of, of MAGA media, where it's like you, you can become establishment maga, where you have, like, responsibilities and you're. And you're getting outflanked by the people that are using the tactics that you'd use to succeed. Talk about that.

[Ben Smith]

Yeah, I mean, it's funny because I spent a bunch of time with Matt Boyle, who's Breitbart's Washington bureau chief of longstanding, and a bit with John Carney, who's their finance writer. And Carney was saying to me, I sort of realized if I tweet, like, tariffs are coming, the market's going to dip 100 points. And so it's like this weight of responsibility that I did not previously have. And Boyle, I think, is constantly a situation where Breitbart's readers and fans are saying, hey, I saw this thing on X that is totally made up. Can you confirm it? It? And then annoyed at them and disappointed when they can't confirm it. I saw them running AP fact checks on USAID the other day, you know, on Breitbart.com and I think I would say they are still fundamentally committed to supporting Donald Trump and occasionally perhaps holding him accountable to being the best version of Donald Trump. Maybe they're in there in their adolescence. I think there is some world where these outlets are sort of forced by reality to that actually Breitbart, which is kind of an attack machine and, you know, very aggressively partisan, does try to get facts right. And I think that's a, you know, getting. Being forced to get facts right, unlike this is not true. On X. On X, like, the best way to monetize your account is to make things up and get them retweeted. Like, facts do have a certain kind of gravity and you can imagine an evolution toward a kind of partisan, but like, British style partisan media. Don't think that's where we are right now.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, no, we're seeing it and it's the danger. I think this is a big warning sign for the left right now. Look, I have a lot of criticisms for you and your pals and the mainstream media's treatment of Trump, normalization, the both sides. I'm sympathetic to all of the criticism. It's tough. I think it's a big challenge covering him when somebody's constantly lying. It presents a new challenge from covering politicians that lie occasionally. But I think the Democrat, there's a be careful what you wish for with the Democratic base, which we saw during, after the Biden debate, which is like that there is now emerging kind of left wing media ecosystem where you also can do pretty well by not telling the truth. That's true in the influencer space and in the YouTube space where it's like, you know, I remember after, after the Biden debate, remember he does that, does that press conference on foreign policy. And I was turning onto one of those fellow, I'll just say I'm sorry on Dimitas touch to see how they were covering it over on YouTube and they were like, this was the greatest demonstration of knowledge and skill that we've ever seen by a president in a foreign policy press conference. And you know, those guys are succeeding, they're outplanked. That takes us to a danger. Well, I'm not worried about getting out flanked. I'm saying it takes us to a dangerous place where, you know, you got to be careful what you wish for on what replaces, you know, the existing incumbents. And Breitbart's seeing it and I think that on the left you might see it too, I guess is my point.

[Ben Smith]

Yeah, I mean, I think to put a point on it in a way. And this is, I'm stealing an idea from my colleague Max Taney, but I think that there was a belief among Democrats that, well, like, like the New York Times was Democrats partisan outlet. Like, you know, you rely on the New York Times and, and what the New York Times is going to do is expose what Trump is doing and write factually about it with perhaps, you know, it's heart beating on the left, but basically with the facts. And that will, then people will see that and they'll change their minds and you know, they'll vote him out. And I think there's a sense now on the left, well, that didn't work. And so what we need are hyper partisan shows that create a bubble in the way that the right has created a bubble. And I think that's in some way what's driving this growth of this booming new hyper partisan left wing sphere that's going to turn you into the New York Times and turn the New York Times into the Wall Street Journal.

[Tim Miller]

We'll see. We'll see what Andy has to say about all this. Up next. Thank you. Ben Smith. Come back soon.

[Ben Smith]

Good to see you.

[Tim Miller]

All right, brother. Up next, Andy car. All right, we are back. Segment three. She's a congressional correspondent for the New York Times and co author of the brand new book Madhouse How Donald Trump MAGA Mean Girls, a former used car salesman, a Florida Nepo baby, and a man with rats in his walls broke Congress. It's Annie Carney. Is Matt Gaetz the Nepo baby? Who's the Nepo baby?

[Nancy Mace]

The Nepo baby is Gaetz. His father was Don Gaetz, a powerful Florida state senator. But good job. Most people don't guess that.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, yeah, no, I know Don. Me and Don go way back, actually. And boy, if you want to understand how Matt became Matt, you should go find some YouTube videos of Don Gates. He's a character. I wanted to ask before we get to the book stuff, and maybe there's nothing here, but. So Mike Waltz was in this madhouse, and he was kind of one of the more normal characters I had Tom Malinowski on. And he was talking about how Waltz, about how fucking pissed and disappointed he is with Waltz because he was the one that he thought was a responsible one on national security. And here he is now at the center of this tornado around the Houthi small group chat. And I think part of the reason that he is advancing the preposterous crazy about how Goldberg might have hacked him, et cetera, is because he knows that he has to try really hard to fit in. And I wonder if you have any thoughts about Waltz or just broadly, if you kind of observed this kind of trend of the people who are more normal and aren't preternaturally MAGA feeling like they have to kind of really go overboard to fit in.

[Nancy Mace]

That's a good question. I mean, Waltz, I didn't cover him. He's not a character in the book. But there's two kinds of Republicans in Congress. Like, there's those who were kind of the more responsible streak, and most of those people left and those who stayed have made the decision that they want to rise and have power in this tribal party. And that means going all in with Trump, basically, there's not a lot of room for breaking with him. So Mike Waltz got chosen to be the national security advisor, and now, you know, I mean, has to completely toe the party line. So if you're still there, you are toeing one line, which is, you know, attacking the mainstream media, attacking Jeff Goldberg for Sneaking onto the chat. And we see them do it in different ways. Like, there's Elise Stefanik is a character in the book who, you know, has become emblematic to a lot of people of, like, she's been the future of the party since it was George W. Bush's party. She's still the future of the party. She just completely transformed herself to be the future of the Trump party. And then there's like a Nancy Mace who criticized Trump after January 6th in her first floor speech who, you know, told me in the summer of 2023, if Trump becomes the nominee, I am pulling myself down from the airwaves. I will just disappear. That clearly didn't happen. And who, like, at one point a few years ago, looked like kind of like a unicorn, like, she beat a Trump back challenger. She was sort of moderate on social issues and that, like, she talked a lot to us for the book and like, literally said out. Said the quiet part out loud, being like, I have some really tough decisions to make. I want to move up, and I can't do that and be anti Trump. So I'd say Mike Waltz is like, yes, he knows he's in the you should know better caucus, but there's only one playbook, which is what he's doing.

[Tim Miller]

They said that the only Nixon could go to China. Right. Because if a liberal did, they would have been, you know, called a communist. There is almost like this element of this that the people who are OG MAGA have, like, a little bit more rope to kind of be responsible. And like the old kind of Republicans have to act crazy to fit in.

[Nancy Mace]

Right. It's like the zeal, like the zeal of the converted. Right. Like Jim Jordan, he's a made man in MAGA world. You don't see Jim Jordan trotting to the courthouse to stand outside the federal courthouse to show Trump how loyal he is. Like, he does not have to prove himself. Some of the others do.

[Tim Miller]

Let's talk about Mace a little bit more, because I thought this segment of the book was the one that gave me a chuckle. So she really did. And we talked about this at the time here at the Bulwark. It just was kind of obvious she thought that she could be vp.

[Nancy Mace]

Yeah. Which is crazy to me because she had approximately zero percent chance of ever being VP. Elise Stefanik, not likely, but not a zero percent chance. Nancy Mace, after she had criticized Trump after January 6, a zero percent chance.

[Tim Miller]

But it shows how intentional all this stuff is the pivot of these people. She went from saying that if He's a nominee. I'm gonna be out to basically saying, okay, I'm gonna completely reorient my media strategy to go on shows in the hopes that Trump sees me, in the hopes that, I don't know, he likes my smile and I get to be vp.

[Nancy Mace]

Yeah. Yeah. So, like, I spent a ton of time with her for the book, kind of just embedded with her a little bit. And what happened was it was, like, the summer of 2023. Her name had been floated in a political article about, like, a short list for Trump's vp. I was in the office with her when she, like, read this story. I could watch, like, the dollar signs and the eyeballs. Almost like her mind was off to the races. Like, I could see her picturing possibly, like, first woman president in the mirror. So. And she was, like, kind of open and talking it out out loud. And I witnessed, like, the justification that so many people make, which is like, well, adults in the room. It's better if I'm there than I'm not there. But it was, like, a little delusional because, as I said, she was not on any actual short list for VP ever.

[Tim Miller]

Did she ever break character when you're in. I mean, it does feel like she has a new character. As you write in the book, she's got a bunch of tattoos now.

[Nancy Mace]

Okay, so the Nancy Mason tattoo.

[Tim Miller]

Yes.

[Nancy Mace]

She became a different person. And I don't. I don't fully grasp what happened to her around the Speaker's vote and a horrible breakup. Like, that sounds very traumatic, but she got. She got nine tattoos all over her body. And the funny thing about the tattoos is that when I told this anecdote to some other people in Trump world, this just shows you how petty this world is and how it's all about, like, I told this anecdote to a few people who don't like Mace, and they were so excited to tell Trump because they said Trump hates tattoos. I can't wait to tell Trump. It's all about Nancy. Macy's tattoos were leverage to use against her standing with Trump because he doesn't like tattoos. I mean, that was fascinating to me.

[Tim Miller]

The Democrats that you talked to, have you just noticed and you've been covering this for a while, Just an evolution from. You know, I feel like during the first Trump, there was a lot of, like, oh, we can work with these guys behind the scenes. They're very rational. Like, they just have to do this, and we're gonna. Et cetera, et cetera. I feel like that has kind of changed. Right?

[Nancy Mace]

It has changed. I mean, look at the leadership level. Johnson, Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, and Hakeem Jeffries, the Minority Leader, actually came in with a great relationship. They are both men of faith.

[Tim Miller]

They both, both kind of corny.

[Nancy Mace]

It's corny. But they found a lot in common and they actually, like, trusted each other and liked each other. And then that relationship is sort of broken. You know, as you recall, in the Congress that we wrote about in the book, Democrats actually saved Mike Johnson's job when Marjorie Taylor Greene was going to oust him because he brought a bill to send money to Ukraine to the House floor. So there was like, actually behind the scenes, they were working together. They felt like they could be honest with each other. And that sort of broke down over the Trump's budget resolution, which Jeffries and Johnson negotiated together. And then Trump just like it became clear to Jeffries that there's really no point.

[Tim Miller]

The one. The one from during. The lame duck.

[Nancy Mace]

Yes, the lame duck. That there's really no. Johnson can't stand by his word because Trump is in control. So, like, there's really no point in negotiating with Johnson when it can, like, it just all fell apart. So there's like the idea that they can work behind the scenes and work together kind of has fallen apart with Trump because it's clear that Johnson doesn't actually have any power or control over his members. It's all just related to Trump's control.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe even a little bit different on the Senate side. I guess Chuck Schumer might be the exception to what I'm saying, given that what you've said in your book about him thinking that Trump fever could break. There's in this reporting about Chuck talking about in the gym, how I talk to Republicans, maybe a little different over there. I don't know. What do you think?

[Nancy Mace]

Yeah, I mean, look, that's a very old school. The Senate is a little more still like that. It's collegial. There's only 100 of them. There are a lot of them have been around forever and do have these, like the senators love to do funny pairings on legislation, like Elizabeth Warren and J.D. vance on, like, clawbacks for banks and Fetterman and Cruz on a deal together. Like, they do do these. They do like to do bipartisan legislation. But Schumer's view, which he articulated to us many times, so it's like a deeply felt view of his, is just that Trump is an evil sorcerer. That was his quote. Who is a quote turd that the Republican Party will reject, and then it will revert to being the old Republican Party. And like, I was driving around Brooklyn with him at one point, and he was like, it was after the border security deal fell through in the Senate. That was like the border security and Ukraine funding deal together that fell apart because Trump killed it. Chuck Schumer was like, look, there's 10 senators that actually hate Ukraine and would vote that way anyway. And then there's the rest that without Trump, they would flip and they want to support Ukraine. And his hope was that, like, this flip would happen. And I just don't. I think that's out of touch with where Democratic voters are and where a lot of his caucus is at this point. Like, most Democrats and voters have come around to the idea that, like, MAGA is bigger than Trump. There's no reverting. Like, there's really no evidence that anything is going back.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, that's correct. Actually, it's out of touch with reality. You know, I mean, it's also out of touch with where Democratic voters are, but it's just out of touch with reality. I mean, just look at what. What happened in the primary.

[Nancy Mace]

Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, maybe Schumer's saying that because, like, that's what he would like to happen, and it's like, wishful thinking, but it's not. Yeah, it's out of touch with reality.

[Tim Miller]

I wonder what you make of the upcoming Congress on one hand and the one we're in the one hand, like, they haven't done anything and they've done literally nothing. On the other hand, we haven't seen the unruliness that you write about in this book, at least yet again, maybe that's just because the rubber hasn't really met the road on anything yet. I mean, Trump is just legislating from the executive branch like a wannabe king, and there hasn't been any major legislation passed. Really?

[Nancy Mace]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

What do you make of that? Are the things you observed in the book there under the surface? You think Trump's kind of holding it together tenuously, or do you think maybe because Trump's in there, you know, you're. You're a man with rats in the walls and all these. These car salesmen might behave for a couple years. What do you make of it?

[Nancy Mace]

Yeah, I. Last Congress was a complete shit show, as one person even told. Don Bacon told us we should name our book Shit show, but you can't really promote a book with a curse word in the title. So we didn't but it was just completely defined by Republicans feuding with each other, and it literally, like, ground the floor to a halt this time. There Trump is sort of uniting them. Like, for instance, the short term government funding bill that just passed the House unanimously. One Republican, Thomas Massie, who's like, just his own person, voted for it. This is literally the same kind of short term spending bill that they hate so much that they ousted Kevin McCarthy because of it. Like, and now Trump told them that he wants it so they fall in line. So they are more united right now because of Trump. He is holding it together and no one wants to cross him. Like, his power over the party is, like, near total. So there's really no room to end. So they are more together. I'd say, like, the top line out of this Congress so far is that they've just just ceded their power completely to the White House. Like in this Jeff Goldberg group chat story. Like, the Congress is part of this story. They confirmed Pete Hegseth to be Defense Secretary. Like, they have some responsibility here for what's happening because they have happily just handed over the power to Trump.

[Tim Miller]

Well, not to be Justin Amash over here, but also we haven't declared war on Yemen. So Congress also could take some power back on that side of things as well. They don't really seem to care about that. All right, Annie, it's good to see you. It's been too long. Go check out the book. Madhouse. How Donald Trump Mega Mean Girls Matt Gaetz Other people broke Congress.

[Nancy Mace]

Thanks, Tim.

[Tim Miller]

We'll see you soon, girl.

[Nancy Mace]

Bye.

[Tim Miller]

All right, thanks so much to Michael Weiss, Ben Smith, and Annie Carney. Let me know in the comments what you all think about the triple show. We'll be back with one of our faves. Maybe there'll be tears tomorrow. Who knows? We're gonna go along with a single guest. I think you'll enjoy it. We'll see you all then. Peace.

[Unknown]

She dropped a load on me before they close the door I be with nobody who know what's going on inside my father body swollen behind my eyes I ain't cry for him in time to return solo we on the ride forward the reverse not working sometimes we collide the black sky full of supernovas and stars that died no lie I'm still rooting for us two foots in the soil rhymes forged the conjoiners to the cosmic split Burning like crude oil cool water drip like osmosis I set the mood for you you know the vibe today I got time for it run Forest five on me like I'm Bob Hori for the tribe Slime mama mentality Stars falling out of the sky.

He was a star when he when I got him he was a star. Sly told you that everybody is a star. The only problem is some people haven't been put in the dipper and pulled back on the world Woke up on the west coast for the first time in my life drove cross country but I remember those flights genuflected when I heard the weed price white boys with the weed pipes Sunny days, sunny nights mighty clouds and northern lights I was always bright so no sooner than we touched down I'm seeing how we could get home and be right it's hard to live in the moment but I guess I had a gift Hawaii so poor zoning off bong rips I painted houses all summer they pay by the shift my boss was an enterprise and white kid eagle eyed everything you did shit gig but I didn't quit MJ GIA 8 ball spitting out the whip splits with Keith at the tip it felt sleepy at night but I liked that Felt like you could relax like you could disappear Like I wasn't surrounded by the past Months passed and we going back and in the back of my mind the plan already hatched the door panels already stashed Illinois state troopers just waiting for time and space to cross our path it's daydreams that I.

[Tim Miller]

Love where you might be controlling some.

[Michael Weiss]

Of the thoughts the dream takes over.

[Tim Miller]

Things are unraveling the Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.