Bill Kristol (2:28)

Actually the opposite, without any pushback. Right. As a single Republican popped up to say, gee, that's not such a great idea. You know, the Constitution says otherwise. But that would be too, too much to ask. I don't have, I mean, I assume he won't, but I don't know. We've assumed he wouldn't do other things. He loves power, he loves being president. It does show a certain lack of confidence in his vice president. I would say having, I'm a little sensitive to these things, having been a vice presidential Chief of staff and occasionally there was a little lack of confidence that people thought and Vice President Quayle from, from top Bush people. And If I were J.D. vance's chief of staff, I'd be like, shouldn't he be saying in answer to this that of course not. I have a great heir all teed up and ready to continue to advance the Trump agenda. But somehow that answer did not come to his mind.

Tim Miller (3:10)

No, it's worth noting, just for the facts, if you're Talking to your MAGA pal down at the bar, the 12th Amendment says clearly you can't be vice President if you're ineligible to be president. And the 22nd Amendment obviously has the term limits, so it's right there, plaintext. So even the VP plan, you know, which is the cutesy version of doing it, doesn't really work. I mean, it's like my friend JJ McCullough tweeted, it's like, well, could this plan work for a 5 year old? Or a 5 year old runs as a VP and then the person resigns? Like, obviously not. So to me, the interesting side of this is part of this is him trying to stave off the lame duck element. And part of it is the fact that, you know, all things being equal, he would want to stay. And I don't think we can have any confidence that a deteriorating 81 year old Trump wouldn't try. And I think it's worth being vigilant about that and, you know, not playing into his hands with how to talk about this. But I do think it's incumbent on the Republicans to be pressured to, you know, come out of their shell. Not that I'd be optimistic about that, but I think that it should be.

Bill Kristol (4:20)

Incumbent upon them not that he would ever try anything to stay in office after he's lost an election or when it's not his turn to be president. But I mean. Yeah, no, absolutely. Once you take it seriously in that way. Yeah, in a way it's a harbinger, not of running for a third term, but maybe just assuming power for life, basically, if we can put it that way. The thing I would say is, I think it also does soften the ground generally for the notion that the Constitution is just a bunch of advisory statements. It's not actually binding on anything. So just like this isn't binding, other parts of it aren't too binding. The Fifth Amendment, the Fourth Amendment or 14th Amendment, all kinds of things that they don't like very much. Those can be kind of worked around too.

Tim Miller (4:59)

Yeah, due process. We'll get to that. The other element of where they're skirting their belief in the law is happening in Wisconsin. So we discussed on what was it on Thursday, I guess with Lovett, this Wisconsin Supreme Court case, which is relatively significant in that if the Republican attorney General of Wisconsin won, then that would shift the balance of power back to Republicans, Democrats maintain control. Some of the gerrymander in Wisconsin might be. Might be changed and which could potentially allow for more fair maps in the states. So, you know, it is important, it is interesting that Elon Musk, the world's richest man, is there. He spent 20 million on the campaign. He says that I think the fall of civilization or something rests on this race. So I don't know if it's that important of a race. He last night had a speech in Green Bay where He handed out $1 million checks to two people. Wisconsin law prohibits offering anything of value to induce anyone to vote. Also, there's some questions about whether he's running an illegal lottery in Wisconsin. And so certainly a lack of care about following election laws in Wisconsin would be the nicest way that you can put it. What do you make of, of Elon in Wisconsin? We'll talk about the race itself.

Bill Kristol (6:16)

Yeah, I mean, he's not a big election law dutiful, careful, election law obeyer kind of guy. And I guess this is part of that pattern. They seem to think it's an important race both for, I guess, for what it will do in Wisconsin, as you said, in terms of gerrymandering and other things. And also having a friendly Supreme Court in place in 2028. Just to get back to our original topic, this Wisconsin is a swing state and you know, they have in the back of their mind that, hey, that could be one where we'd want the Republican state legislature, if it's Republican, to contest the race and to the state courts. Someone told me that he also went on at some length in his speech defending what he's doing on Social Security, that he's sort of, you know, he's just getting rid of fraud. So they're all lying about what he's doing, closing these offices and making it harder to get your Social Security, which is sort of a maybe not what you want him talking about on the Sunday night before the vote in Wisconsin. And secondly does show that maybe that issue is, you know, they feel it's hurting them some or he feels personally wounded by. By it as he deserves to be, incidentally, for sure.

Tim Miller (7:14)

I mean, I think that the Doge fraud and the Doge corruption and just like the haphazardness with which they've acted is certainly hurting them. The other little thing about just this 1 million, I just want to linger on that for one more second because one of the winners, so called winners of the 1 million, appears to be the head of the College Republicans in the state. So again, we'll see exactly how that works out. But that doesn't seem like that is a process on the up and up. And we've seen some from the left online talking about how Democrats like one way to play hardball here is Elon Musk should be arrested. In Wisconsin, we don't do a ton of arresting over election law violations, though we used to, but, you know, less lately with the neutered Federal Election Commission. I guess my question is, how do you deal with this? Like it is just out in the open corruption, like it's comically obvious. You know, he's got the big checks. The whole thing is, it's almost like when you imagine electoral corruption, you imagine like behind the scenes, you know, there's a brown paper bag or, you know, it's the mayor Daley. It's like this kind of stuff. Like what they do is avoid accountability by doing everything so out in the open.

Bill Kristol (8:26)

Now the Trump's president has the Justice Department. They also avoid accountability by knowing that there's zero chance that there'll be any federal enforcement against this. And then it goes to the state and then you get into a slight Alvin Bragg situation where why is the state enforcing a federal law? And it's awkward. It looks like it's just politics if it's a Democratic attorney general or something. So, yeah, the impunity is pretty astonishing, though, and bad, obviously, for the country. And incidentally, we're two months into this administration. Is it going to stop now? I think that's something I won't say I've underestimated, but I'm really struck by it. I mean, when you have a Justice Department and an FBI that's not even pretending that it will investigate any problems on your own side or bring charges even when they're pretty obviously called for and when it's pretty obviously excusing every single person against illegitimate charges have been brought on your own side. So, I mean, it's a get out of jail card for everyone on your side. And they're also going after, obviously, people on the other side that really, that's so corrupting. I mean, it's more than, it's worse than Trump's personal corruption, I'd say, and the grift, you know, or even worse than his personal pardoning of people and stuff. To have the entire apparatus of the federal government firing, you know, career prosecutors, as I say, taking care of your own people, going after the ones you don't, people you don't like out there, that is bad. That is literally what authoritarianism is. And that's what we have. I do think it's only, don't you think this Wisconsin election, I guess, will all be. So it's Tuesday, right. So we'll all be, I guess I'll be writing about it Wednesday morning. You'll be talking about it Wednesday morning.

Tim Miller (9:56)

Yeah.

Bill Kristol (9:57)

Pretty big deal in the sense that, and I'm, I mean, I think if Democrats win, people will say, well, they won the judicial election back in whatever that was, 2023. And, you know, Democratic governor probably sort of stood to reason that they would win by a few points. What if Republicans win this election, they will be a huge freak out, wouldn't you say? On, on the Democratic side, I do.

Tim Miller (10:18)

Well, and I think either, I think, look, there's the Wisconsin Supreme Court election and then the same night as this Michael Waltz election in Florida over on, you know, basically from St. Augustine down to Daytona beach, quite a red district. And so I think the potential for freakouts just as far as tea leaf reading is very much possible on both sides. You know, I think that it's this kind of math teacher running Wisconsin against Randy Fine is kind of a weirdo. And unpopular Republicans, that's hurting Republicans in addition to the environment being concerning for Republicans as far as, like these types of things go, you know, they both are decently significant, like more significant than they would be in a vacuum. One thing I just want to make sure I clarify and get this Right. The sitting Attorney General of Wisconsin is Josh Call, who's a Democrat. So I mean in theory he could be enforcing election laws in the state. With regards to Musk, I just want to leave that out there. The candidate for the Supreme Court, Brad Schimmel, is a Republican. That was the former Attorney General of Wisconsin. So very significant. Musk had a cheesehead hat on.

Bill Kristol (11:21)

Oh, I didn't see that. Is that right?

Tim Miller (11:22)

He looks, he looks very silly. So we'll put it in the show notes if people want to laugh at him. Tesla's stocked down today a lot.

Bill Kristol (11:28)

I'm sure he's a real authentic packers fan and Badger fan.

Tim Miller (11:31)

And yeah, he's, I'm sure he's such a masculine man. I'm sure he can Name More than 3 present NFL players too. Definitely. He's a guy that knows sport well. As you all know, I share my opinions pretty freely on this podcast and sometimes I get in my feelings get emotional. So you can imagine why need a way to boost my online privacy and security to prevent people from snooping around or trying to hack into my devices. That's where Surfshark VPN comes in. Surfshark's military grade encryption helps protect my online life from prying eyes. And since I travel a lot, I can know my data is protected. Here's one example when I'm sitting in the airport using free WI Fi, hackers love that public free Internet. Plus Surfshark does not track or log its own users data. So that means no IP addresses, no timestamps and my browsing history stays with me. Its privacy at its finest. Also, I'm out on the road. I can watch my favorite movies or even stream a nuggets game. Surfshark lets you bypass geo restrictions to access blocked content from around the world. Surfshark also offers other products like Surfshark Search. Say that five times fast, which allows you to browse without being tracked or bombarded by all those annoying ads. Don't let online threats catch you off guard. It's time to take control of your online security with Surfshark VPN. Try Surfshark today and enjoy the risk free 30 day money back guarantee. Secure your privacy with surfshark. Go to surfshark.com the Bulwark for four extra months of Surfshark and we will link that special Bulwark offer for you in our show notes. I want to move on to El Salvador lot to discuss about a lot of developments over the weekend. I want to start though with this audio from a town hall because I think it ties to these political questions as well, as well as the El Salvador issue itself. Victoria Spartz, who is the Ukrainian immigrant that is a Republican representative from Indiana, was at a pretty raucous town hall. She had a lot of negative feedback from the residents. Appreciate those folks for showing up. But she got kind of on tilt talking about the deportations. Well, not deportations, the kidnappings, the removals to El Salvador. And here's a little bit of what she said.

Unknown Speaker (13:49)

You seek asylum, wait, in the other country, don't get it here in the country. So there is no due process if you come here illegally because you violated the law, period. You violated the law. You are not entitled to due process. Legal minded citizens and these people violated law.

Tim Miller (14:12)

You violated the law. So you are not entitled to due process. It's not really how things work, actually. How would that work exactly?

Bill Kristol (14:22)

What's the Alice in Wonderland thing? I mean, verdict first, trial afterwards or something like that, I can't remember. The Queen of Hearts, I think says that, yeah, I guess that's our new system. And it is the system, incidentally on these there's usually deportations or kidnappings to El Salvador as well as some of the others that we're seeing at airports and stuff. I mean, it's pretty horrifying really. As you've pointed out many times.

Tim Miller (14:45)

Sentence first, verdict afterward. From the Queen of Hearts goodwill. Yeah, victorious parts is going to give off Queen of Hearts energy. I want to actually go through what we've learned about a couple of these cases and I want to talk about the politics of it too. So we've been discussing Ann Dree, the gay makeup artist quite a bit. The ACLU is in court on his and others behalf. So we found the government's rationale for removing him. It was the tattoos. In this case, he has two tattoos that they pointed out. There were crowns. One said mother underneath, one mom, one said dad. So I don't know if those are popular gang tattoos, but sure doesn't seem like it to me. Also, if you just, you can look at like a partial transcript I guess of the interview with him where he keeps like saying, no, I'm not part of a gang. No, I'm not part of a gang. No, I'm not part of a gang. And then now you agents writing down, yes, Trenda Aragua, and the whole thing is extremely Orwellian. Then the Miami Herald did some good reporting on this other gentleman, Frango Reyes Mota. They write that in the filings with regards to Mota, the government Uses someone else's last name in several parts of the document. Identifies him with female pronouns. Uses two different unique ID numbers that immigration authorities use to keep track of individuals. Doesn't seem like they. We're really crossing their T's on that. We talked about Neri Alvarado, the baker with the autism awareness tattoos. And the Dallas Morning News has done reporting on this. And I'm going to be talking to the Mother Jones reporter. So I think I've talked to the families of 10 of the Venezuelans who are in El Salvador on YouTube later today, so people can check that out. I don't understand how you can go through these case by case and not think that there's a real problem here. Maybe in one of these cases it's like, I've been joking. Maybe Andre is like the hairstylist in the movie Blow who's helping move cocaine in and out. Like it's possible. But just the scope of these and the different. And reporters doing good work in several different credible outlets. It just seems like there's a real problem here.

Bill Kristol (16:50)

Yeah, I also thought, okay, I mean, it's terrible anyway, but one or two people got caught up in the dragnet. I don't know, maybe it's 10 people, maybe it's 50 people. I have not confidence that even though the bulk of these people are gang members, I mean, maybe, you know, again, what does that even mean? There are people who hang out with people from. In gangs and aren't themselves criminal or criminal in a much more minor way or didn't have much choice. If they're, I don't know, you know.

Tim Miller (17:15)

If they're older brother, older friend, some.

Bill Kristol (17:17)

Relative is in the gang, you can't sort of, you know, turn against it, so you're threatened. So anyway, I really do wonder, Yeah, I mean, who these people are. Of course, God forbid they should actually put out the names of these people like, nor like a normal government would do. And. And what evidence they have. Our friend Aaron Reichland Melnick saw this over the weekend. I'm not sure if he came up with this or is simply passing it on. But they gave to the ICE agents, I guess, these kind of guidelines for how they should decide who to throw into the, you know, onto the plane and kidnap and send them to El Salvador. And it's tattoos turn out to be basically key to it. Right. Or I mean, there are these different points. It's idiotic. These points you can give and then. But I think if you have bad tattoos and what's the other thing you have to have something sort of slightly also equally insignificant.

Tim Miller (18:03)

Those pictures of the phone or like, you know, where you've done things that could be gang signs or which part of Venezuela you're from.

Bill Kristol (18:10)

And then, you know, you add up to eight points and there you are, you know, and these are. You look at this. It's one thing to have a list like this as a kind of guidance for who you might want to interrogate more and you know, bring, bring to court and have an investigation about. It's another thing to put them out of plane to this penal colony in El Salvador. So yes, this thing, the more you look at it, the, the worse it smells. It's really terrible.

Tim Miller (18:33)

I haven't had you on since the Kristi Gnome pinup video with the Rolex watch. I know we were texting about this. Just want to let you kind of cook on. On Kristi Noem.

Bill Kristol (18:43)

No, you and I were. I mean it's so nauseating really. And sick, really, just sick. That's what I felt about it. And the idea that she thinks it's funny or great or tough or appropriate and the people I guess in maga world are sort of relishing this is awful. I mean it's one thing to make them send people somewhere. You have to do it or make a mistake and send some other people shouldn't be there that you don't have to do that. But that happens in life, I suppose. But to be relishing it, she goes after we know or have very good reason to believe that some of these people shouldn't be there. Right. It's not like she was innocent, you know, she didn't know she was there. The next day she went a week after they got there and after a lot of this reporting they had begun to come out. It's really awful. I mean I'm annoyed at Democrats and you've got talked about this and you should.

Tim Miller (19:28)

Yeah, I want to give it to you before we get talk about how annoyed we are at Democrats. Let's. We went through this period where it was like Democrats. Bernie went on Joe Rogan's podcast. You can't go on Joe Rogan's podcast. He's so awful. He's so cancelable. Well, let's hear who. Who has been more clear eyed about what is happening with the Venezuelans between our Democratic politicians and Joe Rogan. Here he is with Constantine Kissing, who I also don't really like. He's kind of one of these contrarian, centrist, comedian, you know, anti woke types. But here's the two of them discussing the. The El Salvador prison.

D (19:59)

And I think a human being being plucked out of nowhere and ending up in a country he's never been in, in a maximum security prison with gang members seems like a bad thing to happen to me.

E (20:10)

It's horrific. It's horrific.

D (20:12)

I don't think that should be controversial.

E (20:13)

No, that's not controversial at all. And this is the thing, you know, measured twice, cut once. This is the, like, this is kind of crazy that that could be possible. That's horrific. And that's, again, that's bad for the cause. Like, the cause is, let's get the gang members out. Everybody agrees, but let's not innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs. And then like, how long before that guy can get out? Can we, can we figure out how to get him out? Does every. Is there any plan in place to alert the authorities that they've made a horrible mistake and correct it?

D (20:43)

Well, if you think about it from a government perspective, and this is where I think it gets quite sinister, is once you've done that, the incentive structure is never going to be to admit that and deal with it. The incentive structure is to say nothing, to cover it up, to pretend it didn't happen.

Tim Miller (20:59)

Horrible. More moral clarity and emotion from Joe Rogan than we've seen from basically anyone in elected office over this. I sent a tweet the other day because I was like, maybe I'm just missing it. I was like, could somebody send me examples of Democrats and obviously fuck the Republicans. None of the Republicans have said anything. Not only that, they're doing their sadistic photo shoots with the, with the people that they've kidnapped. So just stated F them, the Democrats, though. So I sent a tweet. I was just like, could people please send me any examples of Democrats saying or putting out a statement about the Venezuelan refugees that we've sent to this fucking hellhole? And I got a couple replies. Debbie Wasserman Schultz put out a pretty good statement. I'm blanking on her name. There's a congresswoman from Texas put out a pretty good statement. I'll put that in the show notes because I want to give her credit, but a bunch of people sent me examples of Democrats speaking out about Ozturk. And for whatever reason, I think people feel more comfortable about what's happening on campuses and free speech. And that's great. The situation with Tufts is horrible, but that was it. Those two were the only ones I've seen, and it's like, okay, I know we've got Dems listening to this right now. It's like, what is the holdup on this? What is it about this that allows Joe Rogan to speak with moral clarity about how horrific it is, but doesn't allow you to. I truly don't understand.

Bill Kristol (22:21)

Well, because Joe Rogan is just saying what he believes. In this case, he's being a normal human being. And Democrats cannot say a word, apparently, if you're an elected official without going through some filter of what pollsters have been telling you for the last six months, and a rather stupid filter at that, of polling data. And the immigration bad, very difficult issue. Biden border bad. So gangs bad, tough on immigration, good politically. Therefore Trump sends people to El Salvador, including innocent people, and dehumanizes them, and we can't say a word about it. I mean, it's stupidest. I mean, A, it's wrong, obviously, and totally lacking courage and B, it's an incredibly stupid way to think about polling and about politics. You know, the Iraq war was popular in 2004. No one wanted to look like you were a fan of the people. We were fighting terrorists over there and so forth. And Abu Ghraib happened and I think this is what summer of 2004. And people were correctly repulsed and they were huge turmoil. The Bush administration should have fired Rumsfeld them but didn't. But did discipline the people who did this over there. They apologized. It shouldn't be done. We shouldn't have done this. This is in the middle of a war, incidentally, which were not in with Venezuela.

Tim Miller (23:29)

And by the way, Abu Ghraib was awful. But like in that situation, it was enemy combatants, it was terrorists. And at some level, like, this is even worse.

Bill Kristol (23:36)

Yeah, yeah, no, this is much worse. They're just sitting in a jail here. There's no need to send them to El Salvad, you know, but anyway, and Democrats did not get hurt by. And some Republicans, John McCain and many others said this is terrible. So it's a good example though, if they looked at the polls and didn't want to be on the wrong side of the war on terror, they wouldn't have said a word. Now, obviously there was some of that that happened back then, incidentally, Obama, I said this to someone else the other day, Iraq war, you couldn't afford to support, to offend that, to oppose that. John Kerry and all. The one guy who did was Obama because he was just a nobody, you know, what was a state senator from Illinois. And he figured, I'll just say what I believe. And he ended up being president six years later. So politicians are two poll driven generally. Democrats in particular, though you should explain this to me. Republicans. Well, I'll give you one tentative explanation. Why are Democrats so poll driven or poll intimidated and Republicans I think a little less so. And I actually at this conference here with some Democrats and one guy made a very good point to me. He said, you know, the Republicans are used to having issues where they're not really on the winning side. Being pro life has never really been the majority view in America for the 30 years that Republicans were. Being pro gun to the degree they are is not the majority view. People kind of like reasonable gun control. They had to defend these things. That was what their coalition wanted or they believed it. And so they found ways to kind of fight back a partial birth abortion or to claim that they wanted to confiscate all your guns. But Republicans are the way we're used to looking at polls and figuring out, well, how do I deal with it, how do I work around it, how do I mislead people a little bit, but whatever. Instead of simply saying, oh my God, I'm on the 60, 40 losing side of something, I can't say a word. Right. Maybe that's one reason Republicans are a little more aggressive and in not simply collapsing when they see a negative poll. I don't know, what do you think? Is there something to that?

Tim Miller (25:16)

Or here's what I think is part of it, at least in the modern day, in the Trump era. I don't know if I can speak to whether this was true or the case among Democrats back when I was on the other side. I think that a lot of Democrats really feel confused by the country right now and I think that is what is driving it. They just genuinely cannot understand how Donald Trump had won. Don't really understand the kind of do you can pay lip service to the appeal like get it at. Get it at one level, but I get a deeper level somewhere deep inside them. They're like, I actually really still don't understand. And I kind of feel this way a little bit too. And so it's like I should probably be more cautious. I should probably listen to, you know, look at the numbers and look at the data and like think about what issues, what issues can I talk about that might appeal to these people who I don't understand. Right. Who voted for Donald Trump. That's my armchair psychology analysis about why it's happening now. And this is why I'm playing the Joe Rogan clip for these folks. Because it's like, I assume it's surprising to some Democrats that are like, oh, wow, Joe Rogan is speaking out on this clearly. And it's like, maybe this is not as unpopular of an issue as I thought. Maybe the American people aren't that terrible. Maybe the American people have some terrible instincts and are easily manipulated and are easily conned. But when it comes to the case of a gay hairdresser getting sent to a foreign gulag for no reason, you know, maybe there we can get majority support for that. I don't know. It seems to me like it's worth a try. A. It seems to. It doesn't matter, actually, whether it's popular or not, but. But it's also worth a try. Like, if you can listen to a Joe Rogan podcast and hear them speaking like that, like a normal human with empathy, with clarity about how this is something that Americans should be against, it's fundamentally anti American, then maybe that will stiffen the spine. I will tell you if as a, as a carrot, maybe they don't want this carrot, actually, because they don't want attention about them talking about immigration. I think that is another really big part of this. Democrats have decided that any talk about immigration is bad for them. But, you know, if you're a Democrat looking for attention and want to do a selfie video where you're talking about how horrible this is, I will share it. I will send it to my other friends who have big accounts, and they will share it, and we will, you know, get attention for you, because attention is important these days. We have the tariffs coming again. Liberation Day is this week, April 2nd. That is Wednesday. We'll see what happens. Obviously, I'm always a little hesitant to do stock market talk on this pod because things can change over the course of the day. But off the open today, Nasdaq's down about 2%, Dow's down a little bit. S and P is down about 1%. So the market continues to dip on the idea that Trump is serious about this. With the tariffs, he's given no indication. There's a big Politico story over the weekend that the people around him don't really understand what the plan is, but all they do know is that Trump wants to go big, he's serious about it. Those little leaks coming from inside the White House, eventually, if he doesn't actually follow through, you would think that his own ego would prevent that, given how much he's put into this. There's a good chart, though. For people who are struggling to follow this, what tariffs has he talked about what is coming and what has actually happened? What has actually happened is the steel and aluminum tariffs and the China tariffs. Everything else has just been discussed. To me, I've always felt like this is actually going to happen. That's not wwe, but I guess we'll know more in three days. What do you make of it?

Bill Kristol (28:38)

One thing to say is that an awful lot of damage is done just by the endless talking about it and going back and forth on it. So I talked to someone from European government last week so in Washington. And what if he doesn't do it this time because he gets spooked or something? He could do it three months from now or six months from now when he needs to appeal to the base or he gets annoyed at some government doing something totally random on some other issue. Right. So I mean, I think the degree to which it disrupts the alliance, not that he cares, I guess, about that, and disrupts the world economy, which he should care a little bit about, which is what the markets are reacting to. Even those of us who are very large about a Trump second term sort of assumed that on the economy he'd be constrained and on terrorists he'd be constrained because he cares about the stock market. So one thing I didn't think he'd be constrained on mistreating immigrants. He wouldn't be constrained on the rule of law. He might not be constrained on destroying NATO, but on the economy, economic stuff, somewhat constrained, but it may all have gone to his head so much it doesn't even feel constrained on this. And he's talking tough now.

Tim Miller (29:39)

Right.

Bill Kristol (29:39)

I will have to go through some tough times, but we'll come out of it afterwards. Stronger Nation maybe really has internalized the argument.

Tim Miller (29:48)

I think so. This is Bloomberg this morning with the market rout intensifying. Also, Goldman has rising recession concerns and Bloomberg says that it's leaving The S&P 500 index on track for its worst quarter as compared to the rest of the world since the 1980s. Which again shows that this is just like this is not some global downturn that has happened in the first three months. It is something unique to the uncertainty that Trump is inserting into into the market. Just as far as buying their own bs. One thing I thought was interesting over the weekend was our vice president, the poster in chief quote tweeted as this guy that writes for Red State named Ban Chi. You don't need to know all the characters here, but he's conservative. Red State was Eric Erickson's thing. He's quite conservative, occasionally is maybe not the biggest maga, but it's decently maga. And he posted about how this tariff thing is crazy and you're going to help a small number of people who are in one sector in this manufacturing sector, but it's not even going to do that much. You're going to help a small number of people and there's going to be massive other groups of people who are MAGA voters who are harmed by it. That's the gist of his tweet. JD Quote tweets him and says it is this brain dead liberalism pretending to be conservatism that saw the US Go from the world's manufacturing superpower to blah blah, blah, blah. The guy didn't tag JD Like JD Just decided to dunk on some random conservative blogger and calling him a liberal now because he's against tariffs. Because now to be for tariffs is to be conservative in their worldview. And I just thought that was interesting because it reflected kind of a real defensiveness and an emotional attachment to defending the tariffs because he thinks that they're actually coming. And also I thought also it was interesting because to me it read like him trying to intimidate people into staying on side. Like this thing is coming this week and if you're a right winger and you're going to criticize it, well then you're going to get the vice president giving you a spanking.

Bill Kristol (31:42)

I was struck when I saw this European I mentioned earlier, I think for lunch diplomat, how he said they were, you know, I said what's most got you upset and rattled. Of course that was a huge long list. And fundamentally it's Trump's basic policies of reversing 80 years of the alliance and all this and the Hagseth advanced speeches in Europe in early mid February. But he said actually he thought for people in government it was the transcript, the signal text transcript of Vance, the hatred of the Europeans. And Hegseth echoes it. Just to suck up, I suppose to Vance.

Tim Miller (32:13)

But all caps. Pathetic.

Bill Kristol (32:15)

Yeah. I mean what are we even talking about here? I mean the Europeans have done a pretty good job standing up in Ukraine. They've sent a ton of money to Ukraine in response to us. They're now saying they'll do even more and they're going to spend a lot on defense or whatever. I mean it's as if the Europeans have just told us to get lost or something like that. We've told them to get lost. They're reacting In a pretty grown up way. What is that all about? It certainly. I mean, why did just J.D. vance and Pete Hegseth. What do they care one way or the other, honestly, about? You know, they have a deep hatred and resentment of the Europeans. I guess it's sort of owning the version of owning the libs. Owning the Europeans. I don't know.

Tim Miller (32:47)

I think that that is related to it. It's related to me, to the Denmark thing. Yeah, it is as Greenland. So JD's in Greenland last weekend on Friday, you know, like he's giving this preposterous press conference. Feels like it's from a different universe. The thing that struck me from the press conference maybe the most was the parts where he's going after Denmark because it's like deeply personal, like the way that he's going after Denmark. He's like, you know, I don't in front of me. But essentially it was like the Danes let us down. They let Greenland down. They're not doing their job. Like we have to be. It was one of his tells. Whenever he's being ridiculous, he starts with, we have to be honest about this. We have to be honest about this. You know, the Danes, you know, have really, have really failed as a partner. And it's like. But he never says what they did. Like, what did Denmark. Denmark didn't do anything. Denmark actually is, as far as a percentage of their GDP is spending above the NATO, you know, what is required for NATO, and they're increasing it over the course of the year. The Danes sent people to the wars. JD mentions that and kind of dismisses that also too. He's like, oh, well, great. So the Denmark Danes sent some soldiers 20 years ago and now I'm supposed to be nice to them. It's like they can't even articulate does feel. And I can understand why the Europeans then would feel more alarmed by that because it feels like they have a deep emotional hatred for our allied nations that's frankly irrational.

Bill Kristol (34:08)

And they love bullying them, especially the little. Denmark's a very small country. They've kind of done their best to help and to be a good partner. They did send, I believe, troops to both, if I'm not mistaken, Iraq, certainly to Afghanistan. And they've been cooperative when we wanted to actually have some troops in Greenland and stuff. I mean, it's not even worth getting into because it's so ludicrous. Except to say that, yes, there's a deep hatred apparently of these European. Not just the European governments. Incidentally, one of the striking things About Vance's speech in Munich was he hates the European nations. It's not just this particular lefty government. A lot of these countries don't have particularly lefty governments right now, actually. I don't know about Denmark's. Yeah.

Tim Miller (34:45)

Met Fredriksen is. She's kind of like a center left.

Bill Kristol (34:48)

Yeah.

Tim Miller (34:49)

For Europe. She'd be pretty left for here, probably. But yeah, I mean, she's not like, she's like a rabid.

Bill Kristol (34:55)

No, it's not going out of it, believe me. One thing you got to say, in fact, I would say the moment Trump won, they've all gone out of their way to try to be nice. They visited Mar A Lago. We're upping our defense spending for NATO. We understand that he's got some concerns about trade. We want to talk to him. They've been much nicer than we have been, you and I, to Trump. And for this, they've just gotten slapped around by Vance and by all of them, really.

Tim Miller (35:19)

Part of the same call with Welker where Trump floated becoming an autocrat. He also talked about Putin. And we're going to get into this tomorrow. This is going to be more of a foreign policy focused pod, but I think this bears mentioning is that he says that he's kind of disappointed with Russia over the fact that they haven't cut a deal. I guess Russia. Putin made some comment about how Ukraine should have some other temporary government during the deal. It shouldn't be Zelensky that they're negotiating with. And Trump said he was disappointed with this. And then he kind of went on to say, if Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia's fault, which it might not be, but if I think it was Russia's fault, I'm going to put secondary tariffs on oil and all oil coming from Russia. So again, he thinks tariffs is the magical solution. The whole thing again, I mean, there's always. This is important because when you're analyzing the situation, there is a school of thought, a tendency that's just like, Trump is a Russian asset. He's Krasnov. It goes back to the 80s. He's going to do whatever Putin wants. Then there's another school of thought that's like, which I like lean more towards, which is Trump is a child. He's, like, extremely naive. He just wants people to suck up to him. Usually Putin's nice to him. He really thought that if he got in there, Putin would just do him a solid because they are buddies. And because the world is. The deep state was after them and Russiagate, and they can do economic deals together, and he'll make Russia rich. And that he misjudged the fact that, no, Putin is actually kind of serious about this. And I don't know, there's just some indication that Trump is a gullible fool is the right operative theory to always be working on.

Bill Kristol (36:59)

Don't you think he's intimidated by Putin? I mean, thus the kind of fake. I'm going to really have to be serious if he doesn't go along with this, which I've never thought he would, and he's going to just keep pushing and pushing and pushing in Ukraine and elsewhere, probably. And I'm going to put those secondary. I mean, really, are we serious? Is that a serious threat at this point? We have massive sanctions on Russia.

Tim Miller (37:20)

He said pissed off. I just think that was interesting. He didn't say disappointed. I want to pull this up. He said, I was pissed off when Putin started getting to Zelensky's credibility. I don't know. I just think the right operating theory with Trump is that it's all talk, it's all bullshit. He's gonna be nice to you as long as you suck up to him. And nobody really called his bluff the first time through. And I think that if, like, there's this theory, like, oh, he's this tough guy, and if Putin calls his bluff, he's gonna really come hard at him. I don't think so. And I think that Putin has his number on it.

Bill Kristol (37:54)

I'm very confident that that's you're right about that. Maybe Putin occasionally, you know, if he, after pissing him off for two months, will give him a little piece of candy to keep him, you know, so Trump could feel like, oh, he's now he's really trying to try to be nicer to me. And that'll keep Trump going for another two months. You know.

Tim Miller (38:11)

I want to close with your newsletter on which regiment was it here? The 54th.

Bill Kristol (38:16)

54Th.

Tim Miller (38:17)

It was a response to the executive order that was put in place late last week about DEI in the Smithsonian. And we're going to get rid of. Remove improper ideology from our museums, remove anything that talks about how the US has used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement. And you're in Boston and went to see a memorial and kind of gave a little screed on this regard. And so I wanted you to verbalize the screed.

Bill Kristol (38:49)

Okay. I'LL do my best. Race turns out to be doesn't incidentally about what, 75, 80% of all the stuff they hate. I mean in terms of the culture war stuff, the transgender thing is bad and some other stuff, but it is a lot of it's about race. It's striking in that stupid executive order how much of it's about. He doesn't like that we're being too woke about race. So anyway, I'm here in Boston. I got here, turned on the TV in the hotel room to watch the ncaa. This has been a bad. Can we just say this has really been a disappointment.

Tim Miller (39:16)

Tournament's horrible.

Bill Kristol (39:17)

Yeah. There's no close games, no drama.

Tim Miller (39:19)

Girls tournament's been great. Unfortunately. LSU lost yesterday, the Elite Eight, but the girls tournament's been great.

Bill Kristol (39:23)

But yeah, too bad about that. But four number one seeds in the finals, that's really not America. You know, America's about some St. Peter's is America, you know, 15th seed winning. Anyway, okay, so that's my. Anyway, so the game was crummy so I went out for a little walk. It was freezing actually here in Boston on the comet. And I vaguely remember there was this, this memorial on the other side of the comet. It's been a long time since I've seen it though. And it's this fantastic memorial erected by Augustus Saint Gaudens, the famous sculptor, I guess. And he did it and it was dedicated in 1897. It was a huge deal. President of Harvard and William James spoke and all these characters and a beautiful sculpture of Robert Gould Shaw who the son of aristocratic young man who volunteered to lead one of the first black regiments in the Union army. I hadn't realized that the Emancipation Proclamation almost explicitly provides that for the first black soldiers can and should be recruited to fight in the Union army, which ended up being pretty important. Like 10% of them by the end were black soldiers. The Confederates treated them, needless to say, if captured horribly. And also their white officers. So they had white officers with these black regiments back then treated them horribly. Any if they were captured. So this was one of the first ones. They marched down Boylston street or some street here in Boston before going off. They launched an ill advised heroic attack two months later and half of them were killed actually, including Shaw. It's amazing that Frederick Douglass recruited people for this regiment. Two of his sons served so much later it became famous. At the time, that is. I hadn't realized that until I did my Wikipedia type reading. Lincoln talked about it and stuff and it really had an Effect on sort of, this is really real equality. You know, there's Emancipation Proclamation. Sounds nice. Slaves should be liberated when the war ends, basically, in the Southern states. But here in the north, we're actually going to have a regiment that wasn't quite integrated yet, but still, you know, of black soldiers fighting, you know, with a. This part is kind of a little patronizing to say it this way, but, I mean, you understand at the time how it was with a white colonel who's actually a, you know, a serious person who volunteers for that job, and others did, too, actually, to be the officers. So they fought very well. People at the time said, and I think that they were fought as well as white regiments. So it was a big deal at the time. And then 30 years later, they put up this war. And again, it just struck me as such a contrast with the kind of history, the kind of pablum, the kind of whitewashing that Trump's trying to do. Hagseth is getting books removed from the Naval Academy's library. If they're biographies of Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King's autobiography, I mean, it's really one thing coded to this. So Mitch Landrieu, who I think we mentioned already, you're the former mayor of New Orleans, your friend from down there, he's at this conference. I ran into him this morning. So he's Mr. Monuments. Right. He famously took down the Confederate monuments in New Orleans and gave a very good speech on this about how a lot of them put up, not right after the war or much later, as part of a kind of Southern defense of the Confederacy. So I said, you would be. Have you been to see it? He said he'd seen it years ago, he thought. But I said, you should walk over if you want a break from this conference. It's pretty amazing, and it's just. Is a work of art, it seems to me. And also he has a real interest in this kind of thing. And it was interesting. He then said he gave the speech removing certain monuments, one of which would put up in 1893 by a racist mayor of New Orleans who had actually fought as a young person for the Confederacy and put up a monument to Lee or something like that to kind of make a statement about Jim Crow and the end of Reconstruction and kind of, you know, that was what that was about in the 1890s. I wonder. I don't know this. I don't know. I wonder how much the monument here and the speeches that made such a big deal of it was kind of a Northern response to the Southern attempt to re legitimate the Confederacy. But anyway, it's a moving memorial and you can go online and read speeches that were given at the time by William James and Elliot, the president of Harvard. The spirit of that memorial is a lot better than the spirit of Trump's executive order and Hegseth's idiotic directive to the Naval Academy. And we'll outlast them. That was my, my confident conclusion. Maybe too confident, not too confident. Right. They can't possibly.

Tim Miller (43:30)

No, it will outlast them. I don't know if Memorial will. The movie Glory, which also depicts this, will certainly outlast them. Denzel, you know, has their number on this. But I don't know, man. The extent to which, like, people. And I guess we should go with this because this is the other conversation we're having in the green room. I think it's related the extent to which there is just a CYA reaction to this sort of thing across a ton of different institutions and stuff where, like, you're already seeing people are just like, oh, we should. Let's not do Frederick Douglass Day this year. I don't want to deal with the hassle. Or let's not do, like, this thing that we've been doing, you know, to honor the, you know, a particular marginalized group. And so, like, the executive order is going to forcibly remove some things from the museums, which is horrible. But then on top of that, like, there are going to be all these other institutions that are, like, saying, ah, better to be cautious. You know, let's just not do this. There will be a counter reaction as well by some groups, I think. I think Gay Pride this year is going to be probably as rowdy as it's been in a while. It sort of lost its luster, I think, after. After the Obergefell ruling. But I think we might be back. Gay pride might be back this year, but a lot of institutions are doing that. And I think that that is. Is going to have a negative impact, like, with regards to, you know, education and history and what we're learning about our past. But then it also has a tangible effect on what's happening right now. And you mentioned your. With the Boston College professor when we were off air. And I think we should close with that, which is just that, like other people who are worried about the nonsense that they're doing with visas at the airports and, you know, if you're a foreign, if you're a foreign student or foreign professor or here on a work visa or whatever, it's like, maybe this year, I shouldn't travel outside the country. Like, we're already seeing people from, you know, the incoming flights from Canada this year. Way down. Right. And so, like, some of this is like the authoritarian. I make a decision and there's a response, but a lot of it is then the choices that are made in the culture and how things ripple out. And I think that's very concerning.

Bill Kristol (45:29)

Absolutely. I mean, it's the. The authoritarian offensive by Trump and his people is bad and has gone. Been more aggressive than people perhaps expected. But the lack of response by outside and the accommodation and acquiescence to some degree, or at least silence and sort of quiet accommodation and lack of willingness to pick fights has been also very bad. And that is the one, two punch. I don't know, what would you call it? The push and the pull or the. You know what I mean? It's sort of the flip side. Right. I mean, and as one could have imagined Trump being as bad as he's been for these first two and a half months, but one could also imagine a pretty different scenario in terms of everyone's reaction and not, not half the law firms, but all the law firms standing up. Not some universities sort of sounding firm, but others just collapsing, but all of them together, taking a stance and other civic institutions and so forth. I'm not sure I would have expected that. I don't know. I think, again, people were sort of like the Democrats, so rattled by some of their own mistakes in the past and sort of the country that it turned out they didn't understand. Well, overestimating, I think, Trump's power in many ways. These are massive institutions with a lot of resources, and, you know, it's a little bit of, I don't want to fight with these guys. I don't know, you know, but really, what's. What's going to be so terrible to fight with, you know, what's her name? Linda McMahon. Is that her? Trump's Secretary of Education. I don't know. I don't know. The courts, I think, have been pretty good, I can say the judges seem to have a certain amount of, you know, metal in their spine. And maybe life tenure turns out to be a good thing, but I don't know.

Tim Miller (47:03)

All right, well, we'll explore it more next week. Thank you, Bill, as always. And everybody else will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark podcast. We'll see you all then.

Bill Kristol (47:12)

Peace.

Unknown Speaker (47:28)

Steps. Watching time I erase a few more wor. Here I am with.

Bill Kristol (48:15)

You, pretty baby.

Tim Miller (48:22)

The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.