← The Bulwark Podcast
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- [00:00]
Ben Wittes
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Tim Miller
Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to be back with my pal. Editor in Chief of lawfare, senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He also writes Doge Shirt Daily. On Substack is Ben Wittes.
- [00:21]
Ben Wittes
Ouch.
- [00:22]
Tim Miller
Is that not right?
- [00:23]
Ben Wittes
No, I. You know, that hurts. First of all, Dog Shirt Daily predates doge. And, you know, that's like, something I would expect Dan Bongino to say to me. And, you know who I saw on the Amtrak the other day? He was sleeping.
- [00:39]
Tim Miller
Mouth open or closed?
- [00:41]
Ben Wittes
It was closed. He wasn't a bad sleep, you know, but it was. He is the deputy FBI director sleeping during business hours. And if Dan Bongino on his podcast called it Doe's Shirt Daily, I would think, okay, but for Tim Miller to do that, that's like, well, he used.
- [01:00]
Tim Miller
To be a competitor with me in the Apple pod. Ratings you. Now that he's been promoted, I guess, to Deputy FBI Director, you have something to aspire to.
- [01:09]
Ben Wittes
No.
- [01:10]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it was nice for me. I moved up one slot. And, you know, in the Wes Moore administration, who knows that I could be deputy of.
- [01:17]
Ben Wittes
Do you feel qualified, based on hosting the Bulwark Podcast, to be Deputy FBI Director?
- [01:25]
Tim Miller
Boy, you know, and it does prepare you for a lot. You got to have a wide remit, you know? You know, you got to think about that. You got to be up relatively early in the morning, right? So I also take naps midday. I guess I'd say this. I think I could do a better job than Dan Bongino. I don't know. I don't know if I should be at the top of the recruitment list for the future, but I don't want to close any doors to myself, Ben. You never know these days.
- [01:49]
Ben Wittes
For those who don't know, I also host a podcast, the Lawfare Podcast, and my Gorilla One Dog Shirt tv. And I feel very qualified to be Deputy FBI Director against the Bonino standard. And so I just. I have some experience that he doesn't have. For example, I've run lawfare, which is at least an organization devoted to national security issues, whereas, you know, he really had never run anything. So I. I feel like, you know, this gives hope to all of us who are wildly underqualified to be FBI Deputy Director.
- [02:31]
Tim Miller
I'm going to float you for the short list in our dystopian AI POLITICO newsletter in 2036, if we ever get our democracy back. Ben Ford, Lawfare, which you mentioned, a venerable publication that I'M reading more often than I'd like lately. You wrote, I guess, two days ago now about Judge Boasberg and the other Alien Enemies act case that has kind of gotten pushed out of the news because of Abrego Garcia. And so I want to start there and I guess just leave it at the biggest picture. Can you give us the kind of state of play on what we know about the case with regards to the Venezuelans who were also sent to Sukkot?
- [03:15]
Ben Wittes
Yeah, so what we know is that Judge Boasberg tried to prevent this from happening by issuing an order that basic while planes were in the air saying they need to turn around, the government did not follow that order. The planes landed in El Salvador and the contents of the planes, which is to say 260 plus human beings, were transferred to the custody of the Salvadoran government and have been. One of whom was Mr. Abrego Garcia, by the way. But the others who have not had kind of individual attention on them and some individuals have, but you know, most of them on these three planes, two planes of which were covered by this order, have kind of become this mass of people who are alleged to be Trenda Aragua members. And Judge Boasberg has been in the position ever since of trying to figure out what happened, who violated the order? Did somebody violate the order? The Supreme Court now 10 days ago vacated the order on the theory that these cases should have been brought as habeas petitions in the locations in which the people were being held. But yesterday Judge Boasberg issued a 46 page opinion that basically held three things. The first is while my order was later vacated, it was valid at the time and the government was obliged to follow it. Number two, that the government didn't follow it and there is probable cause to believe that somebody in the government intentionally and willfully violated that court order. And number three, that the government therefore has a choice, which is it can either act to remediate in the language of contempt law, purge the contempt, which probably means bringing these people back, or in the alternative, it can identify the person who made this decision so that I, Judge Boasberg, can hold him or her. And by the way, we all kind of know that the person in question is Stephen Miller, but we don't know that in a way that a court can find right. And so finger the person, so to speak, so that they can be individually held in contempt. And as of I can't remember if it was late last night or this morning. Time all blends together. The government has announced that it is appealing this ruling.
- [06:20]
Tim Miller
Got it. Okay. So this ruling then will go back to scotus and then simultaneously there is like a group effort where like, I guess the ACLU and others are suing on behalf of these Venezuelans, like in the Texas circuit and New York, I guess what's happening with that?
- [06:39]
Ben Wittes
So there are various efforts to sue on behalf of people who are still here.
- [06:47]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [06:47]
Ben Wittes
But this is really the mainline effort to see if you can force the government to bring them back. And, well, it doesn't go directly to the Supreme Court. It goes to the D.C. circuit first. And there's a question about whether they will hear it, because normally an action like this is not final enough to appeal. There's been a lot of give in what counts as an appealable order recently. So I wouldn't be surprised if the Supreme Court thought about it in a kind of shadow docket sort of way. But right now, Judge Boasberg is moving along and has given the government, I think, until I can't remember what his deadline was for them to respond to the order. Maybe the 25th or the 28th or something.
- [07:37]
Tim Miller
You know, the thing about this case, which is why it's important I wanted to lead with it, is that you can already see in the public discourse of the Abrego Garcia case, like making all of this about one individual person, you know, on the one hand, has. Has some benefits. Right. It can be. Can be a lightning rod for people to, you know, engage on this. There's focus on one person in the media. That's a, you know, I guess using George Floyd and Black Lives Matter as an example for something like that. On the other hand, the debate over what the government did can get bogged down in the details of that case. I'll get a little bit more into it, Garcia, in a second. And so taking it out to the 30,000 foot level, arguing on the grounds that actually, no, the government just doesn't have the right to take people off the street without due process, send them to a foreign concentration camp, leave people there indefinitely, and then just say, trust us, the people that are there are all. Are all evil gang members. Like, that's just not how the American system works. And I think that that argument you're already seeing in the polls is compelling if you can get it in front of people instead. What gets in front of people is the details of, like, each individual and whether or not they find them personally sympathetic. You know, there are going to be some. Some potential pitfalls with that.
- [09:04]
Ben Wittes
Yeah. So let's talk about These two cases and why they're individually important, first of all. But for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the number of people who would give a shit about these three airplanes that went to El Salvador would be dramatically lower. You would still care. I would still care. You know, JVL would still care.
- [09:27]
Tim Miller
Anyone suffering through my rants on Instagram would care.
- [09:30]
Ben Wittes
But, you know, but maybe because they want you to calm down and shut up.
- [09:36]
Tim Miller
But we get it, Tim.
- [09:38]
Ben Wittes
I have listened to all of them and said, you go. But I acknowledge that I'm the minority on that. You know, the number would be the bulwark crowd, right? Would be the people who are reluctantly reading lawfare again crowd. Those are the people who will care.
- [09:56]
Tim Miller
Without a name, civil liberties lefties, the.
- [09:59]
Ben Wittes
Name Abrego Garcia and the specific facts of his situation matter a great deal in terms of putting this in front of people. And, you know, when you have an individual, you know, Stalin, I don't know if he really said the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million men is a statistic, but it's, you know, famously attributed to him. And once you take it from the 280 people and you bring it down to the level of one person, you humanize it. And that's the role that the Abrego Garcia case has, has taken here. Also the fact that the government in court at least acknowledges that it was an accident and that it was a screw up, which the other cases, it's very, very proud of. Right? So if you read Judge Boasberg's opinion yesterday, and I urge people to do it because a model of the craft of holding the administration accountable for these barbarities, this is how it's done. And one thing it isn't is personal. He refers to himself constantly as the court, as though he's some disembodied entity. There is no Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Right. None of the detainees have names. It's super, super impersonal. But it is a methodical catalog of the events that convince him that the government didn't just not follow his order, but willfully defied his order and conspired to defy his order. And, you know, that is great for the law nerds like me, like, you want a record like that, it's really good for the D.C. circuit and the Supreme Court, because if Sam Alito, you know, has a knit to pick, he's going to pick that knit. And so you want to close every door and dot every I and cross every T and make sure your record is pristine. And that's what Judge Boberg did. But if the goal is to appeal to the public, this is dry as dust, you know, and for that purpose, you need a name. You need somebody who's, you know, married to a US citizen and has a five year old autistic child and, you know, has been working, never been charged with a crime in either this country or in El Salvador. Right. You want to humanize it. And that's why the Abrego Garcia case is so important.
- [12:42]
Tim Miller
I mean, I agree with that in this case that like the Abrego Garcia case is also just so cut and dry. Right. It's like the government admitted they made a mistake and, you know, so he can be the lightning rod, you know, now we see what the downfalls of that are. Like there's now this domestic, you know, violence filing, you know, from five years ago. You know, his wife made some court accusations about abuse. You know, the MAGA folks are talking about that.
- [13:09]
Ben Wittes
Yeah. Although I would like to say that that's a little bit of an overbroad argument because if you could summarily deport all people who had a domestic violence, like half of the MAGA folks themselves would on the next plane, I mean.
- [13:24]
Tim Miller
The president of the United States is an adjudicated sexual assault, you know, committer.
- [13:27]
Ben Wittes
Right.
- [13:28]
Tim Miller
So. So we could send him to see cut, which, you know, people might have mixed views on the yesterday, like the full filing, you know, related to, you know, when, when he was initially detained, you know, he is in the group outside now I'm having a brain fart, whether it was like a Home Depot or a Walmart or something, that he's in a group outside a big box store. Couple of the other people there, it seems like were Ms. 13, you know, he had some, you know, wads of bills on him. Again, like all this stuff, none of this stuff justifies sending a person to a hole in a foreign country without due process, obviously. Like that said, you know, getting bogged down into the details of the case. I had a MAGA friend text me the other day. They were like, I was with you more when you were talking about the gay makeup artist. Because I was thinking, man, we might have screwed that one up. Like, this guy seems like a gang banger to me. Right. The media side of this, how do you get attention on stuff? And then as a political matter, I think that there's importance to kind of just talk about the broad principle of this.
- [14:28]
Ben Wittes
Yeah. So that's why both cases are important. One case brings it home, and the other case is about the policy. It's about the decision to defy a court order and do all this stuff. Anyway, I will say about Abrego Garcia, it is, I think, important not to assert that he's innocent of anything. I don't know who he is. That's why we have process. And if the government wants to bring him back and initiate another deportation proceeding against him on the basis that he, they have evidence that he's Ms. 13, fine. I'm not going to assert that. They could have no possible basis for believing that. I will say that that is not what happened here. What happened here is that they rounded him up because he was standing in a parking lot with some other people and they deported him summarily with no process, notwithstanding a withholding of deportation order that said he could not be deported to El Salvador. And so until you fix that problem, don't bring me casual allegations that he can't possibly respond to. It's not like you have credibility. Not you, Tim Miller, but you, the government. It's not like you have credibility to be making casual allegations about this guy. Right.
- [15:57]
Tim Miller
That's true. You know, and that. And to your point, like in the first term, like Trump's, what was Rob Porter's job? Trump's staff secretary was like, accused of multiple domestic violence situations. So, so again, this is like these sort of casual accusations are not how in America we determine whether someone gets sent to a prison camp. Speaking of the contrary views on this, I wanted to get your take as a lawfare expert. I was perusing the Free Press, Barry Weiss's outfit last night because I couldn't go to sleep. I don't know why I thought that was going to help me with that. But that's, I guess, another question. And there's an article by a Jed Rubenfeld headlined, no, the President has not defied a Supreme Court ruling. What do you think about that?
- [16:43]
Ben Wittes
So I have not read the argument.
- [16:46]
Tim Miller
What do you think about the headline?
- [16:47]
Ben Wittes
The argument depends on splitting hairs. So let's split the hairs and determine how we feel about it. The Supreme Court said two things. One is that you cannot deport people under the Alien Enemies act without reasonable notice to them and an opportunity for them to challenge their designations in habeas proceedings. They haven't done it since the Supreme Court said it, but, you know, they did do something times268 that the Supreme Court has subsequently said was illegal. Number two, the Supreme Court also unanimously said about Mr. Abrego Garcia in Particular. Particular that it is lawful and appropriate for the district court. In that case, this is Judge Sinis to order that the administration facilitate his return, but not appropriate to interpret the word effectuate his return too aggressively. And so far, the administration has done exactly nothing to facilitate his return. So, you know, is that violating a court order or is that merely litigating about what the contours of the Supreme Court's ruling means? I don't think it constantly.
- [18:17]
Tim Miller
This is where lawyers kind of annoy me. Can't we just call John Roberts and be like, bro, what do you mean?
- [18:22]
Ben Wittes
Well, that's exactly what's happening, right? Because Paula Sinis entered an order saying, here's how I interpret the word facilitate. And the Trump administration is appealing that order. And that's exactly the phone call that you're describing translated into the language of appellate law.
- [18:41]
Tim Miller
How long is that going to take? That feels like kind of a, you know, I could just reply the Supreme Court with like, facilitate means facilitate. Can we, you know.
- [18:50]
Ben Wittes
Well, yeah, so that's actually pretty literally what her order says, actually. And look, appellate law always takes longer than you want it to, particularly when you're sitting in a gulag in El Salvador or when you're concerned about somebody who is. But one thing the Supreme Court has not been in these cases is slow. So I, look, I think it is reasonable to say they have not complied with what the Supreme Court said. Would I say they've defied it? Yeah, I would, honestly. But. But I can see how you might split that particular hair. And if I were Jeb Rubenfeld, I might say, okay, they haven't defied it. What they've done is interpreted it aggressively.
- [19:37]
Tim Miller
Yeah. If I were Jed Rubenfeld, if I was, you know, writing for the free press, and I care about individual rights and the rights of free speech, and that's the animating element of my website. I might think the thing that outrages me in this case is not that the government unilaterally swooped up someone fleeing communism off of the street because of their tattoos and sent them to a fucking hole outside of El Salvador. What I would be upset about is that there are some liberals out there that are overstating the case a little bit on the constitutional crisis. And that, to me, is the real threat that faces the country. I could see that if I was on their side.
- [20:18]
Ben Wittes
Let me say this as somebody who does not use the word defy in my own writings and does not ever use the term constitutional crisis. And so I literally cannot be accused of this.
- [20:33]
Tim Miller
Great.
- [20:34]
Ben Wittes
I agree with Tim that to be hung up on the excess of the way liberals talk about this. It's not the way I talk about it though. I am a liberal and it is not precise.
- [20:49]
Tim Miller
Sure.
- [20:49]
Ben Wittes
To be hung up on the precision at this point rather than to be hung up on what is a genuine. Whether you call it a constitutional crisis or whether you call it what I would call it, which is a grave confrontation between the executive branch and the courts. The problem here is that the executive branch did a set of things, some of them involving the life and liberty of many individuals that are in very dubious relation to the law and claim that nobody can force them to undo them. And if you're not confronting that reality, you have a moral instinct for the capillaries. Let's just put it that way.
- [21:40]
Tim Miller
Yeah, how about if we're gonna just pick words, how about an assault on the natural rights of the individuals who fled Venezuela? You know, maybe a Lockean appeal to our friends over there at the Free Press. I don't know. Something to think about.
- [21:54]
Ben Wittes
Yeah, look, my enthusiasm for the free press is altogether under control.
- [22:00]
Tim Miller
Look, the premise, our enthusiasm for the free press, not capitalized. Very high. Very high.
- [22:07]
Ben Wittes
Right. But look, let me put it this way. The bulwark and the free press, you know, were founded within a reasonable space of time of one another on opposite premises. The bulwarks premise was there is a crisis in American democracy and the Trumpist movement is that crisis. And so reasonable center left and reasonable center right people, it started in the center right, of course, need to come together and confront that crisis. Is that a fair summary?
- [22:45]
Tim Miller
Great premise. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, I'm excited about that album.
- [22:48]
Ben Wittes
The premise of the Free Press as I understand it, is that there is a crisis in liberals responding to previous crisis. And we need to all come together, center right and center left and pick nits from the liberal critique of that crisis. And I have to say I don't find that a compelling premise for some of you.
- [23:13]
Tim Miller
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- [25:08]
Ben Wittes
He's the second coolest.
- [25:10]
Tim Miller
Second coolest. Van Hollen, senator from Maryland, said that. The vice president said. So we're, you know, we're relying a little bit on hearsay here that they don't have evidence that Brunei Garcia is Ms. 13. And he also said that the vice president said that America is paying them to keep these folks. These seem like pretty relevant matters for the American courts. I want your take on that really quick. Also, the highest legal officer in our government, Pam Bondi, the attorney general, countered that she was on Fox, as she usually is, saying that he is, quote, one of the top Ms. 13 members. So it's the first accusation we've heard about that. So anyway, I don't know whether you would think any of this has any legal ramifications or this is all in the political sphere.
- [25:55]
Ben Wittes
Well, so there are two legal ramifications. The first is regarding a representation by a senior officer of that government to a US Senator about the state of the evidence. Now that is not going to be admissible as Such. But it's atmospherically very interesting, and it will be interesting at some point whether El Salvador makes any representation to the court as to what information it has about this individual. The more important element is the element about the money, because one question is whether Abrego Garcia and the others are still, in the language of the courts, in constructive U.S. custody. That is, you know, if we put you in a U.S. prison, there are steps that the United States can be ordered to take to release you. Right. But if we put you in a tin box in El Salvador, you know, in a black site or whatever, and it is entirely under their control, there is an actual respectable argument that it may not be remediable by a US Court, but if we pay somebody to run that black hole that you're being held in, then there is a subsidiary question as to whether that entity is just an agent of us, and that becomes much more potentially addressable. So I think the allegation about payment is going to be something that both Judge Boasberg is going to care about a great deal with respect to the question of whether there are remediable steps that he can take with respect to the 260 people. But it's very important with respect to, you know, Brego Garcia's case particularly.
- [27:56]
Tim Miller
All right, let's move on to what's happening in Ukraine. I played this audio the other day, but I think it's worth playing again of Steve Witkoff, our chief envoy, I guess, to this negotiation, if you want to call it that, between our friends in Russia and our counterparties in Ukraine. Before we get to that, just one other item to set the table. Our friend Michael Weiss reported that his sources say that there were Pentagon figures close to Trump that recently questioned one of our allies about why they were still supplying weapons to Ukraine. That challenge was ignored by the ally. And he says also the diplomats in Washington reports that some Trump aides say privately that they are fed up with Europe's effort to strengthen Ukraine. So that's what our European allies are hearing in private. Here's what Steve Wyckoff is saying in public, and there's a little audio hiccup on this. But it's Tucker's fault, not ours. Don't blame Jason.
- [28:56]
Ben Wittes
Always blame Tucker. What did you think of him?
- [29:00]
C
I. I liked him.
- [29:01]
Ben Wittes
Yep.
- [29:02]
C
I thought he was straight up with me. Of course, by the way, I've said that. And you. You can imagine, by the way I say that I get pilloried. Oh, my gosh. You. You're actually called communication, which many people Would, would say, you know, I shouldn't have had, because Putin is a bad guy. I don't regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war and all the ingredients that, that led up to it. You know, it's never just one person. Right. So we're going to. I think we're going to figure it out.
- [29:34]
Tim Miller
Complicated situation, a lot of ins, outs and what have you. Then maybe you can bring a little clarity to Steve Witkoff.
- [29:42]
Ben Wittes
You know, I've never met Steve Witkoff.
- [29:44]
Tim Miller
You weren't a deal man. You weren't a New York real estate deal man.
- [29:47]
Ben Wittes
I was not a New York real estate man. And look, I mean, Steve Witkoff managed to get a ceasefire in Gaza, albeit didn't last that long. So I don't want to be entirely dismissive of him.
- [30:02]
Tim Miller
That said, I'll play that role on the pod. So, you know, it's important that everybody has their own job.
- [30:07]
Ben Wittes
I'm trying to be, you know, bend over backwards to be fair here. This is a morally outrageous statement. And let's focus on three components of it. The first is I liked him about Vladimir Putin. Now, there are many things you could say about Vladimir Putin, who I'm sure is capable of being personally affable. That's part of being a politician and a male manipulator. A manipulator. To say about somebody who is responsible for the deaths of, at this point, millions of people that you liked him, again, just elevates the salience of personal affect over aggregate effect on the world. This is a deeply, deeply evil, you know, this is somebody who has had a terrible, terrible impact on his own country, on a lot of the surrounding countries, on the United States. And the question was, what did you think of him? It was not how was his manner? Was he polite, was he good company? And it really deeply misses the moral point.
- [31:33]
Tim Miller
Can I just pause you right there before you get to the other two? Because I've been dying to get this off my chest lately, because there have been a lot of examples of this very flaw recently. There's a pretty widely familiar pop culture totem, particularly for us elder millennials. There's a show called the Sopranos on hbo. It's not really that complicated of a moral question, but yet people really seem to struggle with it, which is Tony Soprano. It was an actor, it was just a character. But Tony Soprano is a charming character. You might want to go to the Bada Bing and have a whiskey with him and hang out. He'd tell some funny jokes, he Would make you laugh. At times. He seemed like a good dad, sometimes a bad dad.
- [32:13]
Ben Wittes
He likes ducks.
- [32:14]
Tim Miller
He loves animals. Yeah, he seems to be a lover of animals. He also is a fucking bad person who caused the deaths of a lot of people and got himself rich on the back of other people who worked hard. This is not complicated. This is happening a lot. When people talk about Trump administration people. J.D. vance uses this tactic a lot. Tucker uses it a lot. And it's like, yeah, people that are bad and make bad moral choices can also be a good hang. I don't really understand why this is complicated, but people's experience with Tony Soprano demonstrated that the human mind sometimes really struggles with this concept.
- [32:54]
Ben Wittes
Yes. And there's a historical antecedent to this, which is the reaction of people to Adolf Hitler. A bunch of Western journalists would go there and interview him, and he actually gave a lot of interviews, and people were dazzled by him. He was charming. People found his eyes mesmerizing. So you have all these interviews with him where people go there and they're really impressed with him personally. So what? So that's thing number one. Thing number two is the claim he was straight with me. You know, this also has a historical antecedent with Putin, which is George W. Bush saying, I looked into his eyes and I, you know, saw a piece of his soul. And by the way, like, that was unforgivable when George W. Bush did it. Right. It's much more unforgivable now because, you know, then you could say, well, he was. He was elected. He's not the nicest guy, but, you know, he's being helpful. Whatever.
- [34:05]
Tim Miller
We got two decades of info.
- [34:06]
Ben Wittes
Now we have two more decades of info, and none of it supports the idea that he's being straight with you. He is a methodical liar who. Whatever he's being. It's not being straight with you. And then the third part is, this is complicated. Look, you know, there are things in the world that are complicated. Crossing the border of a sovereign state, invading it and stealing 20,000 children, annihilating major cities, all on no provocation. This is not complicated. Right. And the insistence on making it complicated, making it sound like Putin has real grievances, making it sound like there was a real movement in Ukraine to, you know, join Russia or for, like, this is all not true. And my closest Ukrainian friend, Russians are native Russian speaking. Like, to say that somebody's native Russian speaking and to say that they are pro Russian, this is just a nonsensical piece of disinformation and so, like, everything that could be wrong about that statement is wrong. And I want to add that the only thing more outrageous than that statement is what Trump said in the Oval Office.
- [35:40]
Tim Miller
Great. That's where I was going next. Yeah, go for it.
- [35:42]
Ben Wittes
Where he went further.
- [35:44]
Tim Miller
You have to do an impression of him, though, because I don't play his audio whenever possible.
- [35:48]
Ben Wittes
I can't do an impression on him of him. But I will say what he said, which is he was asked about the attack on Sumy on Palm Sunday, you know, killed 34 civilians. At last check on my part, I haven't looked at the latest numbers, but, you know, this is attack on the center of a city. People were going to church. And he started by saying it was a mistake, which he can't possibly know, and a matter about which Russia does not deserve the benefit of the doubt given its systematic attacks on civilians.
- [36:25]
Tim Miller
Are you sure, Ben? Are you sure we want to be fair? Are you sure it's not possible that Putin called them late night over a little vodka and was just, like, done, done? I, you know, I meant, like, what we meant to do there was like, bomb some. Some European tanks. You know, how we both don't like Europe. We meant to bomb some European tanks, but we missed by a mile, and we. We accidentally bombed 300 civilians. Like, my beat.
- [36:53]
Ben Wittes
So, first of all, I'm not saying it wasn't a mistake. I'm. I'm just saying, like, see, previous thing about. He's not. He's being straight with you.
- [37:03]
Tim Miller
Great point. Okay.
- [37:04]
Ben Wittes
You know, Russia makes mistakes all the time. It. It's perfectly plausible to me that they were trying to hit a military target. And it's also equally possible that they're trying to terrorize Ukrainian civilians. I don't give them the benefit of the doubt. It's not like when the US Military hits a civilian target and says, we fucked up. You know, you have a certain amount of credibility. But then he goes on, he didn't just say, you know, it was a mistake. He goes on and says, this war was caused by Zelensky. This war was caused by Joe Biden. It never would have happened if I had been in office. And so he's asked about the deaths of Ukrainian civilians in a military attack in an aggressive war launched by Vladimir Putin, and his response is, you know, it was a mistake, and the whole thing is the fault of the victim, government, and Joe Biden. Well, guess what? The whole thing is not the fault of Volodymyr Zelensky, and it's not the fault of Joe Biden. And if you take these two statements together, you know, you have Witkoff saying he likes Putin. He's got a relationship. You know, he looked in his soul and, you know, he. He thinks he's being straight with me. And by the way, the situation is complicated. And then Trump fleshes out that complexity into. By the way, what we mean when we say it's complicated is it's Biden and Zelensky's fault. You know, I got news for you. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes when it looks like the aggressor country in a war of conquest is just killing the civilians of the victim country, you don't need to look for complexity. It's actually just that simple.
- [39:11]
Tim Miller
I feel like I always ask you this when you're on, but you do work with Ukrainian advocacy groups. I'm just kind of wondering, as you talk to people, kind of this mindset at this point and what people think about the state of affairs over there.
- [39:26]
Ben Wittes
Yeah. So look, it's a very diverse crew. It's not diverse on the question of, is it a just fight? Right. And, you know, there is a lot of sense of betrayal. There is a lot of commitment. You know, people are not going to give up because Donald Trump says he's on Russia's side now on the part of government officials, the strategy is agree to everything we can possibly agree to and let Putin run out his leash. And there was some indication a couple weeks ago when Trump said he was getting really pissed with Putin, that maybe they were getting there. This is a setback in that regard, that they're blaming Zelensky for Sumy.
- [40:20]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it's like, I guess if you're in their shoes, you have to imagine that there's a leash. Right, Right. Like, you have to believe that there's a leash, because that is like the hope. And you just work with the theory that there's a leash that at some point it might be possible that the Yank, you know, come to their senses.
- [40:39]
Ben Wittes
You know, that's their only play. So they're playing it. They're not stupid.
- [40:44]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [40:45]
Ben Wittes
So that's at the government level, at the individual level, you know, there's a lot of heartbreak, and it's mixed up with people not knowing what their personal fates are going to be, because a lot of them are here on either U4U visas or on temporary protective status, which. Both of which could disappear quickly.
- [41:11]
Tim Miller
And so you get temporary protected status other places. I mean, that's probably so most of.
- [41:16]
Ben Wittes
Them have ability to spend significant amounts of time in Europe. Europe has Ukraine visas, but, you know, people have built lives here. And so there's a, a lot of anxiety about that. And there's also a confusion, I think, because it is quite unreasonable to expect Ukrainians, who often don't have perfect English and haven't followed Trump's psychological dramas since 2016, to be deep in what you and I understand intuitively. Which is why he hates Ukraine. Right. What the relationship is between Ukraine today and the Russia investigation in 2016, 2017. Right. There's a reason why he hates Ukraine and it's not based in the facts of anything that Volodymyr Zelensky has done. It's based on a bunch of crazy conspiracy theories that have their roots in 2017. And you and I can swap stories about that stuff and about the CrowdStrike server and Rudy Giuliani's. Right. We know that stuff. It's all bullshit, by the way, but it has affected the way he thinks in a profound way. And it is quite unreasonable to expect a Ukrainian 23 year old who just doesn't want Russia to invade her country to understand that at an intuitive level.
- [42:54]
Tim Miller
He like literally thinks that him and Putin were on the same side of the, the so called Russia hoax and that the Ukrainians were plotting with the Deep State and New York Times and Ben Whitted like James Comey. I can't. He really believes.
- [43:05]
Ben Wittes
Right. And that this all has something to do with Hunter Biden's lack. Right. And you know, if you're a Ukrainian 27 year old, you were like a teenager when some of this shit happened and you weren't following it because American domestic politics, so what? And so all of a sudden this is the reason why Steve Witkoff is saying nice things about Putin when he bombs your country. Right. And it is totally unreasonable to expect them to understand this. And I have sat around a table with young Ukrainians trying to explain this and where this comes from and had them look at me like I'm speaking Greek. And you know, and they're not wrong.
- [43:55]
Tim Miller
I tried to explain this in an article a long time ago. I'll put it in the Show Notes. It was one of my funnier articles. People can go read it if they are like the Ukrainians who think that we're speaking Greek right now.
- [44:04]
Ben Wittes
But it's really important to understand. And I remember this article. This is your Rolling Stone article about.
- [44:09]
Tim Miller
No, it's from the Bulwark. I might have done a version of it for Rolling Stone too. I don't know. Now time is flat circle. But it was.
- [44:15]
Ben Wittes
So look, when you read this article, you have to understand that this story about the so called server is actually an important component of US domestic politics then. But this is now affecting Ukraine's ability to get weapons.
- [44:34]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it is crazy. On the youth thing, just really quick aside, I was speaking to my alma mater earlier this week and in the middle of the talk, I was like, what year were you guys born in again? And a kid goes 2009. And I was like, oh my God. And I was like, so forget being in your teens when all this was happening for like high school students. They were seven. Like they were the age of my child. So anyway, you know, the linear nature of time is confounding. Last topic, I need to mention my friend Chris Krebs really quick. I think obviously listeners to this know he was at DHS in charge of protecting the election in 2020 when he just honestly testified that there was no, you know, fraud, there were no efforts to break into the machines, there were no Chinese bamboo ballots. Donald Trump got very mad at him about this and as a result put out an executive order last week saying that Chris Krebs should be investigated. They should lose a security clearance that the company works for, should lose their security clearance and suffer other consequences. So yesterday, Krebs announced that he was resigning from that company, Sentinel One. It's a cybersecurity company. He said the choice was his and that he wants to focus on this fight to protect our democracy and our institutions. I just, I gotta say, number one, good on Chris Krebs. We don't deserve him. It is wonderful that we have somebody out there that is willing to just be honest and straightforward and unapologetic and take on this fight. Number two, this is really unbelievably fucking pernicious and bad. And if any other president in our lifetime had done this, this would be the front page New York Times story every day. The President of the United States specifically targeted, with an official executive order, an American citizen who did nothing except for their job, because the President doesn't like that person. The President of the United States is targeting and menacing an American citizen as a result causing him to have to quit his job. A man that's a parent with many, many kids. This is crazy. It is un American. It is not with precedent. And like, because there's so much other crazy shit up there, it's kind of getting slept under the rug. You know, the story that he quit, I saw a lot of Places didn't even cover. So good on Krebs. We'll do what we can to help support him. But I don't know if you have any other thoughts on either Chris or on the legal side of us.
- [47:15]
Ben Wittes
Well, so I have thoughts on both. First of all, on Chris Krebs. You know, one thing Lawfare spends a lot of time on is cybersecurity, and so on the substance of his work. Chris Krebs was one of really two people who created CISA as a major cybersecurity powerhouse, the other one being Jenn Easterly during the last administration. But this is an organization that became a serious government player in election protection in a bunch of other stuff. And Chris Krebs is one of several reasons for that. He did remarkable work. And so this isn't a situation in which some minor player is being oppressed for saying something about, this is somebody who made a real contribution and who is being oppressed. And the word is not too strong because of that contribution and because he had the temerity to say that the elections that he helped secure were, in fact, secure. And so I don't want to lose in this, that there are a lot of people who, in the first Trump administration who said, okay, it's important that people like me be in, because otherwise crazy people are going to be in. And as a general matter, I was not all that sympathetic to those claims. And I think a lot of people kidded themselves about how essential they were. Chris is not one of those people. Chris made a real contribution in the first Trump administration. And one of the reasons that we had a quite pristine election in 2020 was Chris Krebs. The second is about the oppression. You know, the Constitution has a very specific provision barring what are called bills of attainder. You can't legislatively declare Ben Wittes or Tim Miller a criminal. You don't get to pass a bill that says you're a traitor. Right. You actually have to indict them under law that exists and prove it.
- [49:39]
Tim Miller
Yes.
- [49:39]
Ben Wittes
The British Parliament used to declare, write a bill of Attainder and then execute people on the basis of it. This is a Bill of Attainder. It's actually an executive Order of Attainder. It's slightly different, but it's the same thing. It's I, the president, point at you and say, you're a traitor. And it is morally outrageous. It's legally outrageous, and it works anyway. And the reason it works anyway is because if you're a cybersecurity consultant who wants to do business with Somebody who's that controversial. So Chris will prevail in whatever the fight involves. Right. If he sues and challenges it, he'll win. Just as the law firms have won. Right. Who've challenged it. But note that a lot of the law firms fold instead of litigating, even though they know they can win. And why is that? Because it's bad for business to be on the wrong side of the President. So we have this challenge, then we really have to think about it, which is how do we incentivize people to do the right thing when they're legally right, when they're morally right, even though it's bad for business? And so hats off to Chris Krebs. He's doing the right thing. And we should all figure out ways to soften the landing pad for people who do the right thing in government and people who are four plus years later being oppressed for it while private citizens.
- [51:21]
Tim Miller
Amen. I should close, but I just want to put one finer point on that just by giving an example, because anyone that is ever a whistleblower is going to suffer some consequences. Consequences. I think back to the first person that comes to mind is Scott McClellan during the Bush administration, who is a spokesperson who then resigned and spoke out about the Iraq war. And that didn't help him. Had he just resigned, he could have gone out and gotten a much fancier job. The controversy surrounding it certainly didn't help his future job prospects. But that's a personal choice and he should be commended for that. Imagine then, if instead of that playing out how it did, George W. Bush signed an executive order that said Scott McClellan needs to be investigated, that we need to look into this person again. The New York Times would have covered that every day. That would have been the craziest thing that happened. Anyway, I just think that this is a very important story and I don't want to lose sight of it. Ben Wittes, I appreciate you very much for sticking around with me. Any final thoughts or plugs you have for us?
- [52:26]
Ben Wittes
Before I let you go, can I mention Lawfare's fundraiser, please? We have a fundraiser going on for Lawfare that has gone completely viral for reasons that I'm not sure I understand, except the excellence of my colleagues and the work that they're doing. But a lot of people have been tweeting about it and supporting us. So if you are inclined to do the same, Please go to givebutter g-I v e b u T-T-R.com Journalism and support the work that we're trying to do.
- [53:07]
Tim Miller
It's great work. I appreciate it. It makes me smarter. Not every day. I can't take it every day, but on the days that I read it, it makes me smarter. Thank you, as always, always to Ben with us. Everybody else, thanks for hanging out. People keep telling me that this podcast is helping them stay sane. And is there therapy? I've had several people tell me that this week that is boggling my mind because I think it's making me crazier. So, like, there's some kind of cosmic thing happened where, like, the sanity is.
- [53:38]
Ben Wittes
You'Re absorbing the insanity of the audience and you're internalizing it all. It's like the picture of Dorian Gray.
- [53:46]
Tim Miller
Yeah. There's a metaphysical side to that. So, anyway, I appreciate it, everybody that's listening every day. And so we'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition. Peace.
- [54:10]
Ben Wittes
Got a blue moon in your eyes?
- [54:29]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. Down.
- [54:58]
Ben Wittes
Just can't help no therapy sa.