← The Bulwark Podcast
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- [00:02]
Tim Miller
Oh, the sadness you feel when you realize you've picked up your very last hot, crispy McDonald's fry. But what's this? More fries at the bottom of your bag? Oh, the joy, the joy. Oh, wait, never mind.
- [00:24]
Bill Kristol
They're gone again.
- [00:27]
Tim Miller
Bottom up.
- [00:38]
Bill Kristol
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We have ended up with a double segment for your Monday pod today. My colleague Joe Perdicone happened to be in Rome this morning for his wedding. And so we have a Catholic Rome correspondent who I spoke to about the death of Pope Francis, our first Jesuit pope. Somebody that I feel a little, even as a lapsed Catholic, a little kindred spirit too. Or maybe not kindred spirit, but a little connection to Papa Francisco having been the first Jesuit pope, someone that has acknowledged the existence of gay Catholics and, you know, treated them with humanity, came to, I think, really recognition washing the feet of AIDS patients in Argentina. So it's a sad loss of Pope Francis. I get into that at greater length with Joe Perdicone in segment two. But up first, it's Monday. He's the editor at large of the Bulwark. Not a Catholic, famously. It's Bill Kristol. How are you doing, Bill?
- [01:37]
Joe Perdicone
I don't think I'm famously not a Catholic.
- [01:39]
Bill Kristol
I mean, you're pretty famously Jewish, I guess.
- [01:41]
Joe Perdicone
I'm famously okay with Catholics. Some of my best friends have been and are Catholics and some lapsed and some not lapsed.
- [01:47]
Bill Kristol
You know, a lot of converted Catholics in your world, actually a lot of people coming in and a lot going out. A lot of movement in the, in the doorway to Catholicism around. Bill Crystal maybe worth mentioning, I guess that the angel of death, our vice president, J.D. vance, did visit Pope Francis the day before his death.
- [02:09]
Joe Perdicone
Yeah, I mean, it is a little striking. You know, I don't follow the intra Catholic controversies that much. I used to be kind of interested in it, but I've sort of lost touch. But he seems to have been a very decent man. I say, as a non Catholic, looking at it from the outside, he seems to have been a very, very decent man in an age that's not very decent in many ways. And in that respect, I looked up to him and I think he was an important public figure for non Catholics as well, don't you think? In this moment, for sure.
- [02:38]
Bill Kristol
And it was a noteworthy change, honestly, much more in tone than in actual doctrine. There's a lot of the traditionalists, the trad caths here in America tried to, I think, make him into something that he wasn't as far as radical change. I mean, I still can't get married in the church. There still aren't women priests. It was more about his tone and his rhetoric, which was a pretty striking change from the severe Benedict, Pope Benedict. And I think that he was so old when, I think, I forget, 75, 76. I think when he ascended to the papacy, there's maybe a feeling that this was sort of a transitional pope, you know, kind of that would he would back quickly, not to be macabre, but back quickly to, you know, a more traditional type of pope. But, you know, he ends up like really remaking the types of people that are appointed to become cardinal, et cetera. And so, I don't know, as I get into it, Joe, it's possible that may be more of a permanent shift, more than transition and kind of we'll see how the conclave shakes out. So that's that. I guess I just would have to recommend one more time that if you have any elderly family members, I'd recommend they stay away from J.D. vance for the near future, just in case people that might be on their deathbed. How about that for a transition? Pete Hegseth is Secretary of Defense. A crazy Easter Sunday night series of leaks targeting Hegseth. I guess he had fired three people, including his chief of staff, with accusations that they'd been leaking. Though there's, I think, some dispute on those accusations now. Last week, then the New York Times story last night about how there's a second signal chat where he detailed war plans in Yemen. And this chat was not started by Mike Waltz, it was started by Hegseth, and it included his wife, his third wife, the former Fox News producer included his brother, Phil Hegseth, his personal attorney. Why all these people needed to know when the planes were taking off for Yemen, it is unclear. So that story is sort of this extension of signal gate and extension of this notion that there's just these guys are totally reckless in their behavior around this type of material. Subsequently, there's a Politico story that was an op ed really written by this guy, John Oliott, who's been with Trump, his Trump spokesman, dating back to 2016 on national security issues. So longtime Trump person. The article is almost grotesquely sucking up to Trump to a degree that is hard to bear. But once you get through all the Trump suck up stuff, I think what she has to share to kind of, I think, get his bona fides out there. He basically says that Pete is an incompetent. He'd been hired by Hegseth to help set up the public affairs office. He turned down a, a promotion opportunity because it was such a shit show. And he essentially says there are more shoes to drop. So that's like a basic summary of, of the Easter Sunday night hit job on, on Pete Hegseth. I'm wondering what your kind of top line reaction was to all that.
- [05:42]
Joe Perdicone
No, an excellent summary and you said it well last night on the video. You did right away. One side note on the perils of being a morning early morning newsletter writer. I was planning to write on Hickseth. I watched your video and I thought about the same thing, the Times article, the Politico piece by Trump's former spokesman and had basically the same thoughts you had, but thought I'd write a short thing this morning and just put in as a, just in a document that we do morning shots in. I just put in a headline and then I was going to get up early this morning, which I did write it, which I did. And the headline I put in was Goodbye and good riddance. Just because, you know, and I thought that I woke up this morning to the news that the Pope had died. I thought maybe not. Don't, don't have that headline in morning shots could be misunderstood. So I did change. At least I was alert enough to change that. And Joe had, has a wonderful piece in Warning Shots which leads warning shots on the Pope. Very similar to the conversation you had with him, of course, but really nice. I mean, so a couple of points about Hegseth. It's, you know, the degree of irresponsibility. The first, participating in the Waltz Signal chat was bad. Sharing some of the military details in that chat was bad, but it was with at least his peers, his colleagues in the government. So he maybe just forgot this wasn't on the right kind of phone. Whatever this is done on his own personal cell phone. It's a group that was set up during his confirmation so it doesn't have government officials in it. It may accidentally have some government officials or some of the people went into government, but it was kind of the group working with him on his confirmation presumably includes some PR and political types who were helping him out, lobbying the Hill and so forth, who probably didn't go into government, who have no clearances at all, leaving aside his wife and then the brother and his lawyer, both of whom are sort of in the Pentagon now, but they have jobs that do not require them to know the flight plans for the attack on Yemen. So totally irresponsible. Beyond irresponsible. I mean, would be a firing offense in 10 minutes in any other administration. For the SEC DEF to have done this, incidentally, would be a firing offense for anyone in the military who did this and for any civilian employee working under Pete Seth in the Defense Department. So that's A, he should be fired. B, the Republican senators might have known this was coming. Some of they were warned by an awful lot of people, not just us, just by like the evidence of his life, that this kind of thing was going to be a big risk. And 50 out of 53 of them voted to confirm him. Really a disgrace. You know, any one of them could have stopped it. Right. Any one of the 50.
- [07:59]
Bill Kristol
It's worth just sitting on this for a second because I feel like sometimes, you know, even at the Bulwark, whose mission is to name and shame the Republicans, sometimes we gloss over it because it's just the expectations are like below the earth. They're so low for these guys. But like, this is the thing, it was just utterly obvious to anyone, you know, like my aunt who does not pay attention. You know what I mean? Like the guy at the corner store. You don't have to pay attention to politics. Anybody looks at this person. Pete Egseth had never run a large organization. He was a weekend Fox and Friends anchor, co anchor. His personal life was a total disaster. He had had problems with alcohol. Whether or not he still does. Debatable. But like, you know, this was a grown man at a work conference at 1am shouting at the hotel staff while drunk while like cheating on his mistress with a third person. Like the whole, like the whole thing, you know, and then allegedly assaulting her based on that woman, that married woman's testimony. Like, and this is just a person that, that is a disaster across every possible metric. Like there's just no way that you could look at this and say, well, you know, his personal life is a problem, but like look at his resume or look at his experience running an organization or, or you know, he hasn't run a big organization, but he's shown a lot of great judgment. And the other parts of his life, you know, like there's nothing like. And, and it was blatantly obvious he should not have this job running the world's largest and most important bureaucracy, really the US Military. And yet these guys support him. Tillis has additional private information about how reckless he is and still goes to vote for him, still decides that his reelection prospects, which are looking pretty shitty right now anyway, are more important than, than just Ensuring that the US Military is run by somebody who is, like, minimally competent to do the job. And it is just really shameful that the senators did not take the opportunity to say, no, we can't do this deputy, give him some training wheels, or can we make him the spokesperson? But you can't confirm this person. And so here we are.
- [10:13]
Joe Perdicone
They could have. It's scary to vote publicly, I guess, against someone Trump is behind. That's no excuse. Of course, four of them could have gotten together and told Trump, withdraw this or we're going to vote. The threat probably might have been enough. It was with Gates Wicker, the ranking Republican unarmed service. Senate Armed Services had expressed doubts about Hegseth and subsequently, just a week or two ago, did send co signed a letter asking for the IG investigation of the earlier signal chain, which actually may have triggered some of the events that led to this last fiasco with the firings and the like. So he sort of like popped his head up a tiny bit over the rampart, but again, too little, too late and inexcusable. I was in some other text chain this morning. People were joking about how, you know, there's another case gamer, who it is now resume enhancement, to say the least, and lying. Basically some other appointee who's up and someone said, yeah, that person will only get, you know, 90% of the Republican votes or 95% instead of, you know, 100%. You know, it's. It is terrible. So, yeah, worth worth calling them out, you know.
- [11:14]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. And it's worth mentioning that, like, this unraveled in three months or three months to the day from inauguration, that these stories came out. And it's like, I mean, how horrific of a manager you have to be to take a job. And within a single quarter, somebody that you hired that says that they're a friend of yours is already going to, like, thinks things are so bad that they need to go to the media and say, guys, we got to move on from this guy. I just think that's pretty notable. These three months have felt like many years, but it's only been three months.
- [11:47]
Joe Perdicone
No, totally. And also that you fired your chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, the two people who worked directly for you, not people who came up through other means, so to speak.
- [11:56]
Bill Kristol
And Trump appointed former Lloyd Austin hangovers or whatever.
- [12:00]
Joe Perdicone
Yeah. Or Trump appointees because they were buddies of his to be secretary of the army or that kind of thing. People who work directly and the chief of staff to the deputy Secretary Defense, who I believe was a Hex, Seth Crony, who was imposed on Feinberg. These three all get fired. They get anonymously smeared on the way out. Apparently smeared on the way out of the door that they were. Had problems with this leak investigation. They may have leak classified or sensitive material. They deny it. And apparently. And the guy. Oh. Yet reports that they have none of those. Even had a lie detector test.
- [12:29]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. Let me just read this little bit from him because I think. I think it's important. This is from the Oyet article. He said that Defense Department officials working for Hegseth tried to smear these fired aides anonymously to reporters, claiming they were fired for leaking sensitive information. Yet none of this is true, says Olya. While the department said that it would conduct polygraph tests as part of the probe, not one of the three has been given a lie detector test. In fact, at least one of them has told former colleagues that investigators advised him he was about to be cleared officially of any wrongdoing. Hegset's team has developed a habit of spreading flat out easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues.
- [13:02]
Joe Perdicone
No. Amazing. Now, one thing you noticed and you stressed last night, and I would say I actually noticed too. And this is probably both from our backgrounds. You're so much more in campaigns and dealing with the media in that way and maybe a little more in government, I guess, but a couple of campaigns, like where did this story come from? You know, most people read. I find this all the time that you. That you and I. This is like our professional deformation. We read a story in the paper and the first question is less what did it say? Than why is that story there? Especially when it's four sources report. Well, who are the sources that would have known about this text chain? Right. It's a dozen people. Maybe they blabbed about it a lot. But you probably have to be pretty close to HEGSETH, probably in DoD, maybe over in the White House, I suppose possibly to have leaked this. Four people talking to the New York Times about this. I would say the knives are out for him. And this is the point you made probably some reinforcement from people still in the administration, not just the disgruntled aides. I think that's pretty. Pretty striking. Right. I mean that they. And the Trump pushback is very lame, I think. Didn't it. What was it? It was kind of a non denial denial. This is the fake news press going at it. It's not classified there. Pushback. Not that he didn't do it. Yeah. The flight plans of the F15s are not classified information or sensitive information that shouldn't be shared on a non secure cell phone with your wife and other friends, buddies, nuts, like not military people. So I mean, I do think that's. It doesn't prove that they're going to dump him. It proves that the knives are out for him. And it suggests to me that he could well be dumped in the next day or two. Do you think?
- [14:31]
Bill Kristol
I mean, a day or two. I don't know. Like Trump is, you know, famously stubborn in these cases and it's sort of like, what is Hegseth saying if Hagseth is on the side of Trump, I mean, he could definitely survive. Like, we've been plenty of these situations where it's like everybody around is like, Mr. Trump, this guy is crazy. But Trump doesn't care as long until the guy becomes a problem for him. So I think it's based a lot more on that relationship. But regardless of whether he stays or not, just the fact that these people, close supporters of Trump, close to Trump, close to Hegseth, are the ones that are trying to push him out, I think is telling. The other thing that you just from your experience in government just worth maybe saying a word about is just you do get into these little bunkers and bubbles and just speak a little bit. We talked about last night about the paranoia, the idea that you would fire your close aides and then you're blaming them of things. I mean, it seems like a very unstable place for Hegseth to be if you're kind of engaging in this in the media at this point.
- [15:34]
Joe Perdicone
No, totally. I was struck by the paranoia too. And I think at 1.1 can make it look he's done damage, in my opinion, to our national security. In the few months he's been there, a lot of it would have been done anyway because the policies weren't his idea and someone else would have pursued the idiotic culture war stuff and taken down Jackie Robinson's portrait from the Pentagon and gotten rid of books in the Naval Academy and announced to the Europeans that we're no longer interested in defending Europe. All that stuff could have been done by some other Trump appointee as SecDef. But now that this has all happened, leaving him there is genuinely bad for our national security in a very deep way. I mean, what do you do if you're a serious person in the Pentagon now? I guess you try to work around him, but I mean, that's not. He is literally in the chain of command. I mean, just let's not forget this is not like Secretary of the Interior. And it's a little guy's kind of embarrassing and you just have to sort of hope the department kinds of runs itself. He's literally the next in the chain of command after the President, not even vice President, you know, so you know, the staff can't really and run him on that. God knows whatever, you know. So I think the degree to which he really does need to be. And this is where I get. I come back to the senators, Roger Wicker, the serious Tom Cotton, serious people who care about national security. It's intolerable the situation that he's SecDef. And they need to tell the President that. And they need to say it privately if they want for a day or two, but then they need to say it publicly.
- [16:50]
Bill Kristol
Agree. Just really quick, since you mentioned it, my buddy Ryan Holiday who does the Daily Stoic, people might be familiar with his work. He's a non political guy. I've said MAGA people on his podcast. It's a podcast about the lessons that you can learn from the Roman Stoics and he's written many books about that as well. He wrote a book about kind of lessons in fatherhood for the Stoics that we did an interview about him. I think it was last Father's Day with them if people want to go check that out. Anyway, he was supposed to speak at the Naval Academy. It wasn't the first time. He spoke there several times and they called him and were like, are you going to mention the book bands? And he said, yeah, I mean I own a bookstore, I write books. It's going to be about lessons from the Stoics, including things such as you should engage with challenging ideas, you should engage with ideas that you don't believe in, or else you'll not be able to understand the opponent. That's part of war planning and battle planning. And so it wasn't a never Trump thing. It wasn't like having me speak there. But there was going to be a reference to it. They canceled his speech, the Naval Academy. And this is all again going back to this sort of ham handed attack on DEI from the TV host I forgot you'd interviewed.
- [17:59]
Joe Perdicone
You talked to Holiday and I don't know him at all personally, but he wrote a good piece in the New York Times about this a couple of days ago which people should read. And the context in which he was going to bring this up, I believe was he was going to talk about Admiral James Stockdale, a hero of his and actually of mine too. And I met him once or twice and always been concerned to try to redeem his reputation from that unfortunate vice presidential debate in 1992 when he was running with Perot. Kind of unfair. Anyway, he talked about how it helped him as a prisoner of war, heroic prisoner of war for five years in Hanoi, to have read Marx and to have read communist works. And he took a whole course at Stanford, I believe, where he read it wasn't balanced even they just read Marxist Leonard's works and he writes about this in his book. And he's a genuine hero and he's a hero at the Naval Academy. And even so they remove Maya Angelou because it might corrupt the young midshipmen.
- [18:48]
Bill Kristol
I suppose the other interesting thing from the Ulyot story is he has this titillating line towards the end. There are very likely more shoes to drop in short order, with even bigger bombshell stories coming this week. So we'll see. Again, coming from inside the house, the warning. If your jeans are stiff, uncomfortable, or just past their prime, it's time to swap them out for something fresh. Enter the perfect jeans. Stretchy enough to leap over puddles, stylish enough for a backyard crawfish boil, and comfortable enough to go from office to happy hour. Spring means random weather and plans, so you're going to need jeans to keep up. With over 5000 options of waist and length, sizes, washes and trendy fits, all super soft and stretchy yet durable, the perfect jean makes it super easy to find your perfect pair. That means you can look and feel perfect whether you're battling a 40 degree morning commute or hanging out with the guys, having a beer, eating some oysters on an 80 degree muggy New Orleans afternoon. For a limited time, our listeners get 15% off their first order plus free shipping at ThePerfectGene NYC. Or Google the Perfect Gene and use code Bulwark15 for 15% off. Long time Bulwark listeners know I've been battling with my identity related to Genesis and I'm going to tell you, Coachella, the big genes are in. The big jeans are in. It's tough for me as an elder millennial, as an elder millennial gay whose skinny jeans are so central to their identity and I have to embed something embarrassing. I'm starting to like it. I'm starting to like it. I like it. I'm getting it. I'm starting to get it. You know, the silhouette's got to be right. You still got to have the skinny top for it to work for me. The baggie on baggy isn't really my thing, but I don't know. Slowly but surely, I might be exploring. And the perfect jean is a great opportunity to do that because as I mentioned, I got a bunch of sizes, bunch of different options. I'm trying it, I'm working on it. The first one was maybe a small leap towards a little less skinny jean. They're nice and comfy. Been wearing them just to hang out, kick around, but I don't know, I might try to get a little bigger. We'll see how it goes. It's finally time to stop crushing your balls in uncomfortable jeans. By going to ThePerfectGene NYC, our listeners get 15% off your first order, plus free shipping returns and free exchanges. When you use code Bulwark15 at checkout, that's 15% off for new customers at ThePerfectGene NYC with promo code Bulwark15. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Get rid of those khakis and get the perfect gene. While we're doing foreign policy, a bit on Ukraine. We talked to Anne Applebaum about this somewhat on Friday, but I was kind of seeing the video as it came in, so I've had a few days to kind of let it simmer. But Rubio is in Europe and essentially says that Trump's getting bored with this, like the negotiation isn't working. And rather than, you know, there were some reports initially that he was pissed, remember that it was like, I'm pissed at, at Putin. Hasn't been any evidence of that or like any actions that would yield the type of response that a pissed person would have. And instead what Larco is essentially saying, and the Europeans were trying to kind of translate it, was we might just be done, like if we can't get to a deal here and in a weird way is sort of putting the onus on Zelensky on this. Like, if you can't come to a deal, then the US Is just going to be done. What done means, whether that's intel sharing, whether that's no more money, all that's still a little bit vague. But they're kind of laying the groundwork for just saying good night and good luck.
- [22:26]
Joe Perdicone
I think maybe it's even a little more direct because there are some reports now, I think, from last night and this morning that we put on the US Put on the table on Thursday in Paris, wherever they were meeting with the Europeans, the deal that we thought would be acceptable, which is a terrible deal for Ukraine, needless to say. And that's sort of what Rubio is insisting they accept. So either way, you're absolutely right. The threat is that we walk away. And unless he just takes this deal, that's a very bad deal, and leaves Putin in a very strong position and lets Putin say that he will have succeeded in his brutal invasion and also has the prospect of removing sanctions and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's what we've all expected, I guess. Again, it's sort of like this isn't a surprise. This has been the direction Trump and Vance and Hegseth and all of them have been going since they took over, basically, and certainly since early February, mid February, the Munich speeches, But still terrible to see it. This is where the Europeans can make a difference, because I don't know if the Ukraine can make it just with Europe, but I'm not sure they can't. They certainly can't for a while. And Europe, I think, is horrified by this and maybe they'll step up.
- [23:33]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [23:33]
Bill Kristol
And there are mixed views on that. And Michael Weiss, when he was on a couple weeks ago, was very strong on the fact that he felt like Europe could do it if there was the will to do it. Just worth noting, because it happened over the weekend on this point, the deal that was on the table is a bad deal for Ukraine. It's also not really a deal right in the way that because Putin announced that he would have an Easter ceasefire because he is such a religious man, so respectful of the traditions and the faith, and then he went and flouted it. According to the Ukrainians, there were 2,800 incidents of firing on Ukrainian territory during the period where Putin said that there was a ceasefire. So it was basically one of these. We're calling for a ceasefire. You don't attack us because we don't want to be attacked on Easter, but we're going to keep attacking you. The whole thing is preposterous. Zelensky gave a speech about this where he said that evil may have its hour, but God will have his day. I think trying to demonstrate which is on the side of the righteous here on Easter Sunday. Anyway, it's a pretty. It's a pretty bleak situation in Ukraine.
- [24:43]
Tim Miller
Oh, the sadness you feel when you realize you've picked up your very last hot, crispy McDonald's fry. But what's this? More fries at the bottom of your bag? Oh, the joy, the joy. Oh, wait, never mind.
- [25:06]
Bill Kristol
They're gone again. I guess Even more bleak, though we keep speaking about it, than the situation in El Salvador, where there was the tiniest, you know, green shoot, you know, which we discussed last week with Kilmar, Grego Garcia, being able to meet with Chris Van Hollen, Chris Van Holland, finally, you know, being the Democratic leader to demonstrate that you can have I don't know if you can get results, but make somewhat of a difference by actually trying and advocating on this issue. There have been some reports from El Salvador that Abrego Garcia is the first person people have seen leave Sukkot. Right. Like previously, anyone that had went in was there like, and had not been released again. So something to be said for that. Obviously there's the big sort of, you know, propaganda back and forth with Bukele trying to like, make it seem like they were having margaritas. And then Trump. There's some debate online. Garcia has the tattoos with a marijuana leaf, a smile and then a cross and a skull. Some claim that that's an MS.13 tattoo. Who knows? And then Van Hollen kind of does the full Ginsburg this weekend going around on the shows. I'm in for JBL today and write about that and the Triad for folks who want to go check out the newsletter. But I'm wondering what your you made of Van Hollen's comments upon return.
- [26:31]
Joe Perdicone
I'm struck by how many Democrats continue to be unhappy with Van Hollen. I guess, I mean, I just think he'd be trying to do the Lord's work. He's doing the right thing, probably politically the right thing to do, too. But that's kind of secondary in this case, I would say. I've been on, I don't know how many, two or three zooms, honestly, since he went there. Gee, we're really uncertain whether this was the right thing to do. I mean, Gavin Newsom, I guess, is the person who said this most publicly on Wednesday. And then we wrote about it and other and he sort of his people tried to walk it back a little bit that he didn't really mean to suggest that it was a distraction. Yeah, we shouldn't worry about people getting snatched up, you know, from the streets of the US and sent to the school age in El Salvador. And then sadly over the weekend, they're trying to send more. Right. There was this big court case that required the 1am Supreme Court intervention, which was required at 1am only because they had no confidence the administration wouldn't do what it sort of said it would do, kind of that it would hold up for a while. Before shipping this next group out, which they previously pledged, incidentally, not to ship people out until there was notice and a chance for people to contest the judgment that they were gang members. Meanwhile, incidentally, Bukele is also saying that he's happy to trade these people to Venezuela in return for some Venezuelan political prisoners. I don't know if he's just being buffoonish at this point, but again, it shows what he thinks he's got here. He's got human capital, human prisoners. He can sort of trade, like, traffic in to get other people he wants. It's all beyond grotesque. And I'm glad Van Hollen did his best, I think, to protest about it and also maybe to influence others in the government, including the courts, who do follow the news, after all. And that's one thing I'm struck by, incidentally, just talking to some of the lawyers over the weekend, the degree to which judges, very different types of judges all around the country now have discovered you can't believe what the Trump administration says, even in court. And that is a little. I think the courts have had this. Maybe it's a conceit, but a kind of thought that, well, lawyers in court aren't going to be bullshitting the way politicians do.
- [28:31]
Bill Kristol
I mean, that's kind of how it worked in the first Trump term. There was like this little rigmarole, right. Where they were basically honest in court. I don't want to overstate. I'm sure that somebody who has a specific memory of a time where they lied in court, but directionally, they would say one thing in court that was closer to the truth, we'll put it that way. And then, you know, Trump would talk or spokes or spice or would talk or whatever, and they would say something totally different. Right. At least in that way. Right. Like the courts felt like they were dealing with, you know, a counterparty in the government that was like, at least giving them the true facts, regardless of how then the administration would act. Deep questions about that now. I mean, particularly when it comes to the immigration stuff. And I mean, this is what I wrote about. So I don't want to belabor the point. In the newsletter, people can get my long views, because I'm so just disgusted with the idea that there's even any debate to be had about what Van Holland did and whether that's the right thing politically, for starters, like, the election is just so far away that it's just so stupid to think it's the hubris to think that some political strategist or some politician in Washington can know on April 21, 2025. What will matter in November of 2026 is just beyond comprehension. Like you people have no fucking idea. All right? Like you have no idea and let's not pretend you did. If you knew on April 21, 2023 that Donald Trump would be elected again, then call me and I'll listen to Nostradamus. But like, let's just have a little bit more humility about what will actually be a big story in 18 months. But like, beyond that, Abrego Garcia isn't out of jail. Andree is not out of that gulag. The makeup artist there's this new story from the Guardian over this weekend about Arturo Suarez Tre who's this musician who's in North Carolina who seems like his situation is pretty similar to the makeup artist who's there in Sukkot now who does not seem to have any, any gang ties. Like these people are all still in prison, but we got a proof of life of one of them. There is a stall now on sending more people there. Like the clock matters here, like stopping the clock, preventing them from sending more and more people which they obviously have an ambition to do, including citizens that like matters. That is a real policy difference. And that stall is happening because of the actions of the politicians and the lawyers and the judges. Right? Like all of this like matters in a substantive way. And I don't know, there was a poll that came out about the non voters over the weekend that I thought was interesting. When you ask like Democratic leaning non voters why they didn't vote, a common refrain from a lot of them is that like they didn't think they were very strong, that they were fighting for them. They were tough, you know. You know, I don't know who knows, right? Like if this will be the kind of thing that people will think. But I don't think it would hurt for the Democrats to demonstrate that there are some people in the party that have some actual backbone and maybe frankly that would have some political benefit. And I think that there's an argument for that that is just as strong as the argument that the median voter in 2026 is going to think that the Democrats are for Ms. 13 or whatever because they don't think people should be disappeared to El Salvador.
- [31:38]
Joe Perdicone
No, I totally agree. And also just one point if I could, about the judge J. Harvey Wilkinson, who wrote the very eloquent opinion on Thursday. I guess it's in Friday's morning shots and obviously people can read it anywhere about this program the seizing of people and sending them to El Salvador and upholding the pause that the lower court had ordered on this. I know J. Harvey Wilkinson a little bit. He wrote for the Weekly Senate a few times. Very old fashioned conservator Judge Reagan appointee. One of the things about being an old fashioned conservative though is you tend to actually defer to the government more than a lot of civil libertarians sometimes want. And in fact Wilkinson wrote an opinion in 2003, I think, upholding some government actions with regard to Guantanamo and Al Qaeda prisoners, which was overturned by the Supreme Court actually because they thought he went too far in deferring to the government. So this is not a guy who's even a libertarian conservative particularly. He's really that kind of old fashioned judicial restraints or a. I think we sort of ex Republicans can take some pride that one of the most eloquent statements condemning this policy of Trump's and the actions of the Trump administration is done by an old fashioned conservative, a Reagan appointee. But secondly, it is striking and this was much too far for him. So as I said, this is not a guy who was looking to be famous by being a libertarian on this. His instinct was if anything was rather.
- [32:54]
Bill Kristol
The other way, like a resistance judge or like one of these things.
- [32:57]
Joe Perdicone
No, he's just appalled. Just appalled. And this is not consistent with the most fundamental characteristics of the rule of law.
- [33:05]
Bill Kristol
No, the Wilkinson statement was very, very good. I think that the fact that, that there was a 7:2 Supreme Court ruling also on this, the blocking of additional use of the Alien Enemies act again is like somewhat encouraging, right? That it's just Alito and Thomas. And so, you know, like you had Stephen Miller out there saying that like that totally undermined their spin, right? That like the Supreme Court was actually on their side, this nonsense spin. And it's like, you know, it becomes pretty tough to make. I mean you can make the case and it will work for the newsmax viewers that are not reachable. But it becomes pretty tough like to make the case broadly that Chris Van Hollen or the Democrats that are arguing for the rights of these people are on the side of Ms. 13 gang members when Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch are on their side too, you know.
- [33:54]
Joe Perdicone
In an emergency opinion at 1am on a Saturday morning. Then they joined that they weren't who knows what private leave, which ones wanted to do it at 1am as opposed to the next day or something. But that I agree the 7:2 on the emergency opinion is a real sign that they Think we have an executive branch that can't be trusted to follow the law or to follow the decisions of other courts because in this case they thought it was very clear that the previous decisions should have bound the executive not to send these further people the next day.
- [34:26]
Bill Kristol
I'm going to end with some Hamilton for the cringe. Resist libs that are listening. So do you have any other news items before we get to the attack on King George? I saw this tweet from Historian. I hate to not credit her. I'm blanking on her name. We'll put the link to it in the show notes. And it was like a list of the grievances against King George and the Declaration of Independence. And you read or hear various times the various parts of the preamble to the Constitution or the main thrust of the Declaration. But you don't reread the list of grievances all that often. It had been a while since I had read them. And so I want to read a couple of them for people because it's pretty jarring just how apt it is to our current moment. Among them he has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. Another grievance for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world. For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury. For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses. He has excited domestic insurrections among us. In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant as unfit to be the ruler of a free people. The section in particular, really in Del Salvador of the transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses. It's hard to get more on the nose than that.
- [35:52]
Joe Perdicone
And I gather from my five minutes of research on this, and I vaguely remember this from decades ago when I knew a little more about this, that was actually a pretty big deal. I mean, that it was considered a real affront. I mean that they were sending these colonists to England to be tried instead of being tried before a jury of their peers here in the colonies. And the king was doing this unilaterally. So it is an apt comparison, as are the others. It's another conversation we should have sometime. I think we discussed this briefly the other day offline, that this past weekend was the 250th anniversary, obviously, of Lexington and Concord, the midnight ride of fall, Revere and all that we're going to spend now, the next year plus celebrating the revolution and then actually beyond that, the actual war that follows from the Declaration of Independence. But the next year plus celebrating up to July 4, 1926, 1926, 2126, which will be the 250th anniversary. Very important to. I think Trump will try to hijack this and make this all about his version of America. Very important that we all, in our different ways, and I think it should be in a decentralized way and have millions of different people could do millions of different things, historians could have one kind of series of panel discussions, and people like us could do other things at the Bulwark, but insist that we are the ones defending the American Revolution. We're defending what America is about. We are the, if I can put it this way, the patriotic side in this fight. And it's not just a rhetorical trope to talk about Trump as a kind of mad king. It's literally the case that he's trying to abridge some of the most fundamental things that we fought for in the revolution.
- [37:22]
Bill Kristol
Well put. We'll leave it there. Up next, a little bit from Joe Perdicone from Rome. Folks, want to hear more about the passing of Pope Francis. Bill Kristol, I'll see you back here again next Monday.
- [37:52]
Tim Miller
Oh, the sadness you feel when you realize you've picked up your very last hot, crispy McDonald's fry. But what's this? More fries at the bottom of your back? Oh, the joy, the joy. Oh, wait, never mind.
- [38:14]
Bill Kristol
They're gone again.
- [38:18]
Tim Miller
Bada ba, ba, ba.
- [38:22]
Bill Kristol
Hey, everybody, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark here. Pope Francis died this morning on Easter. Born Jorge Bergoglio, he's the first Jesuit pope. Shout out to the Jesuits. First Latin American pope. And we are lucky to have our congressional correspondent, Joe Perdicone in Rome for a wedding. Weddings and funerals, you know, there's always a connection. How you doing, Joe?
- [38:46]
J.D. Vance
I'm very sad but very happy because it's my wedding. But then the sadness of learning about the death of Pope Francis, someone who I admire greatly, was a big shock, you know, And I found out when I was 5 minutes walking distance from the Vatican. And so I was like, let's walk over. We knew beforehand because we're sickos who check our phones all the time. But most of the people there didn't appear to know. It was like, not a lot of crowds because it was early in the morning. And then I started watching people and nuns Priests, you know, tourists, you know, Jews, Muslims. There's tons of people there just as tourists. And you start seeing people look at their phones and then you see people gasp. And then you start seeing people like tearing up a bit. And then suddenly I turn around and what was five people behind me was hundreds, thousands, a sea of people just all walking over to pay their respects, to wait to see what happens. Kind of shocking moment, but it was very powerful.
- [39:55]
Bill Kristol
Talk a little bit more about the mood. I mean, reverential. You sent a picture to our slack of a couple folks doing the rosary. A very familiar picture to Catholic schoolboy like me. But Catholics also. Funerals are a mixed emotion with Catholics, right? I mean, you're going home to God. It's less dour maybe than in some funerals I've been to in some other faiths. What was the mood like in the square?
- [40:19]
J.D. Vance
Because we were there, like right when it happened. There was just a lot of shock because he had been sick for a long time, but then he had really looked like he turned the corner. And this past week was Holy Week, so he was doing public events. He did the Stations of the cross. He snubbed J.D. vance and then met with him very briefly last night. He drove in the Pope mobile through St. Peter's Square just yesterday. So he was doing a lot more events. So people thought he had turned the corner. So it was not surprising. But I think the abruptness and especially the morning after Easter. And so here in Italy, Monday after Easter is Pascuera, which is the. It's another national holiday. So there's not a lot going along. A lot of stores are closed. So it was just like very, very sudden. People expected, you know, if he was going to die, it was going to be in the same kind of dramatic fashion that the several months prior to him getting better were. They would be more expected.
- [41:18]
Bill Kristol
Well, since you mentioned it, we have to at least do the brief on the ranked politics of our vice president, J.D. vance. Having briefly met with him yesterday, J.D. tweeted this morning about how he got to meet the Pope yesterday, the day before his death. I don't know if there's anything more to say about that. Do you have any other. Anything else on the JD of the situation?
- [41:40]
J.D. Vance
Here's a quote. So Vance was, I guess, wanted to meet with the Pope like any Catholic would. And J.D. vance converted to Catholicism just a handful of years ago. And then the Vatican just said, no, you're going to meet with the Secretary of State of the Vatican.
- [41:58]
Joe Perdicone
That's it.
- [41:58]
J.D. Vance
And Pope Francis then did his Good Friday Stations with the Cross, in which he gave a long series of remarks. One of them stuck out to me, which you can read in morning shots, was a very obvious critique of the west and of the United States right now. He said, today's builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers and that those who fall along the way are losers. Theirs is the construction site of hell. And that really was another example of how Pope Francis was very critical of right wing governments, of overly aggressive, discompassionate capitalist governments. And for him to be talking that way to the very end and then to give Vance a very brief meeting, this was just like an exchange of pleasantries. Gave a couple Easter eggs for Vance's kids. He gave JD A tie or something and was just like, great. And the photos the Vatican released, he's sitting there like. And Vance as giddy as anyone and any Catholic would be meeting the Pope. But Vance's politics differ greatly. And Pope Francis is a huge, huge advocate for migrants, which this administration is an active danger to all migrants. And so the politics are there and they're going to be, especially throughout the selection process for the new pope, because Pope Francis, people think, oh, there are so many conservatives in, in the American Catholic Church that they'll, they don't want another, you know, progressive like Pope Francis. I don't think that's true. He's really remade the, the College of Cardinals in a way that very much mimics his idea that you place priority on the poor and on migrants. And so you might see a continuation of his style of leadership. If you look at the preferredi, which is, you know, the guys who they expect to be in the running, you know, the final four to be the next popes, a lot of them are very similar to Pope Francis ideologically. And so if their personality is similar to his, which was very unafraid of very powerful people outside the church, you know, you can expect that to continue and you can expect the divide between, you know, these very new Catholics like Vance, who practice things that aren't Catholic at all, really don't really align with Jesus's teachings. And so the politics are still going to be there and you're going to hear from a lot of them as this process goes forward.
- [44:33]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I'll put a link in the notes here. There's a very long. The Pillar is just a very good Catholic media outlet that had a very long obit that I read this morning of Francis. And he really does position it as like, Francis was Not like the radical left Pope that, like the, you know, that the mega bishops in America like tried to make him out to be like the very politicized American church. Right. And we see this in a lot of different areas. Denver, where my family is, my brother works at the Jesuit school. The bishop there, archbishop, is, you know, extremely far right, doctrinaire, pro trump bishop. It's kind of like, what is that? It's a rather new thing, this influx in the Catholic Church. But like, that is not really how Francis is seen. Obviously. Obviously he's not seen as a far right and he didn't identify as that. And obviously he focused more on the poor. Like his changes around giving a blessing to same sex couples or whatever were a lot more mild than what a lot of folks wanted to paint him out to be. And it was more about, you know, kind of his focus on the poor and his image. And he became, he came into, you know, recognition as archbishop in Argentina, going to the slums, right. Like washing the feet of AIDS patients and, you know, doing the types of lowering himself. That is so counter to kind of this whatever faux masculine, faux tough guy sort of element that we're seeing on the right.
- [46:00]
Tim Miller
Oh, the sadness you feel when you realize you've picked up your very last hot, crispy McDonald's fry. But what's this? More fries at the bottom of your bag? Oh, the joy, the joy. Oh, wait, never mind.
- [46:23]
Bill Kristol
They're gone again. There isn't one other political kind of element here. Tom Homan, the immigration czar for Trump. I went after Pope Francis not just a few months ago, saying, I've got harsh words for the Pope. The Pope ought to fix the Catholic Church. And so you are going to see, I think, a very kind of politicized treatment of this from this White House and from MAGA World. I don't know if you have anything else on that.
- [46:55]
J.D. Vance
Yeah. And you could have seen it on Thursday. Every Holy Thursday, Pope Francis visits a prison outside of Rome where he washes the feet of the inmates, which is a very symbolic gesture because back in olden times, if you didn't take care of your feet, you were as good as dead. And so now it's more of a symbolic thing of washing the feet. And he would, he goes into these prisons every year. And this year he said, every time I come here, I ask, why them and not me? And at that same day, you had Republican members of Congress, even one who claims to be a practicing Catholic, like Riley Moore from West Virginia, doing the thumbs up pose at the World famous torture prison in El Salvador. And so there, there is that huge divide, I think when we look at the way that Pope Francis approached things. A lot of people liked to make him in their image. And so they would say things like, oh, he's this radical liberal or he's this, this huge progressive. That's sort of misreading the situation. When he would say, oh, I want to give blessings to LGBT people, or I, you know, want women to be treated fairly, he wasn't saying, well, let's have some, you know, purple haired woke priest now. You know, he wasn't doing that.
- [48:18]
Bill Kristol
He was saying he didn't change. There's no women in the priesthood now. You know, like, there's like a lot of things, things that didn't change.
- [48:24]
J.D. Vance
And most Catholics aren't demanding that.
- [48:26]
Bill Kristol
Right.
- [48:26]
J.D. Vance
And he's just made it a more inclusive for, you know, the worshiper, which is the most important thing. That's what affects the most people. And that's what stuck out to me and the way that he's cared for the poor. Like he, he made this quote. So right around inauguration time, I read this quote from Pope Francis where he said, when you give money to the poor, just drop a coin in their cup and keep walking. Stop and make eye contact with them. That's the more important thing you can do than anything. And when I was walking to the January Sixer inaugural ball, which I wrote a piece about, there was a homeless man outside. Everyone was ignoring him, and I stopped and I gave him, I think it was 10 bucks. And I looked him in the eye and I was like, he's 100% right. That is much more meaningful. And then I went into the January 6 inaugural ball and that, that was another story.
- [49:21]
Bill Kristol
But what are you making eye contact in there?
- [49:24]
J.D. Vance
That eye contact was a lot more uncomfortable, you know, having like even the smallest amount or changing calibrating the way you view the most vulnerable people. That was a huge theme of his message. And that was something that I think a lot of people, especially over in St. Peter's Square, where I, I just was. That was the vibe is that this was a very decent man in a very indecent period in history.
- [49:51]
Bill Kristol
Well, and he named himself the Francis, comes after St. Francis Assisi, who's kind of the hot saint when we were growing up, but besides that, known for care of animals mostly, but really for society's outcasts. Right. And that's like how he tried to frame himself. Did you get to hear the bells? Were the bells tolling at the St. Peter's Basilica.
- [50:12]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, they do their like standard bells at 11am but they were kind of going off and on throughout the morning. I'm gonna try and head back there later this evening when the camera lingo, which is essentially the Susie Wiles of the Vatican, will lay him in the coffin and.
- [50:30]
Bill Kristol
Ouch.
- [50:31]
J.D. Vance
Well, you know, a much nicer version of Suzy Wells, basically the chief of staff. And I'm going to try and go there. I'm expecting a much bigger crowd even than I saw this morning because more people will get word. More people are going to come in from out of town. And right now, Too is every 25 years in the Catholic Church, it's called the Jubilee. And it's a period where everyone floods to Italy. And so it's more packed in general with especially religious people. All the people on my flight, half, maybe two thirds of them were just, you know, church groups making the 25 year pilgrimage to Italy. You know, there were huge groups and you could tell. And so it's going to be really packed and this is going to make it even more packed.
- [51:18]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I did not realize it was the Jubilee. I remember the 2000 Jubilee as a Catholic schoolboy vividly. Anyway, Joe Pritigan will give us more if you go there later tonight. Do it. Give us a little video of the scene and we can post it on the page here and appreciate it. Congrats on the wedding and thanks for doing a little work on your wedding week.
- [51:36]
Joe Perdicone
Yep. All right.
- [51:37]
Bill Kristol
Thanks to Joe Perdicone for hopping in on his wedding week live from Rome, from Vatican City, even on the death of Pope Francis. Thanks to Bill Crystal, as always, rest easy, Papa Francisco. And we'll see everybody else back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast.
- [51:53]
Joe Perdicone
Peace.
- [51:54]
Unknown
I believe in mistakes an accidents that the nature of life is chaos and confusion Man's rules of law and order May not stand and I should be and be not afraid to reach for heaven I may think that I know the true heart needs my pride May bring me low Unable to see.
- [53:23]
Bill Kristol
I'm.
- [53:24]
Unknown
No closer than yesterday but tomorrow I may stand Be and be not afraid to reach for him.
- [54:03]
Bill Kristol
The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editor editing by Jason Brown.