S2 Ep1039: Bill Kristol: A Golden 747 from Hamas's Sugar Daddy

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast: Episode S2 Ep1039 Summary

Release Date: May 12, 2025

In this episode of The Bulwark Podcast, host Tim Miller engages in an in-depth conversation with Bill Kristol, Editor-at-Large at The Bulwark. The discussion navigates through a spectrum of pressing political issues, offering insightful analysis and critical perspectives on the current administration's policies and actions. Below is a comprehensive summary of the key topics covered:

---

1. US-China Trade Negotiations and Tariffs

Overview: The conversation kicks off with an examination of recent developments in US-China trade relations. Following negotiations in Switzerland, the United States has reduced tariffs on Chinese imports from 60% to 30%, while China reciprocated by lowering its tariffs from 40% to 10%.

Key Points:

• Economic Impact: While the reduction in tariffs provides a marginal boost to both the US and global economies, Kristol emphasizes that the changes are relatively minor compared to what might have been achieved under alternative policies.

  "It's marginally good for the world economy and for our economy, so that's good. It's still marginally bad compared to where we might have been if we just continued Biden's policies at this point..." (05:33)

• Presidential Authority: The administration's unilateral approach to adjusting tariffs without Congressional approval raises concerns about the erosion of established trade protocols.

  "He decides he's had some meeting in Geneva and suddenly tariffs are down to this for 90 days... if it became a permanent thing, someone might say, hey, don't we have like Congress that ratifies these things?" (05:33)

• Market Reactions: The markets responded positively to the tariff reductions, reflecting investor optimism about reduced trade tensions.

  "The markets, though, are happy this morning. They soared." (04:27)

---

2. Qatar's Gift of a Boeing 747 and Corruption Concerns

Overview: A significant portion of the discussion centers on the controversial acquisition of a luxury Boeing 747 from Qatar, intended to serve as the new Air Force One until the end of President Trump's term.

Key Points:

• Nature of the Gift: Kristol criticizes the impropriety of accepting such a lavish gift from a foreign government, especially one with ties to Hamas.

  "The new Air Force One is going to come from Qatar. A palace in the sky... the funders of the group that the administration is targeting is now also the funders of the new presidential airplane." (13:53)

• Legal and Ethical Implications: The deal potentially violates the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits federal officials from receiving gifts from foreign entities without Congressional consent.

  "It's going to go to the presidential library, not to him afterwards. So it is a gift to him... but then it's obviously illegal. It's an emolument unless Congress approves it." (15:23)

• Geopolitical Concerns: Kristol highlights the irony of accepting a gift from Qatar, a nation that has historically supported Hamas and maintains a complex relationship with Iran.

  "They've sent over 1.8 billion to Hamas over the past decades... It's intriguing that the funders of the group that the administration is targeting is now also the funders of the new presidential airplane." (16:00)

---

3. Release of American Hostage

Overview: Despite the overshadowing issues, a positive development is the announcement by Hamas regarding the release of Eden Alexander, the last American hostage held for over 550 days.

Key Points:

• Hostage Release: Kristol expresses genuine relief and happiness for the hostage's release, acknowledging the positive outcome amidst the administration's controversial actions.

  "One good news in this situation is... Hamas said Sunday they're going to release the last living American hostage, Eden Alexander... Genuinely happy though for Eden Alexander and his family." (25:05)

---

4. Trump's Executive Order on Prescription Drug Prices

Overview: The episode delves into President Trump's executive order aimed at reducing prescription drug prices in the United States through ambitious and arguably unfeasible measures.

Key Points:

• Policy Details: Trump proposes reducing drug prices by 30-80% and adopting a "most favored nations" policy, aligning US prices with the lowest globally.

  "Prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced almost immediately by 30 to 80%. They will rise throughout the world in order to equalize... bringing fairness to America." (26:00)

• Critique and Feasibility: Kristol criticizes the executive order as unrealistic and compares it unfavorably to previous approaches, such as the Biden administration's Medicare negotiations.

  "As you say, it was a law... But Trump is now just inventing that. He's going to personally put caps... It's all bullshit. It's a reality show." (29:50)

• Impact on Reconciliation Bill: The executive order is seen as a tactic to garner support for the larger reconciliation bill, which includes significant tax cuts and potential Medicaid reductions.

  "The reconciliation bill is like... this is what we're trying to push up the hill." (31:47)

---

5. Congressional Reconciliation Bill and Tax Cuts

Overview: Kristol and Miller explore the intricacies of the proposed reconciliation bill, which aims to extend tax cuts while potentially introducing cuts to Medicaid.

Key Points:

• Economic Implications: The bill is projected to add $4-5 trillion to the deficit, necessitating significant Medicaid cuts to balance the budget.

  "...extending the tax cuts is going to add 4 or 5 trillion. And so, you know, they'll have to... create fake math to even make that defensible." (40:04)

• Political Challenges: The bill faces hurdles due to internal disagreements within the Republican Party and concerns from moderates in blue states about the impact on deductions like the SALT (State and Local Tax) deduction.

  "Holly in the New York Times... 32 Republicans on a letter about how, you know, this bill can't add anything to the deficit now." (31:47)

• Potential Outcomes: The uncertainty surrounding the bill's passage underscores the administration's reliance on high-risk legislative maneuvers to achieve policy goals.

  "Putting all the chips on the table. And if it falls apart in Congress, that would be a very dramatic moment." (43:28)

---

6. Suspension of Habeas Corpus and Immigration Detentions

Overview: A contentious topic is the suggestion by Stephen Miller, a key advisor to President Trump, to suspend habeas corpus amid ongoing immigration enforcement actions.

Key Points:

• Legal Concerns: Kristol vehemently opposes the suspension of habeas corpus, citing its essential role in safeguarding civil liberties.

  "Suspend habeas corpus. That is the key. Arguably... one of the two or three single most important guarantors of civil liberty." (45:14)

• Immigration Enforcement: The podcast highlights alarming instances of ICE detaining non-violent individuals, including young immigrants who pose no threat to public safety.

  "They're not going after violent criminals... they're literally people working in restaurants... for what?" (50:26)

• Political Inaction: The lack of decisive response from Republican senators and members of the House exacerbates concerns about unchecked executive power and human rights violations.

  "They think business leaders know something about their businesses and the economy. If they hear nothing from senators and members of the House... they think, I guess maybe it's okay." (35:53)

---

7. Russian Propaganda Targeting International Leaders

Overview: The episode briefly touches upon Russian propaganda campaigns, particularly targeting international figures such as UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Key Points:

• Disinformation Tactics: Kristol mocks the spread of unfounded allegations, such as claims of international leaders engaging in drug use, highlighting the absurdity and malicious intent behind such propaganda.

  "It's hard to understand. It's like... a big fat bag of cocaine... a dirty napkin, which is what it obviously was for anybody with eyes." (53:20)

• Impact on Public Perception: The dissemination of such misinformation aims to undermine trust in global leadership and sow discord among allied nations.

---

Conclusion

In this episode, Tim Miller and Bill Kristol provide a critical lens on the Trump administration's policies and actions, emphasizing concerns about corruption, erosion of democratic norms, and the potential long-term implications for both domestic and foreign policy. The discussion underscores the need for accountability and adherence to constitutional principles to preserve the integrity of American governance.

---

Notable Quotes:

• "It's marginally good for the world economy and for our economy, so that's good." – Bill Kristol (05:33)

• "We're just having the whole US economy and global economy chugging along at the whim of this guy and his kooky advisors." – Bill Kristol (05:42)

• "It's our plane, not his." – Bill Kristol (15:23)

• "It's a reality show." – Bill Kristol (29:50)

• "Suspend habeas corpus. That is the key." – Bill Kristol (45:14)

---

Note: Timestamps correspond to the transcript provided for precise reference.

Transcript

[Bill Kristol]

Foreign.

[Tim Miller]

Hello, and welcome to the board podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. A quick shout out. We do have that Nashville event coming up May 29th. Got some tickets available for that. Chicago sold out. I decided to make a little family weekend out of it, so that might be something for you to consider as well. Come hang out with us in Nashville. Go to the Bulwark.com events today. We've got a lot to discuss. The liberation of the American economy is on a 90 day pause. We're borrowing a new Hamas force one from Qatar. Socialist price controls are good now. American hostages freed. Russian propaganda about a Keir Starmer cocaine bender. A tenuous India, Pakistan ceasefire. The zone has been flooded with shit and we're here to wade through it. It's Monday with Bulwark Editor at large, Bill Kristol. What's up, Bill?

[Bill Kristol]

How are you, Tim? Busy weekend, you know, busy morning today even, right? Terrorists, Air Force One, drug prices magically going down. It's really something here in Trump's America.

[Tim Miller]

I know, it's brutal. You know, today was the first day where I was like, in a while, I was like, ugh, okay, I guess we gotta wake up and care about this shit. But here we go.

[Bill Kristol]

And as someone was saying to me over the weekend, I feel like we're overwhelmed. But of course, they have the whole federal government, like, doing stuff for them, you know, and we have like, the Bulwark Fine team, who we are, the Bulwark staff. And Congress has its small staffs trying to fight back. It is a big advantage being President of the United States. And for all their clownishness and incompetence, you know, having some people who know what they're doing and loyalists who are willing to do everything Trump wants and foreign leaders who. Who want, in some ways to work with Trump or use Trump, let's put it that way, and give him some token victories occasionally, or not rub his face in it. It is a big advantage being president if you think of your four years in office as just defeating your enemies and rewarding your friends, not doing something good for the country. It does feel like they're constantly coming at us with a lot of forces.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, plenty of opportunity for that. And one other thing, this is a little bit, you know, kind of an obvious, at this point, observation, but it just feels particularly acute today. It's just like the reality show element of it. Like, it's preternatural. I don't even know if it's actually strategic. I just think that, like, he is a reality show figure. And you just have all this stuff that we're about to get into that like, wouldn't have even been news in other administrations. Right. Or like, wouldn't be anything that regular people would have to care about, you know, because it would be, there'd be negotiations happening behind the scenes in Switzerland between the trade representatives. It's like only super nerds would care about it because you aren't doing like, it's 150%, it's 12%. Right. Like, like this whole, the show of it all, I think is really, is wearying also.

[Bill Kristol]

It's a good point. And you know, I don't watch many reality shows, I'll be honest, but I get the impression they keep everyone interested and excited based on ludicrous little things, right? Oh, the couple broke up. I don't know. And some, like, married, you know, whatever. The thing is, married at first sight and they didn't break up. They're having a fight. You know, it is like that. I mean, Trump obviously has internalized the way you keep people interested. What are, if you step back for two seconds are trivial or, you know, not important things. But hey, there's drama, you know.

[Tim Miller]

All right, so let's go through it. We'll go through today's reality show because it is our burden. It's our rock that we have to push up the hill. So Liberation Day has come and gone. The US after some negotiations in Switzerland over the weekend, has decided to reduce the China tariff to 30%. China's reduced the US tariff to 10%. For context, this means there's an additional 20% tariff over the pre Trump status quo for products coming into the US The China State TV summed it up this way. The outcome of the trade talks with Trump team shows China's firm countermeasures and resolute stance have been highly effective. China gets nearly all tariffs off for doing very little other than agreeing to talk. The markets, though, are happy this morning. They soared. You guys wrote in the Morning Shots newsletter that that was a result of Trump, at least for a little while, deciding to stop holding a pillow over the face of global trade. So I've got a few other reacts from people this morning. But what, what are your other top takes from the fact that we're, we're back down to 30%.

[Bill Kristol]

I mean, it's marginally good for the world economy and for our economy, so that's good. It's still marginally bad compared to where we might have been if we just continued Biden's policies at this point or to more traditional low tariff policies. But yeah, I mean, Liberation Day, that was such hoopla just over a month ago. It turns out the markets like it whenever there's a relief from Liberation Day when we're like unliberated, liberated from Liberation Day. And I mean Trump is a shrewd enough student of public opinion of the markets to maybe keep following that. But he's also, once you launch the tariffs, it's not quite so easy to unwind them. And so we're seeing that with China. And the other point I'm so struck by is it's all so lawless. He decides he's had some meeting in Geneva and suddenly tariffs are down to this for 90 days. Because of course, if it became a permanent thing, someone might say, hey, don't we have like Congress that ratifies these things? Like I seem to. I'm old enough to remember a huge fight over nafta. What was NAFTA about? It was about the tariffs between US Mexico and Canada. And then Trump changed it in 201718 and it went back to Congress, if I'm not mistaken, that whatever they called it then us, Mexico, something USMCA took.

[Tim Miller]

Me, it's Monday morning took me, but.

[Bill Kristol]

It went to Congress. So we're just like having the whole US economy and global economy chugging along at the whim of this guy and his kooky advisors.

[Tim Miller]

In some cases just a few other things. I just, I was kind of collecting some of the reacts today to kind of contextualize this. For people who we've had so many different tariff rates with China over the past four months, it's been a little hard to follow. Justin Wolfers summed it up like this. There's two ways to frame the news. U.S. trade policy and our macroeconomic prospects are much better today than they were yesterday. That's number one or number two, U.S. trade policy and our macroeconomic prospects are much worse today than on inauguration Day. Both of those things are true. Joe Weisenthal, who I had on the pod a couple weeks ago, asks his followers, has China made any concessions in a way that's superior to the pre April two status quo? Nobody has a good answer to that. Wiesenthal says the biggest losers here are people hoping for a Trump led economic catastrophe. So that might have been some of you. I'm not going to accuse anybody. And number two, the people of the Trump as part of a big chess game party who thought that the tariff announcement was some brilliant strategic plan that would reshape the global economy in a way that's beneficial to us. Fox business guy Charlie Gasparino points out that remember the notion that tariffs would pay down the deficit or the tax cuts or free childcare for everybody, I guess that's all off the table. So again, that's like the preposterousness of all this. Right. Which is it's marginally worse. I guess it's good news because we are staring down the barrel of a potential crippling recession for the economy which isn't I guess off the table, but the chance of that has now decreased. And so it's like, I guess Trump has people in this world where we are not guaranteed to have a self imposed recession is I guess good news for the Wall street guys.

[Bill Kristol]

It is for the Wall street guys. And I don't know about the public. I think he's hurt badly though actually by the whole back and forth stuff. At some point it's like what is. And I think in that respect I'm not so, you know, I know we all think and it's obviously correct some in some way that, you know, the real effects on real voters is what matters ultimately. But also I think this perception of just relatively stable and competent and like non idiotic governance matters to people and they do have the sense that maybe short term we've stumbled into an adequate place. So it's not clear incidentally we could still have recession in three months. You know, this depends on Trump's whimsical. I think people got in some sense to think that's not, that can't be healthy. And also what do you do incidentally? Fine, they're down a little lower. What do you do if you're a corporation, do you now out still try to get your stuff out of China? Do you decide everything's fine to import stuff from China? Do you place orders for six months from now when it's a 90 day window here? I mean I think a lot of the uncertainty argument which people like Larry Summers and I think we discussed this last week a bit and others have been emphasizing remains front and center.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. In certain niches, like people are still going to be impacted. Like real impact, like it won't be across the board. Like it was potentially going to be where everybody felt real economic pain. But you know, in the tariff area and you still have some small businesses, like I've referred several times to the woman that I was talking to here in New Orleans that sells the tchotchkes, the tourist tchotchkes, like 30% is still a Lot like, that's still a big number, right? If you're selling Mardi Gras beads or what, you know, like cheap stuff that was made in China. And so it's still going to hurt some of those businesses for sure. We still are going to have a period of shortages. We might end up having a supply chain issue now as a bunch of people try to get stuff in for China really fast in case the negotiations go south and Trump has a bad day or some Chinese person says something mean about him, so he decides to put it back up to 140%. So there's some discussions of that, like a big rush. And then I do feel like sometimes I've given a little short shrift just because there hasn't been a lot of news items on it, to the federal government cuts, those things are still happening. I was talking to somebody over the weekend that was, you know, just graduating, you know, from getting their doctorate. And it's like the job market is horrible right now. If you are somebody that is wanting to do a research job or, you know, a government job, right? Like one of these types of things, you know, there is a huge chill for hiring from universities, research institutions, as all the DOGE stuff and the lawsuits carry out. So you combine all of that with. With like a halt, you know, a slowing of federal government hiring and a bunch of firing, you know, with the tariff uncertainties, back to Wolfer's point, I mean, it still is like, it still is a significantly worse economic environment than it was five months ago in a.

[Bill Kristol]

Worse political environment in the geopolitical sense. I mean, we all know, we all say this, that one objection to all this tariff stub manipulation is that it empowers one person. Trump, instead of having a more of a rule of law, predictable situation, it also empowers Xi Jinping. If Trump internalizes that, ooh, that was good that we were able to hit this deal to go down to 30. It means Xi just has to. If we send an extra aircraft carrier near Taiwan to try to deter something, and G says, you know what? You want to go back up to where we were, we can have that tariff, that trade war going again. As I say, the tariff stuff empowers Trump internally vis a vis Congress, vis a vis, you know, predictability and the rule of law, but it empowers bad guys externally to also manipulate us.

[Tim Miller]

Since I freely share my opinions on this podcast, maybe more than I should, which can often get personal and emotional, you can imagine why I need a way to boost online privacy and security to protect people from snooping around or trying to hack into my devices. That's where Surfshark VPN comes in. Surfshark's military grade encryption helps protect my online life from prying eyes. And since I travel a lot, I know my data is protected while I'm sitting in airports using the free wifi because hackers love that public free Internet. Plus Surfshark does not track or log its own users data, so that means no IP addresses, no timestamps and my browsing history stays with me. It's privacy at its finest. And while I'm on the road I can watch my favorite movies or even stream a nuggets game because Surfshark lets you bypass geo restrictions to access blocked content from around the world. Surfshark also offers other products like Surfshark Search. Say that five times fast which allows you to browse without being tracked or bombarded by all those annoying ads. Don't let online threats catch you off guard. It's time to take control of your online security with Surfshark VPN. Try Surfshark today and enjoy their risk free 30 day money back guarantee. Secure your privacy with surfshark. Go to surfshark.com the Bulwark for four extra months of Surfshark and we will link that special Bulwark offer for you in our show. Notes Speaking of aircraft news, it's kind of unimaginable corruption and potential national security risks all wrapped up in one, which is what is I guess going to be. The new Air Force One is going to come from Qatar. A palace in the sky. Jonathan Karl broke the news over the weekend that this would be the most valuable gift ever extended to the US from a foreign government. It's a super luxury Boeing 747 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar. The gift will be available for use by Trump as the new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation. Trump had previously toured the plane when it was parked at the West Palm Beach International Airport in February. Apparently there was some discussion that was this was maybe a premature report. But then Trump bleeded last night in defense of the plan he read this so the fact that the Defense Department is getting a gift free of charge of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old air Force One temporarily in a very public and transparent transaction so bothers the crooked Democrats. They insist that we pay top dollar for the plane. Democrats are world class losers. So that's his spin, the Qataris, who I think, I think it should bear mentioning because I want to get into some of the geopolitical sides of this. They've sent over 1.8 billion to Hamas over the past decades. They also are funding the Student for Justice protests that we are jailing people from organizing. So it's intriguing that the funders of the group that the administration is targeting is now also the funders of the new presidential airplane. So where do you want to go with that? Plenty of elements to it.

[Bill Kristol]

So many elements. Maybe just two. I mean, it was when I first heard the news, I didn't realize it was going to end up being Trump's, you know, that I thought it was a government to government thing that we were buying or the Qataris were being nice and selling us at a discount or giving us government to government a plane.

[Tim Miller]

Sure.

[Bill Kristol]

It's still grotesque. I mean, we should be at, we're the United States of America. We can build and maintain and design our own Air Force One. And it's still a Boeing plane if I'm not mistaken. So, you know, it's still kind of an American thing. So then I thought it was just grotesque. And I think the palace in the sky thing is what struck me. Right. This is a republic. We're not supposed to have palaces, we're not supposed to have palaces on the ground. We're not supposed to have palaces in the sky. And it was nice. The White House, it's always been a thing in America. It's a goodow. It's more, more guarded than it used to be. And it's a little harder to get that close, but still, you can walk pretty close to the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue and there are still public tours and you can more limited than they used to be. And Congress is very accessible. It's supposed to be a democratic republic. We're not supposed to have a president flying around in our palaces. And I always liked the slightly beaten down aspect of Air Force One and Air Force Two. I was much more at Air Force Two than Air Force One when I was the Vice President's Chief of Staff. You know, it wasn't the greatest plane in the world, but maybe that's more appropriate for a republic, not to replace it every four years with the most up to date, fancy palatial thing. So that's just my own kind of personal Republican preference with a little R.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, no, kings like this is always been a hobby horse of mine. There's a reason that he's called Mr. President. It was An American tradition. Right. There's a public servant. It's our plane, not his.

[Bill Kristol]

Well, it's his because they structured this deal so that it's a gift to him and he gets to then. Right, but then it's obviously illegal. It's an emolument unless Congress approves it. We'll get back to that in a second. But then it's going to go to the presidential library, not to him afterwards. Not really a gift to him. As if there's any distinction between his presidential library in terms of his ability to use it and so forth, and even finances. God knows the way Trump runs things and his personal wealth. So it is a gift to him. So then you say, well, the Constitution's very clear on this. I mean, no emoluments, no presence, as they put it, for anyone in a position of trust or position, an office of trust in the United States of America. It's why when I was in government as a, your vice presidential chief of staff, a couple of times foreign governments would give us, we were on the delegation obviously with the vice president, would give us nice gifts and it was rude to say no. So you would say thank you and then you would go back even to the hotel and hand them over to one of the security officers. They would go to the State Department. State Department would figure out whether to give it back to the other host to the host country or maybe more likely give it to a museum or something like that. You don't get to keep a gift from a foreign government. Now, there is one exception. Congress can. The framers were pretty hard headed. They were Republican with a little R. But there were times when maybe, you know, do want some official for some reason to be able to accept a gift. So they have an exception in Article 1, Section 9, I think it is, of the Constitution. That's if Congress consents, an individual could accept a gift. I think the Democrats in Congress should just say we get to vote on this. And they should dare the Republicans say Republicans, fine, you're fine with this. You just jam this through with your 53 to 47 majority in 220 to 250 or whatever it is. But we want to debate on this and whether this is the right thing for the United States, whether we consent to this gift of from a foreign government to an officer of the U.S. i mean, if a soldier in Qatar, we have a big base in Qatar, the largest US Base in the Middle East. If a soldier or airman in Qatar got a gift from the Qatari government, a gift from a wealthy individual in Qatar. Totally unacceptable. He'd have to return it. If he didn't return it, he'd be court martialed or whatever. Right. The commander in chief can take a gift, but the commander of some platoon can't. I mean, it's all beyond corrupt and beyond unseemly really, for the president.

[Tim Miller]

It's a great suggestion. Democrats absolutely should pressure them to take a vote on this and force Republicans to vote on this if they're going to jam it through. Because you have seen some pushback from Republican circles, not from actual candidates. Right. They're all cowards. But you know, crazy Laura Loomers, even against this Ari Fleischer.

[Bill Kristol]

I know, I mean here we are.

[Tim Miller]

With, we're on board Ari Fleischers that he's against this. There's editorial Free Press today, some of those folks who've been Trump friendly. And part of the argument from the Free Press is related to the Israel side of this, which I think is worth at least bringing up. Right. I mean, look, the corruption, the Trump corruption, which is astonishing and maybe this is the type of thing that could break through in a way that the meme coin doesn't like. I'm going to keep talking about the meme coin, but it's hard to understand. It's hard for people to understand. This is not that hard for you to understand. Like a foreign government, an Islamic government is giving Trump a plane that he's going to fly on. A government that does business with Iran that was funding Hamas, was essentially the Hamas sugar daddy in Qatar. They are going to pay for our Air Force One. That's absolutely insane. And Larry Summers was talking over the weekend that there are very serious rules for colleges to take money from countries like this from Qatar because we don't want foreign governments, especially those that are quasi hostile, at least in certain elements of foreign policy, to be overly influencing the country. And so again, this would be a horrible, corrupt Trumpian deal if the plane was coming from, well, I guess I was about to say Denmark because Denmark isn't our friend anymore. If the plane is coming from Norway, you know, it would still be horribly corrupt, but we could conceivably be on the opposite side of Qatar and various military related foreign policy issues over the coming years. And Ramehsa Ozturk, who thank God got out of jail, who we shackled and we put into a prison because she was the co author of an op ed that was critical of Israel's actions in Gaza. So we jailed her for that position. Now simultaneously we are taking the biggest gift in the history of the American government from a country that was actively supportive of the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, that was actively supportive of Hamas, that was harboring the Hamas terrorists that committed the atrocities. It's like when Trump does a gaggle on the plane and somebody, he asks him about their policy of jailing austurc, of jailing the leaders of these campus protests. He's going to be doing it on a plane that is funded by the people that funded the campus protests. It's preposterous. It is totally inappropriate on a straight corruption level. But also it just reveals the emptiness of their position on this, that they're willing to challenge the free speech rights of people and jail people and go after this for a political purpose domestically. But on foreign policy, like whatever, when it comes to bribes, maybe if Ozturk could have afforded giving Trump a plane, she wouldn't have had to be shackled and jailed. The whole thing is deeply offensive, no matter what your view is on the particulars of the dispute.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah. The political leaders of Habas are in Qatar. I believe when Trump lands there, they'll be living in luxury five or 10 miles away, provided safety and security by Qatar, obviously there. And Qatar is also a close ally of Iran, with whom we have real issues, to say the least and whom Trump allegedly is supposed to be tough on. They share a gas field and stuff, so they've been a big player in trying to, you know, stop conflict with Iran and sort of normalize relations with Iran. They did it themselves and they brokered that for other countries in the region anyway. I mean, the geopolitics is slightly complicated. We have a big base there, too. So I can. That one could I. I'm pretty anti Qatar personally, but I think I can see that people will say you got to get along with them. It's like the Saudis, whatever, that's one thing. But as you say that the bribery is coming from that government, not from some, I don't know, whatever, just, you know, kleptocratic government with whom we have that isn't harboring horrible terrorists and isn't a good friend of Iran still be bad. But this does make it even more shocking, really. And we'll see if any of these Republicans, I mean, it seems like a lot of my fellow Jews who are much too Trump curious and Trump adjacent, were telling me for fellow pro Israel people who, many of who happen to be Jews, that Joe, no, Trump's going to be great on Israel. He's the one who's going to be tough on Iran. You know, know, I don't know. I went to a demonstration sponsored by one of the. Now to think about it, the Jewish Council here in Washington, you know, Jewish community relations organization in front of the Qatar Embassy, actually spoke for five minutes. I mean, you know, here with. Because they, this is after October 7th, because they were harboring Hamas and they're supposed to be a non NATO ally of ours. And we were not doing much to put pressure on Qatar, to put pressure on Hamas, to get back the hostages, so to stop the war, basically. And so, you know, Qatar, in the pro Israel community was an object of, I think correctly, really of not just dislike, but real, you know, hostility. I'm curious to see whether the pro Israel types who told me how great Trump was going to be for Israel, I'm curious to see what their reaction is going to be to this.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, they funded Students for Justice, and Rubio was out there saying, we're going to take the student visa away from people who are organizing Student for Justice, so we're going to strip those people's visas while we're riding around on the fancy plane that pay for the. It does. I just, I just knocked my microphone down. So I'm like, as I'm waving my hands wildly. It's just, it's totally ridiculous. And I just, I do remember, I go back to that MSNBC panel. I was sitting on the panel with this Haley donor, the guy who is like, I don't like Trump. And there's a lot I don't like about Trump that I just feel, no, I have no choice but to be for Trump because of these student protesters. And I'm like, the student protesters were protesting Biden for starters. Secondly, now you are now in league with the person that has just taken a bribe from the funders of the student protest. So who knows what will actually shake out on all this? And obviously, Trump and Bibi have a close relationship in ways that I'm not supportive of. So the whole thing is complicated. But in a region with all of those, with all of the serious security issues and complicated relationships, like the country shouldn't be taking a bribe from one of the players, like, either of the players, they shouldn't be taking a $400 million bribe from Israel.

[Bill Kristol]

Well, that gets to this point. I mean, what's. If you want to signal that you'd like to get more bribes, what's the best way to do that? Take one bribe. Because then everyone else thinks, oh, my God. I mean, if I want to have my equities in here, maybe I need to do. I don't have a $400 million plane, but I have a $250 million concessionary contracts on a Trump hotel, a golf course. I mean the whole world starts thinking and again, you sort of almost can't blame the other leaders. They've got real rail politic things to deal with. I better bribe Trump too. So he's in his own cunning way of course, has opened the door to just unimaginable amounts of corruption.

[Tim Miller]

Really, there will certainly be more bribes coming behind. I also should just note one more thing is that Pam Bondi, the Attorney general who made the rule link that this was legal, some kind of one page document giving a legal blessing from the Department of Justice to this bribe, she was a lobbyist for Qatar before she got the job. So in addition to the Bondi thing, Eric Trump was in Qatar recently and they just inked a new deal on a luxury golf resort worth 5.5 billion. So like in addition to the government to government or government to Trump Library, however you want to take it, bribe of the plane. The Trump family is also personally enriching themselves and this is a, a direct violation of the emoluments, no doubt about this. And B, you can't tell me that this is not going to impact the foreign policy of the country. Guys, I think we got a perfect time for an ad about finding certainty in an uncertain world. And that is on the moment that Donald Trump has decided to move the tariff rate down 115%. It's 30, it's 10. It's 60. It's 145. It's 30 again. Who the hell knows what it is? Well, if you're looking for some certainty in your life, it might be time to turn to Selectquote, one of America's leading insurance brokers with nearly 40 years of experience helping over 2 million customers find over $700 billion in coverage since 1985. Other life insurance brokers offer impersonal one size fits all policies that may cost you more but cover you less. While Selectquote's licensed insurance agents work for you to tailor a life insurance policy for your individual needs in as little as 15 minutes. If you've ever worried about getting coverage with a pre existing health condition, Selectquote partners with carriers that provide policies for a variety of them. High blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease. Selectquote can ensure you can cover those conditions or others. Head to selectquote.com and a licensed insurance agent will call you right away with the right policy for your life and your budget. Selectquote they shop, you save, get the right life insurance for you for [e-mail] Bulwark Go to SelectQuote.com Bulwark today to get started. That's SelectQuote.com Bulwark One good news in this situation is it does sound like, and who knows, maybe it's thanks to the bribe. Hamas said Sunday they're going to release the last living American hostage, Eden Alexander, who's been held for over 550 days as Trump heads to the region, which is again good news. This is the nature though of these sorts of situations when you go to corrupt real politic in the extreme. You know, you get obviously there are some positives when you start getting bribes. So this is a good positive. Genuinely happy though for Eden Alexander and his family. Insane that he was taken for so long and hopefully the health will be good. I think we'll be seeing here maybe by the time the podcast is out learning more about his physical status. I want to move on to the pharma stuff. Are you feeling like this is a reality show roller coaster yet? This all happens. It's the last podcast. On Friday, Trump did another bleat. Prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced almost immediately by 30 to 80%. They will rise throughout the world in order to equalize and for the first time in many years, bring fairness to America. I'll be instituting a most favored nations policy whereby the United States will pay the same price as the nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the world. This is going to be an executive order today setting price controls via executive order. Trump pleaded back in August. Kamala will implement Soviet style price controls. So I guess we're keen on Soviet style price controls now. If you want to have a take on the policy of this, I'd be happy to hear it. For me though, it's just America is supposed to be a constitutional republic with different branches of power. This Congress so far has passed five bills, the lowest in generations. Like they've not, they've done nothing essentially since the Lake and Riley act in January. Everything else since then has been like very modest. It's hard to even say everything else. It's like four things that have been like very random niche issues. Like they've passed nothing and like this is not how the American government is supposed to work where, you know, the autocrat issues a diktot from on high about what the price of medicine is going to be right like they're, you know, traditionally, maybe the presidential administration would have a policy paper, have proposed legislation, they'd have an announcement, maybe they'd have in the White House have some people from the Hill that are going to be the lead sponsors on it. They would roll it out. Right. Like that's how you do things in the country. So, I mean, I think obviously there are gonna be legal challenges like this to everything else. But I don't know what you make of our new, to quote Trump, Soviet style price control regime legislation was passed.

[Bill Kristol]

When Biden was president as part of the big Democratic, you know, build back better or one of those pieces of legislation, I can't remember which one. To authorize the president to negotiate with the drug companies to reduce prices that the government would pay for Medicare, basically, for maybe Medicaid, I suppose. And that's how, when they talk about getting drug prices down, it's never really been, almost never been direct price controls. On the private side, it would be what price the government would pay and the government's such a major purchaser and Biden did negotiate some prices down, and that was touted by Harris in 2024 and so forth. But it was done according to congressional legislation and it was done according to specifications of making clear, you know, what the criteria were and, you know, procedures and so forth. So as you say, it was a, it was a law. I mean, it was a legal way. They had to pay some price, the government has to pay some price and they got a law allowing them to push prices down. Trump is now just inventing that. He's going to personally put caps, I guess, price controls on, and also not even at a number, but at equal to the lowest anywhere in the world. So if Luxembourg has, I'm making this up, but for all I know, they do incidentally have like cost free, you know, drugs for their citizens or for that matter, one of the tidy oil states in the Middle east, like the UAE or Qatar or something. What are we gonna have cost free drugs for? I mean, the whole thing is nuts, basically. It's not, that is not policy. It's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. We're not gonna be paying the same price as whatever the lowest price is somewhere in the world for these drugs I shouldn't think we make. And so it's all bullshit. It's gonna get struck down or held up in court. It's, it is a reality show. And also, if I'm not mistaken, Trump repealed the Biden executive orders that were implementing the negotiated settlements that he had pursued according to law, on Trump's first day in office. So it's, it's all nonsense. But you know what, he's getting beat up a little bit. The economy's slowing. He's got this huge tax bill with massive tax cuts for the wealthy. And so his political advisors said, hey, getting drug costs down for the middle class and the working class, that's popular. And just do a fake executive order making it happen.

[Tim Miller]

The tie to the reconciliation bill is really important, right? This is getting out in front of. The details are going to be coming out about how they're going to pay for the tax cuts and it will include health care cuts. So it's like if you have this fig leaf over here that's like, well, but we're cutting drug prices by 80%. Just don't. This talking point for people, it is an intentional talking point to offset the reality of the cuts that are likely coming to Medicaid, tbd. We'll see if they can actually pass this bill via the reconciliation bill, doing the whole like, oh, where are the Republicans? Thing. I know that's our job. We get tired of it. It's noteworthy that we're going through a moment where the president is trying to set price controls over prescription drugs, that the president is trying to set the price of the cost of everything, like it's a department store via the tariffs, that again, we're taking a free plane from the people that were funding Hamas. All of these things that would go against traditional Republican views and that you see essentially nothing, essentially no pushback from the Republicans. The one anti Republican thing that Trump pushed was potentially maybe raising tax rates on the very highest income. Right? They did get a little pushback from that. So that was in the one area. So it is noteworthy and pathetic, frankly, that all the Republicans are just going to kind of go along with this and pretend like this is conservatism. But, you know, we've been seeing that for so long. The thing, to me, that's the most striking and I think it's related to kind of what you were saying earlier about how the foreign countries want to give Trump some wins because they know that this is the way to deal with him, is the way the business community deals with Trump. If there was a Democratic president that was doing adding 30% tariffs and a 10% tariff across the board on everybody throughout the world and also putting price controls on prescription drugs like the pharma, the chamber of Commerce, the team of lobbyists, all of their surrogates that Go out on the news, the Wall Street Journal, Edward, and there would be a hair on fire reaction to all of this. You know, you get tired of hearing the term communist being thrown around about the Democratic president. The Democratic president's a communist, he's a socialist, doesn't believe in the free market, doesn't believe in the capitalist system. And there'd be an overwhelming response from the business community. And it is pretty noteworthy that we're not seeing that that like pharma is just going to take this and you know, fig and fight it back in court and Wall Street Journal and cnbc. Right, like that. That element of it I think is noteworthy because we've come to expect the cowardice from the Hill Republicans. But it's pretty striking that we're also seeing it more broadly from the whatever business community and the free market advocacy community.

[Bill Kristol]

And it's related because obviously if business leaders all over were going crazy about this, some Hill Republicans would say yeah, they who get huge support from these business leaders would be responsive to that. It's in this respect the cowardice of the Hill Republicans and the cowardice of the external groups including, but not only business leaders reinforces each other. Right. Neither wants to go first. And I guess the business groups think they'll take care of this behind the scenes just like they lobbied to get the China tariffs down to what they a more reasonable level. They'll, or they'll go to court or they'll. The self fulfilling spiral of abdication and cowardice is very bad actually among the elites. You and I have discussed this before too. I come back. When is the public going to get upset? Well, you know what? The public's not going to get upset if they get no signals from any elites whom they do respect. I don't care what people say about everyone hates all these institutions they voted for, these members of Congress, the senators they respect. They think business leaders know something about their businesses and the economy. If they hear nothing from senators and members of the House, if they hear nothing from the relevant business leaders or trade union leaders for that matter, or civic leaders or public interest group leaders, if they hear nothing or little from them, they think, I guess maybe it's okay. You know, the people who should be most upset aren't upset. Who I'm just, you know, I don't know as much as the head of Pfizer about whether this is a good idea or not. Right. I mean it is. It's a very dangerous the spiral of abdication.

[Tim Miller]

You know, when a new shirt becomes your Go to. That's what happened when I picked up a few new pieces from Quince. They're the first things I reach for in my closet. Lightweight, comfortable and always on point, Quint has all the things you actually want to wear, like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners. The best part, everything with quince is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. By working with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without the crazy markups. For me, the item I mentioned earlier, it's the only annoying thing about summer coming here in Louisiana because I have been loving my little army green shacket from Quince. I've been vibing out in that army green shacket when I have to go to New York or Denver. Oh, I'll get to wear it to Chicago to the live event we got coming up in Chicago. I think it's still shacket weather in May in Chicago. So I've been checking that out. And you know, there's a bunch of other stuff that is summer appropriate, whether it's the short sleeve polos or that, you know, little blue piping short sleeve button up that I've been wearing. A plus had a great experience with everything I've got from Quince. So elevate your closet with quince. Go to quince.com the Bulwark for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U-I-N-C-E.com the Bulwark to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com the Bulwark Here's a name that just came into my head, just want to throw out there. It was a flash in the past, Grover Norquist. Remember him? He used to have the media and when Obama was president and the Obamacare proposals were going around would be modest compared to what the price controls that Trump just proposed where there's a tax, you know, a new tax regime that would have, you know, modestly increased the corporate tax rate. Right. Like these just very small incremental concerns. And Grover Nordquist is everywhere. He's organizing meetings, wall to wall, Fox Times. I mean like casual Americans knew the name Grover Norquist. Is he alive? Who knows? Is Grover still alive? I don't know. You might see him in McLean sometimes.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, I don't see him, but I think I read somewhere that he, that he is. Another just obvious point that we've made Already. But Obamacare was a piece of legislation. It was submitted to Congress, it was amended in Congress, it was debated in Congress. There was markup. There were actually huge fights about what would be included and whatnot. That is how it is supposed to work here, for all of one's doubts about it and nitpicking. And what Trump has done is, of course, just. I don't even know if it's executive order at this point. It's a tweet, but it allegedly could be translated into an executive order, though it's totally unmanageable. So I'm not sure if it will be. The one thing that's putting pressure on him is that we still seem to believe enough in actual legislation that he sort of does have to get authorization to continue the current tax regime to pass the stop taxes and go back up to where they would be if, when the temporary taxes expire at the end of this year, that still has to be a reconciliation bill, which still, we'll see if they obey this rule, sort of has to be paid for, which still therefore means, as Jonathan Cohn explains well, in the Bulwark, which means actual cuts in Medicaid. So there's still like, one tiny one area, not tiny, one significant area, where actual legislation still seems to get passed. Now, they're also monkeying with those rules, and they're going to try to, I think, not really pay for them, and they're going to try to overrule the parliamentarian and all this kind of stuff. But it's unbelievable that the area of congressional action has been so constrained. Right. The total sum of congressional action, as you say, so far was nothing that the original act on immigration, enough pressure to get him to withdraw. Ed Martin for D.C. attorney, though, not, of course, Hexath or Bondi or Patel or any of those people. And then there's one big piece of legislation that's coming down where they're gonna desperately try to make it, come on, you gotta give us this one vote. This is the one vote we need. And put huge pressure on the Republican senators and members of the House.

[Tim Miller]

I assumed that there was like a 95% chance that they would jam through whatever the reconciliation bill was that they came up with just because they had to. Because it's. To your point, right? It's like the one thing that they're actually doing. I've downgraded that just a little bit because as you've started to hear from folks, the tension between the cuts that would be required to make this even plausibly in the ballpark of where you could even imagine to try to sell it to people as not a deficit buster are very severe. And you have Holly in the New York Times today talking about how there shouldn't be any Medicaid cuts. There was 32 Republicans on a letter about how, you know, this bill can't add anything to the deficit now, like, there's no chance of that. Like just the, just the extension of the tax cuts is going to add 4 or 5 trillion. And so, you know, they'll have to, you know, come up with some fake math to even make that defensible. But, like, you got to do something to get it to a place where you can create fake math. Right. And then you have this. The blue state moderates who, you know, never actually show any courage, I don't expect them to kill the bill, but, you know, they've got real concerns about the salt deduction. It's interesting. If you're like a upper middle class New York or California resident, just letting the tax cuts expire would actually help you tax wise because of the salt deduction. So if you're Mike Lawler, like, there's a lot of people in your district, like, extending the tax cuts actually makes their tax rate higher than letting them expire in a weird way. So I think that there's like some chance that that becomes like a little bit trickier than they'd anticipated, but we'll see.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, the one big beautiful bill is it's a little like shock and awe, like Doge. It's effective as opposed to having to win seven or eight different victories or win them in slower motion. But it's also risky because you're putting all the chips on the table. And if it falls apart, yes, some of the Doge stuff has actually, though it's not huge damage, it's fallen apart in the courts more. But if this falls apart in Congress, that would be a very dramatic moment, wouldn't it? I mean, and don't you think Trump, I see why he did this. I think actually he's kind of shrewd and sort of, I don't know. I'm okay with raising taxes a couple of percent on the wealthiest, you know, and maybe carried interest. I mean, he's always had that slight, Steve Bannon influenced. It's not authentic, but I mean, sense that. Well, politically, why are we falling on this sword? Exactly. You know, it doesn't really. No one Trump knows pays taxes anyway, right? Or pays them at 38 or 40%. They pay them at 7% of that, you know, so he figures, what the heck, I can give him this.

[Tim Miller]

Somebody said, like, raising taxes on the very top, like, or creating an, a super top tax bracket is like, it's basically like a professional athletes tax because, like, the only person that makes like 20 million a year in salary is like the professor. Like, most of the other people making 20 plus million are doing it in capital gains and like doing other ways.

[Bill Kristol]

Right. I mean, you could of course increase that too, but they don't want to even do that. I agree. So. And then there's the carried interest thing for the hedge fund guys. So I agree it's all sort of fake on Trump's part, but it shows a certain political instinct. I wonder if just opening that door rhetorically weakens that Republican ability to just be mindlessly, unbelievably, uniformly obstinate in being against any tax hike anytime. We all made fun of them when they all raised their hand on the stage. What year was that? 2015, I guess.

[Tim Miller]

I think it was 11.

[Bill Kristol]

Which campaign?

[Tim Miller]

2011.

[Bill Kristol]

11. When? Yeah, that maybe 11. When they wouldn't raise. No one would ever raise any tax for any reason on any single human being in America, allegedly, except indirectly on some poor people because they would make the pay more in co payments and deductibles and stuff, but no actual tax increase, God forbid. That was a kind of insane version of dogmatism in the service of what? I mean, it's a practical question what the tax rate should be, but there was a certain political sense to that. Right. Once you open the door to debate, well, then, I don't know, there's a lot of empirical data that maybe the tax, current tax, you know, regime isn't perfect and some rates should go up, maybe some should go down. And I do think Trump in a way has. I don't know, maybe I'm overstating. This has sort of made it a little harder to kind of take that absolutist. We're not even talking about, considering, mentioning, acknowledging the remote possibility of any hike in rates anywhere, anytime.

[Tim Miller]

You know, let's go to the E block. Trump's probably most influential advisor suggests that the administration is looking at ending habeas corpus. Let's listen. Well, the Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So that's an option we're actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the Courts do the right thing or not actively looking at suspending habeas corpus, if they get mad at the judges. This Constitution, the supreme law of the land, is hair. Miller referenced also, you know, says that this is a job for Congress if Congress is in session. Barrasso was asked about that on Meet the Press this weekend, Senator from Wyoming. And he refused to say what his opinion would be on this. He was asked three times by Kristen Welker. So, Bill, what do you make of this?

[Bill Kristol]

I mean, the fake justification for this is that it's a time of invasion, which it's not. So that should be out of the question. Therefore, to suspend habeas corpus, it's been done, I don't know, two times sort of in American history. Once by Lincoln, clearly, then approved by Congress, Congress at the beginning of the Civil War, and then by Roosevelt, but I think in a limited way in 1941, 42. And I think that's it. Basically, we're not under invasion. We're not at war. Steve Miller can say we are. I actually think this increases the chances of the courts throwing out the Alien Enemies act, which is going to get to the court reasonably soon, maybe, because that also, the predicate of that, remember, in the actual legislation is, I think, very similar language. Maybe it's copied from the Constitution about invasion or. Or war that permits us to just detain these people and ship them, in this case, ship them to El Salvador and so forth. So maybe the courts will stand up a little more in this case. And again, for me, though, he says suspend habeas corpus. That is the key. Arguably, I don't know, the single most important, one of the two or three single most important guarantors of civil liberty, of living in a free country where the government can't just snatch you off the street and keep you forever in some dungeon or ship you abroad to some dungeon. You have the right to say no. Your lawyer has a right to show up and say, I want to know what the charges are, and you have to justify keeping him there or release him on bail or whatever. The idea that they're going after that. I would have thought that 40 Republican senators would say, no, no, no. I support President Trump. I support closing the border. I support all this tough stuff, but we cannot talk about suspending habeas corpus. But no, as you say, Senator Barrasso, once upon a time a relatively normie, conventional Republican, he didn't quite want to endorse it because even he knows, like, that is real, really, you know, too far. But he Certainly didn't want to criticize it or rule it out.

[Tim Miller]

No, that's pathetic. Honestly. Sometimes there's this convention like where a journalist like asks a Republican, like, would you support Trump if he does this crazy thing? And you know, they just don't want to like give the question the credibility of like a response because, you know, there's like a follow up story that then comes, it's like, oh, they so and so senator says that they wouldn't support. Right. And so you kind of teach the candidate to not answer the question. It's like a media training thing. Like that's not what was happening here. And there's a direct audio of again, I think the most influential advisor to the president, the guy that overruled the vice president on the leaked signal chat, Stephen Miller, the person who is instituting the immigration policy, talking about how they're actively considering this as part of the immigration policy. And by the way, they kind of did suspend habeas corpus already, at least for the Venezuelans that they have sent to Sokoto and are in, in that jail where they have no access to lawyers, no access to family. And I think we're at 58 days or so where since anybody's heard from the people that were sent to El Salvador. So it is a legit question. And the fact that like in the context of that, where the administration is already in select cases taking away people's right to due process and suggesting that they're, they're actively planning to go further, it's more than a legit question. And for somebody like John Barrasso just to be like, well, I don't know, who knows Mr. Trump is going to secure the border. Chairman Trump has set a very good rate for the wheat harvest this year is pretty astonishing.

[Bill Kristol]

And what Barrasa says, and Mr. President Trump's always said he will follow the law. Yeah, I think that's really wonderful. You know, Comrade Stalin has always said he will follow the constitution of the Soviet Union.

[Tim Miller]

We've got Comrade Bob Gandhi over at the Attorney General's office. They'll create a document, say we'll just type something up here that says that it's legal to take a bribe from the Qataris, it's legal to send Vietnamese immigrants to Libya because we just want to dump them in a war torn country that will take them. One last thing on the immigration thing, just because this continues to happen. I was looking at this thread from Mark Chiassano, who writes for, he's a freelance writer, writes for New York Mag and others but was talking about a case. There are a lot of these random immigration cases that aren't getting as much attention anymore that are still ongoing with ICE. The one he writes about where these two brothers in New York who are 19 and 20, they were brought to America by their mother from El Salvador when they were 10 or 11. They speak English. They've committed no crimes. They have had no discipline at school. They've graduated high school. They go to their standard check in. You know, they're trying to go through the process, the normal process for getting legal status here. They go in for their check in and they end up being shackled and detained, like, shackled in a very intense way. So that they. When they were talking to, I guess their lawyer or their mother, they were saying that they were still like feeling phantom pains from all the chains that they were in. They're currently in a detention center here in Louisiana. And they said, the lawyer said that one of the ICE guys was talking to them and said, stop thinking about going back to school. Don't worry about any of that stuff. Just put your mind to El Salvador. You're not from here anymore.

[Bill Kristol]

No, there were raids here in D.C. at restaurants. I mean, think about it. They're not going after violent criminals. They're not going after even nonviolent criminals, so far as one can tell. Or, you know, people who are problematic, but maybe the charges aren't proven against them, or people who have been listed as gang members. These are literally people working in restaurants in Northwest D.C. i mean, they're probably not a great danger to the community if they're going to the trouble of actually working. And the restaurant owners, maybe they have a fake Social Security number or maybe they don't, certainly. But in the case they're paying taxes, presumably, and working hard or the restaurant would fire them, you know, I mean, so they're like this cases you've been discussing, and they're going after them for what? For what? Who's unhappy that they're working in this restaurant? You know, I mean, that's what's so infuriating. I mean, so much is so infuriating. And I don't. The most infuriating is the most unjust and really harsh treatments and family separations and some of the things we been reading about. But it's happening all over the country and obviously they can't find enough criminals and they have quotas and they are really out of control, in my opinion. And again, I mean, God forbid Congress should ever, like, take a look at what they're doing. Have. Have the guy testify, have Hohman up there. I guess he's a White House employee. Maybe they can't force him up there. But there's. Kristi Noem is supposed to be in charge of that department, dhs. I think the degree to which DHS is a genuine threat to our securities. I joked three or four weeks ago, I'm sort of rethinking my has to, you know, like, abolish ICE was like, a little bit overstated, but maybe. I don't know, maybe they were onto something. It is terrible, really.

[Tim Miller]

You know, I mean, it's hard to imagine, like, going to work for ICE right now and being able to feel good about that.

[Bill Kristol]

It's not like, I mean, police departments do bad things, as we've learned increasingly over the last 10 years. And there's police brutality and they're bad at it, but their police departments do a lot of good things, too. I don't mean to be too harsh. I guess there might be. There are some. I guess some things that ICE does that are necessary. It's becoming increasingly clear to see what they are, and certainly they're now being driven by these quotas is to just go after basically innocent people.

[Tim Miller]

All right, I wanted to get to this Russian propaganda that has. Alex Jones tweeted it has 24 billion views on X. I'm glad we've replatformed him about how Macron and Keir Starmer and Mers from Germany were supposedly doing a big fat bag of cocaine on the flight back from hanging out with Zelensky. But we're out of time, and so this feels more appropriate for the. The Gen Z pod, bringing the expertise of the youth on whether the supposed bag of cocaine was that or a dirty napkin, which is what it obviously was for anybody with eyes. So if you want more on that, tune into FY Pod, go check it out. Go subscribe over there. And Bill, Crystal. I'll relieve you from having to reveal whether or not you can identify the difference between a bag of cocaine and a dirty neck.

[Bill Kristol]

You know, I'm just gonna guess that Friedrich Mertz can't. Can't. Can't identify that difference either, you know.

[Tim Miller]

Anyway, Bill Kristol, thank you so much, everybody else. We'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark podcast, and we'll see y' all then. Peace.

[C]

Roll up to the club in my 1964 Caddy street ready to stunt at a quarter to one just a looking for fun I set a twist for me, baby Hit a rip for me, baby? Take another shot, get lit for me, baby It's a quarter to two what you want to do? Cocaine Contra dancing to you? I think a bit of cocaine country dancing will do. Come on, let's get it going. Only you can keep me rolling better. Quarter to three? You know what I need? Well, I'll you tell Fist for your baby? Hit a rip for you, baby? Take another shot, get lit for your baby? It's a quarter to four. Do we have any more? Okay. Culture dancing for you Concert dance to loop.

[Tim Miller]

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