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- [00:00]
Unknown Speaker
Foreign.
- [00:14]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I've got a couple announcements and a rant before we get to our guest. On the announcement side. We got something exciting coming. June 6th in Washington, D.C. it's Pride weekend. It's World Pride, actually, in D.C. and alongside my fellow gays, Sarah Longwell and John Lovett, we are going to be hosting a live show, fundraiser and protest in support of freeing Andre. Andre, as all of you know, he's the makeup artist that our government has disappeared to El Salvador. Robert Garcia was yesterday grilling, he's a congressman from California, was grilling Kristi Noem about whether we have proof of life for Andre, whether she who's gone to visit and done pinup pictures in front of the prisoners, was able to just guarantee that at least we know that these people that we've disappeared with no due process are still living. She refused to do that. In a about as grotesque a way as imaginable, though it's about what you would expect from our Secretary of Homeland Security. So we want to make sure we're bringing attention to this, making sure that it is not lost, that it's not forgotten. And we want to do it at a, at a moment where there are going to be a lot of people in D.C. so if you are a gay, if you're a D.C. resident, if you're a gay ally and want to come party with us, but also be righteous and passionate in our support for those we've wrongfully sent to El Salvador. We'd love to see you June 6th, Washington, D.C. tickets are going to be on sale maybe tomorrow, maybe Saturday. So check out the Bulwark site, check out crooked sites, and on Monday, I'll make sure to give you guys the details once it is fully live. Also, for some new listeners who want more of my backstory on being a Republican, I did Hassan Minaj's show. So we're gonna include a link in the show. Notes to that today. I told you, I've been a pod slut lately. I've been out there in these streets doing podcasts and Hassan wanted to, you know, kind of give me a little shit about my past. And I, I can take it. I, I, I enjoy that. And, you know, sometimes I get feedback from people who are new who don't, you know, the Bullock OGs have heard this a million times. But for, for newer folks who are interested in my trajectory, go check out that. I appreciate Hasan having me on. Also, we're getting into all foreign policy today. So if you just want some other political hot takes. Me and Sarah and JVL were on one last night on tnl so you can check out the next level as well. One last thing before we get to our guests on the immigration front. I've been mean to mention this. I want to see which day I tweeted this. It was Monday and I just, it's been, I haven't been able to get to it on the podcast. I believe I've mentioned on the show the story of Ximena Arias Cristobal. That's a young woman in Georgia, in Dalton, Georgia who had just graduated high school, was brought to this country from Mexico when she was 4. She was pulled over for initially the what the initial allegation, what the police told us was that she did not have her turn signal on when she made a right turn and then did not have her license on her. They realize she is not documented. They shackled her and sent her to a detention center three hours away in Georgia as they process her for deportation to a country that she has not lived in since she was a very small child. If she came in a different year, she came a little after the time to qualify for daca. You might be familiar with that, folks. We tried to pass the DREAM act several times which would have given legal status to people who are brought to this country as children and who, you know, check certain metrics such as not doing crimes, going to school, learning English. Ximena had done all of that. And we are, you know, I guess like holding her in a cell for some reason, I don't know what fear of, fear of flight. I don't understand besides cruelty, why we feel like we need to do that and then are going to send her back to our home country. The whole story as just sick as it is that this is what is happening with the country, that there aren't other ways that we can't deal with this. Obviously, you know, criminals should be jailed, should be sent back to their country. People that came here illegally as grown ups, you know, I'm gonna have probably more liberal views on that than some others, but I understand that they're gonna have to be rules and some of those folks are gonna end up being deported and that's just the nature of, of our system. But who's for this besides Gollum, Stephen Miller and Tom Homan and a few other people replying to me on X who are trying to get off on other people's pain. The idea that we're going to send this young woman who's done nothing wrong, back to a country she hasn't lived in because she didn't have her turn signal on is fucking outrageous and it is enraging. But if you're ready to be more enraged, she actually did have her turn signal on. Here's a press release that came out on Monday from the Dalton Police Department. After review of the dash cam video of the traffic stop, it was determined that Ms. Arias Cristobal's vehicle was similar to the offending vehicle, but was not the vehicle that made the improper turn. City of Dalton administrator was notified by the police chief that a dismissal for the improper turn citation was in process after review of the dashcam. Great news. I guess she's not going to get a traffic ticket any longer. Here's the problem. She still remains in ICE detention, facing deportation. I. You just don't. Can't hate these people enough. Honestly. It's just like this young woman has done nothing wrong, did nothing wrong, did not come to this country out of her own volition illegally. She was brought here, she went to school. She's following traffic laws, apparently, and we are sending her out. But because we want the country to be more like China, I guess we want to be more like some authoritarian state. And we no longer want to be a place that welcomes folks from around the world who are looking for opportunity, as we've been for the entire history of the country. That is, unless you're one of the 59 white Afrikaners who we are going to bring in, one of whom you should check out. JBL's triad from yesterday has a lot of very nasty things to say about Jews. So I guess that's where we're at in this country right now when it comes to immigration. It's tough to, you know, with all the crazy stuff in the news to get to all these individual cases. But this one was so outrageous, I wanted to make sure not to miss it and to highlight it. So up next, let's get Our foreign policy PhD we're welcoming back a favorite. He's the editor of the Insider, a Russia focused media outlet and he's a contributing editor at New Lines magazine. He was an investigative reporter for CNN and the author of Inside the Army of Terror. That's Michael Weiss. What's up, man?
- [07:00]
Michael Weiss
Hey, man, how's it going? Greetings from London.
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Tim Miller
You had a boozy brunch?
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Michael Weiss
I had a boozy brunch.
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Tim Miller
That's exciting.
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Michael Weiss
With an international man of mystery.
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Tim Miller
I love that.
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Michael Weiss
Other than myself, that is.
- [07:11]
Tim Miller
I Love that. Hopefully you can have some gossip for us for the podcast. I was watching the news this weekend. I did have one big picture question before we started kind of getting into the details. I wondered if you at any point this week have started to think to yourself, this is all too stupid. Maybe I shouldn't have been a foreign policy journalist. Maybe I should have just been a shepherd or something, you know, pursued a different passion.
- [07:33]
Michael Weiss
My alternate blue sky livelihood would have been raising Shetland sheepdogs in some, like, English shire. Probably why I came back to London, to escape the, what is it, the moronic inferno. Is that Saul Bellow's term for the United States? That's what we come. Yeah, yeah. No, look, as much as everything is just incredibly stupid, it also makes sense in a weird way. I mean, I was thinking about this. So Trump goes to the Middle East. Everyone he's meeting with has been in power forever or will be in power forever. They've had eight years to take the measure of this guy and they've realized, oh, okay, so he's not an American president like we're used to, where we have to barter about strategic and national interests and there's some horse trading and all that. We just have to bribe him like we would anybody in our part of the world. And it's very clever of the Qataris to give a 13 year old jet worth $400 million, but which will require years of refurbishing, which includes, by the way, cleaning out the spyware that I'm sure the Qataris and probably the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians have been placed in it, and then installing all the kit that the Americans will require for intelligence collect, and that's going to cost a billion dollars. So in other words, Donald Trump takes a bribe by a foreign power which will cost the US taxpayers $600 million. It's pretty incredible, like a masterstroke of statecraft. And then you've got Ahmed Al Shara, the jihadi president of Syria, former jihadi, who says, well, why don't you just build a Trump Tower in Damascus? And lo and behold, sanctions are magically lifted. And Trump is not only posing with this guy who is a top operative of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and then the Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi's lieutenant who was dispatched into Syria to set up the ISIS franchise there or the ISI franchise there, which became isis, but it was on the US terrorism list up until very recently. And then Trump not only poses smiling with the guy, but says, oh, he's quite attractive. He's charismatic. He's a real fighter. He's just met Muhammad Ali or something. It's just. It's transactional. It's so cosmically narcissistic. But I guess this is just the way the world works and everyone's figuring it out.
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Tim Miller
Yeah. So this is the question about the way the world works. Just really quick, a quick aside of the Qatari plane, because I haven't had a chance to get to this. David Frum plugged this. I didn't realize this. That plane's actually been for sale since 2020, and nobody would buy it. So it was also a nice, easy bribe. And the other thing I didn't realize is that the royal family also offloaded a jet to Turkey to Erdogan in 2018, and that jet was even fancier. So we're getting sloppy seconds when it comes to the bribes, like the Winnie the Pooh and the Tuxedo Maga guys have looked at this Trump trip and they've tried to fashion onto it a much more sophisticated explanation for what's happening than what you just laid out, that he's easy to bribe, and that is that the neocon, neoliberal world order is over. Where we care about values, and we try to impute these values onto these kind of sand dictators that will never do that. And instead, what we have is a new order that is based just totally on our interests, where we just horse trade with these guys and we do good because we're America and we understand capitalism. We do good deals. And that's actually a much more sophisticated thing to do than the naive previous regime, where they cared about these things like democracy and women's rights and the lives of journalists and et cetera. What do you make of that? There is a sophisticated foreign policy turn here, rather than just Donald Trump liking to get free, gaudy stuff.
- [11:27]
Michael Weiss
Well, first of all, there's no stability or reliability to anything this guy does. So tomorrow he can decide, well, actually, I made a mistake. I'm going to reimpose sanctions on Syria. Right. Let's talk about the neocon world order. Who's the biggest loser of this trip to the Gulf? Benjamin Netanyahu. Right. Donald Trump's bestie Israeli prime minister. A man who made no mystery of the fact that he was, I mean, actively campaigning for Trump's reelection and then waiting for Trump's inauguration to do all kinds of deals, finish the war in Gaza, per Netanyahu, which is as soon as the war started, I thought, the Israelis are never going to leave. There's not going to be a withdrawal. They're not going to slot in the Palestinian Authority. This is going to be full on permanent occupation and it certainly looks like that's the way it's tending. But also let's get the Americans to now take out Iran's nuclear program by force, which is what's something the Israelis have been begging every administration since George W. Bush to do. Right now it looks like both those things are not well the permanent occupation of Gaza I think Trump just said again today let's make it a free zone, an American run free zone, beachfront property for all, etc. Etc etc. We'll see where that goes. But it certainly looks to me and to Middle east watchers like where things are headed with respect to Iran's nuclear file is JCPOA 2.0 which is the.
- [12:50]
Tim Miller
Iran deal for the non acronym listeners. Yeah, I mean Obama Iran deal.
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Michael Weiss
I can only imagine the group therapy bills being sustained by AIPAC and the foundation for Defense of Democracies and the guys who've been angling for maximum pressure.
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Tim Miller
I got a good quote for you on this this morning before you go down this route because I've been wondering when we're going to hear from Tom Cotton on this because he's got to be really upset. I'm sure we'll be hearing from him any minute. Here's what Trump said. Talk about Qatar. Nobody's going to break that relationship with Iran. Iran is lucky to have the Emir of Qatar because he's actually fighting for them. He doesn't want us to do a vicious blow to Iran. He says you can make a deal. Iran should say a big thank you to Qatar. So that's just Trump basically saying that like because the Amir gave me this plane and cuz we're doing these deals like I'm just going to chill with Iran.
- [13:36]
Michael Weiss
Yeah. And the Iranians are off are dangling multi hundreds of billions of dollars if not trillions of dollars of trade deals that could commence with the lifting of Iran sanctions which they're hoping that will happen if they cut a deal. So okay, I could see how optically people would say this is the end of the neocon world order. But let's look at the other side of the ledger. It was Obama and the progressive realists who said well actually taking out Bashar Al Assad would be a major own goal. We don't have any strategic interest in Syria. We want to recalibrate with Iran. In other words create a kind of equilibrium between the Shia hegemon in the region and the Sunni led Gulf Arab states, principally Saudi Arabia. I mean, Obama was on record with Jeffrey Goldberg and others saying pretty much that a strategic realignment of America's priorities in the region. But Syria was always kind of the obstacle to this. Right? Like we kind of supported a Syrian insurgency, but didn't give them enough weapons and certainly didn't support them to overthrow the regime. We wanted to apply a sufficient amount of pressure to get Bashar Al Assad to negotiate his removal. But really the fundamentals of his Ba' Athist regime would stay in place and up until the end of the Biden administration. I mean, Brett McGurk was the biggest, biggest, most vocal proponent of keeping Assad in place, lifting sanctions on Assad's regime. That was something he wanted to do because the Emiratis were pushing him and other Gulf Arab states. It looked like Assad was coming in from the cold, there was going to be full rapprochement. And what happened? Well, we've discussed this on a previous program. The Turks said we cannot do a deal with this man, particularly about the Kurdish issue, which is the principal overriding Turkish national security concern. And hts, which has been in this sort of garrison enclave in Idlib for eight years, building its own statelet with Turkish largesse and under a Turkish garrison rule, had been champing at the bit to do an offensive. They let him out and the offensive was a catastrophic success, blew everybody's mind, not least of all the Turks. They didn't expect it to lead to regime change, but that's what happened. So the mantra of the anti neocons and the sort of realists forever was there is no military solution to Syria, only a diplomatic one. Well, no, it turns out there was a military solution to Syria. And although the Turks didn't intervene directly, they certainly intervened indirectly, as Donald Trump himself was joking when he was sat next to Netanyahu in the Oval Office several weeks ago. So you kind of have the United States now certifying what looks to be a pretty hawkish interventionist policy in one country in the Middle east by recognizing Alshara lifting sanctions. So I'm a little bit confused how people seem to come up with a coherent or sensible worldview here. I mean, there's a little from column A, a little from column B. But again, we come back to the core issue, which is this is a man who is incredibly impressionable. Somebody has a, a line that I quite like was, he's like a seat cushion. He bears the impression of the last ass to sit on him. Right. Incredibly impressionable and, and just eminently bribeable. You know, it's not what's in it for my country, it's what's in it for me. Ooh, you want to give me a plane? Awesome. You know who's going to give him a mega yacht next, right? You're going to build my casinos and my hotels in your countries. Amazing. That's how he does business. And I think, you know, I don't fault these Gulf kleptocracies and autocracies from just figuring this out. I mean, they have their own interest to pursue and to prosecute and, you know, good on them, I suppose. But yeah, it's a terrible state to be in in this country when I mean, all of the crimes, all of the corruption, it's not hidden. It's not the kind of thing that the Washington Post has to spend two years investigating. It's happening under the klieg lights. It's happening on 24 hour cable news networks in plain sight. And we're all kind of like, oh, okay, I guess it's the new status quo.
- [17:32]
Tim Miller
Bill Kristal wrote about this this morning in our newsletter. People should check that out. But the out in the openness of this is they say it, they're like, look, this isn't, it's not a crime, it's not corruption. We're just doing it. Right? And I think that, that as part of the thing they use as a shield, I just look at it and think, isn't that kind of humiliating? I mean, Trump was touting, the White House was touting. Let me pull this up here. The Trump effect, all caps. They'd secured 1.2 trillion in Qatari investment in the U.S. i mean, the Qataris have a $300 billion GDP. They're the 55th largest GDP in the world. Why are we bending the knee in front of this, A tiny regional Middle east autocracy for Donald Trump to be.
- [18:17]
Michael Weiss
The last man in Washington D.C. to be bought by the Qataris. I mean, that's worthy of a Joseph Heller novel or at least a Netflix limited series, right? I mean, that is the most hilarious thing in the world. The Wall Street Journal. Everybody's writing pieces now about Qatari influence peddling and how they purchased universities and institutions and massive lobbying campaign. And all they had to do is give this guy a jet, an old jet that nobody else wants to buy. It's utterly hilarious.
- [18:44]
Tim Miller
Hey, I gotta tell you about this game changing product I use before a night out with drinks. It's called Pre alcohol. Let's face it, after a night with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. And I never bounced back that well. I come from a long line of people with weak tummies and as a result I have to make a choice. I can either have a great night or a great next day. That was until I found Pre Alcohol Zebiotics. Pre Alcohol Probiotic Drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow. This is definitely something I've been turning to when I know it's going to be a night out of drinking. If I'm going to a concert, maybe I'll try it tomorrow. I've got a little dinner party in New Orleans I'm going to be going to. There's one caveat. Like for example, I've been not really drinking on weeknights because I want to be nice and fresh for you guys in the morning. But sometimes things happen like the nuggets blowing an eight point lead in the fourth quarter. Me deciding I need to turn to a cocktail wasn't prepped for that, so I didn't have my zebiotic. Pre alcohol preparation is what matters here. I guess that's what I'm trying to tell you. Spring is here, which means more opportunities to celebrate warmer weather before or drinks on the patio, your little vacation or your best friend's wedding. Don't forget your ZBiotics pre alcohol drink before drinking and wake up feeling great the next day. Go to zbiotics.com thebullwerk to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use the bulwark at checkout. Zebiotics is backed with 100% money back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com the bulwark and use the code thebullwork at checkout for 15% off. I don't know. I guess this is more my boat than yours, but I'm obsessed with it. It's like the whole notion of MAGA was this braggadocio. We're going to make America great again. America is this world leader. We don't need all these other countries. Everybody else has been flying around the world getting taken advantage of. It's like, how do you combine that? Oh, we have this liquid gold underneath our feet and all this, like, why do we need? You know what I mean? Like, to me, there's a little bit of a humiliating element to this that we, that Trump just has to, he's lavishly just kind of tossing the MBS's salad yesterday and we're like getting like old leftovers from Qatar. It's like, why? I mean, we have natural gas, we got oil. What is the, what is the point of this? I remember when Obama bowed like Obama did a little, just a little kind of bow for like maybe this far was really a bow. And Fox was wall to wall on that. I mean, Trump is fully prostate on the ground.
- [21:41]
Michael Weiss
He is. And I mean, it's not a particularly original insight to say that this is a guy with a real penchant for strong men. And one of my favorite anecdotes from sort of the Cold War Soviet period and the reason why so many Western intellectuals supported Stalin. I think I've mentioned this on the show before. Malcolm Muggeridge was talking about his friends Sidney and Beatrice Webb, because he had just got back from Moscow in the 1930s and the scales fell from his eyes. He saw what Stalinism really was and he couldn't understand why are all his left wing intellectual friends still supportive of this sort of wretched regime. And he said, oh, it's because Stalin is doing to intellectuals over there what the webs would like to be doing to intellectuals in London. Right. So don't discount the fact that what Donald Trump sees in these dictators and these autocrats and these strongmen is exactly what he would like to do in the United States. Yeah, he wants to turn the United States into a version of this. Right. And his, his, his deepest frustration, certainly from term one, and he's made no secret of, of trying to eliminate anybody who might stand in the way of accomplishing this in term two, is that, you know, what he would call the deep state, but you and I would call just the normal petty bureaucracy and civil service fetters of any liberal democracy. He hates it because it stops him in his tracks from just imposing his will. And it's interesting to hear somebody like Steve Witkoff who very sort of nakedly says, oh, we'll get the Iranians to do a deal. Because Donald Trump can bend anyone by force of his own personality. I mean, that is what you say of a totalitarian tyrant, right? That he is so charismatic and he embodies capital H history. And he's in this place for a reason, almost a divinely anointed position. Everyone must submit, everyone must do his bidding. And one of the things we've also seen, and I keep telling my Ukrainian friends this is actually no, Donald Trump can be resisted. He can be told. No, he can be wrangled with and fought. And he usually caves because after a while he gets bored and frustrated and exasperated. Look at the Chinese, look at the whole tariffs regime he's trying to put into place.
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Tim Miller
I slipped there by saying that Trump got prostate in front of mbs. That was maybe a Freudian slip.
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Michael Weiss
Well, you did say that he was tossing MBS salad, so I think we know where the metaphoric language is here, Tim.
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Tim Miller
Yeah, prostrate is the word I was looking for there. It's not just Trump that likes the accoutrement of all that. It's a good insight. It's also his fans. You notice on social media he's in the UAE this morning, landed the UAE Sheikh Mohammed welcomed him and it's kind of this royal greeting. They've got the drums. They got the drums and all of the. Just the kind of shit we don't do here. It's a little gauche, but all of his superfans are posting about like, look how hard this goes. Like Trump in the Middle East. I mean, some of them, like Trump himself, some of them want the actual autocracy part of it. They want to have total control and not want to give control away. They don't want liberal democracy. And some of them just, I think, although just kind of like the big daddy kind of gaudy elements of this and feel like that is what is strong, not the trappings of a liberal democracy.
- [25:02]
Michael Weiss
What do these regimes do to lure people? Particularly the prototypical MAGA acolyte, either low tier or middle tier, is the failed political operative or the wannabe journalist who started a blog which said that January 6th never happen or was an FBI conspiracy. Now they're running important agencies in the state. They're all losers and failures who have made the show. And one of the reasons they made the show is exactly this type of regime or this type of political element, usually foreign powers. And it's not just in the Middle East. I mean, look at Hungary, look at Russia, look at these, these other countries where, you know, Populist or even pre populist dictatorships have formed. They cater to their every need and whim. They see the vulnerability, they see the shortcoming in these types of kind of psychological archetypes. And they just say, oh, we'll fly you first class, we'll put you up at a five star hotel. You like girls, we'll get you girls you could never get back home because they wouldn't talk to you. You know, we'll give you caviar, we'll give you champagne, we'll treat you like a potentate, even though you have no right to be. Well, here's Donald Trump, who is essentially a potentate himself or an oligarch, an American oligarch, but everybody's looking at him and saying, hey, look at the way he's being treated. Yeah, that's exactly it. That's what we all want. And he can bring that to all of us. That's his magic power in the United States. He will lift up the losers and the burnouts and the dregs and give them security clearances and give them government portfolios and give them the power to take revenge on those who denied them all of these things, all of these luxuries and all of these privileges. Right. I mean, it's the Nietzschean resentment. That's what is really the kind of, I think, bedrock ideology of this movement. And he plays it brilliantly. Look, I will be the first to say I think Trump is a political genius without any exceptions. I mean, I don't like the political genius. I don't like what he's managed to achieve with it. But. But he has managed to do almost the impossible, come back from multiple criminal convictions. I mean, I was just chatting today with somebody, okay, where's the compromise on Trump that maybe the Russians have or the Chinese have? What compromise? What could you possibly have on this guy that hasn't already been ventilated in public or adjudicated in a court of law? I mean, sex crimes, been there, done that, bought the T shirt, financial impropriety. He was awaiting sentencing, I think, and then he got elected president.
- [27:46]
Tim Miller
You know, everybody always wants the pee tape, but the problem is he's a germaphobe. So even if there were a pee tape, it'd probably be other people peeing on each other, which I don't think would probably hurt him that much.
- [27:55]
Michael Weiss
Yes, but as I remind everyone, urine is sterile. So you can be a germaphobe and not necessarily averse.
- [28:01]
Tim Miller
I don't see it. I don't want to Take away anybody's dreams, but I don't see it. Got any fun trips coming up. One thing you probably haven't put on your packing list, learning the language. But with Babbel, you can start talking in just a few weeks. Start speaking a new language with confidence thanks to Babbel's conversation based technique that quickly teaches you useful words and phrases about the things you actually talk about in the real world. There's over a dozen languages available to learn at your own pace so you can achieve your goals with material tailored to your individual proficiency level, interests and time availability. I'd love to go for fluency in a new language using Babbel. It's a little ambitious for me given the fact that I'm taping 99 podcasts per week. And so, you know, I'm looking just instead for a little bit of proficiency conversationalism. You know, being able to talk to the waiter, be able to chat with somebody at a bar. As I've been mentioning, we are getting a week off. We're doing a full vacation this year. No podcast. You guys are. We're going black, we're going dark, going to Europe. We've picked our locations. I'm going to be in Spain and the Netherlands. I think learning Dutch is probably a little ambitious, so we're going to focus on Spanish and we've been turned to Babbel for some conversational help on that front. It's handcrafted by 200 language experts. Babbel's lessons are voiced by real native speakers and built with science backed cognitive tools like spaced repetition and interactive features to fit any learning style. They have engaging and interactive dialogue to practice conversation skills right away and speech recognition to make sure you're getting the pronunciation just right because you know that's embarrassing when you get the pronunciation wrong. Stay motivated to learn a new language. It's never been easier thanks to real time feedback, progress trackers and handy visualizations. In only 10 to 15 minutes a day on Babel's mobile app or website, I want you to learn another language. So I'm teaming up with Babel to gift you 55% off subscriptions, but only for our listeners. @babbel.com bulwark get up to 55% off@babbel.com bulwark spelled b a b b e l.com bulwark babble.com bulwarkrules and restrictions may apply. As much as I enjoy doing psychoanalysis of the Trump fucking bootlickers with you, we got to do a little Bit on the actual. Well, are they actual negotiations, the fake Potemkin negotiations that are happening in Turkey? So Zelenskyy arrived in Turkey today a little before we got on. He said Ukraine brought the highest level delegation Trump had yesterday been suggesting that a breakthrough might be coming. And there was buzz that he'd go to Turkey to meet with Putin and Zelenskyy. But then the Kremlin pulled the football out from underneath him. Again, Putin's not coming. Some low level flunkies are going. Trump earlier today says, well, why would Putin have gone if I didn't go? So talk to us about the state of play of the negotiations here.
- [30:52]
Michael Weiss
Well, I mean, the first thing you have to realize is that Putin wants to reactivate this Istanbul, quote, unquote, peace process, which was inaugurated in 2022 at the start of the full scale invasion when Russian tanks were literally ring fencing the city of Kyiv. Ukraine was in a quite vulnerable position. And what these talks amounted to wasn't how to stop the war, it was how to get at the root causes of the war. So in other words, they want to do regime change in Ukraine, which means Zelensky out. They want to install a pro Russian satrap to run the country. They want Ukraine completely demilitarized. They want Ukraine nowhere near NATO, even though various presidents, including the last one, had said that Ukraine is not going to join NATO in the near future. And they want to really re litigate the post Cold War European security architecture. So they want U.S. troops out of NATO's eastern flank. They want a whole kit and caboodle of things here, which doesn't just stop at Ukraine's borders. So to go to istanbul now in 2025, when Russia has a million soldiers either dead or wounded, much of its army has been hollowed out through attritional warfare over the last three years. International sanctions regime on Russia still in place. Russia does not control nearly as much territory as it did in 2022 and basically act as if Russia is still in that position of power is ludicrous. And I think Zelenskyy quite rightly saw what this was about and called both Trump and Putin's bluff and said, oh, okay, great, I'll go to Istanbul, but I expect to negotiate with my direct peer, which is Vladimir Putin. And the Russians say Zelenskyy is illegitimate. So Putin cannot sit across from Zelenskyy and treat him as a peer without completely undermining his own position. So they send, you knowdinsky, former culture minister, propagandist, very low level Flunky doesn't have a lot of wasta. They're sending the same team, basically that they sent in 2022. So it's just a reboot of what they tried and failed to do back then. Now, the danger here is Zelenskyy has a real, a proper team in place. He's got foreign minister there, he's got significant high level government officials, not least of all himself. But what the Russians are trying to do is do this sort of Potemkin theater and then say, well, we had our direct talks. The Ukrainians are intransigent, they will not come to the table, they will not make concessions. And then basically cajole Donald Trump into applying even more pressure on the Ukrainians, which he's very susceptible of doing. Right. He does not extract anything from the Russians. He signed off on this European led initiative which said, you have until this past Monday to do a 30 day ceasefire. If you don't, we will impose crippling new sanctions. Well, it's now Thursday.
- [33:52]
Tim Miller
How are the sanctions?
- [33:53]
Michael Weiss
Where are the sanctions? Right. And so the Europeans unfortunately look a bit weak and humiliated by not sticking to their own guns on this. They rope the Americans, they rope Trump into this. And then just with a bright, shiny new object that Putin threw out there, Trump said, amazing potential for peace in our time and completely through his own plan, or a plan to which he was a party to under the bus in favor of a Russian active measure. So there's not going to be a breakthrough here. The question is, where does Trump come out on all of this? And if history is our guide, he's going to say, well, it's the Ukrainians now that are being obnoxious and they need to look reality in the face here. And they're not going to get back all of their territory. We're not sending our troops, they're not going to be in NATO. They need to bend the knee. We'll see. Other people are suggesting that. Well, actually, he's become more exasperated and angry at the Russians because he sees them as the spoiler. So the U.S. ambassador to NATO was suggesting as much recently. I mean, look, I will say this. I play devil's advocate with myself. There are certain things Trump has not done yet that he could have done on day one. He could have ended all security assistance and all intelligence sharing. And I don't mean that temporary moratorium that he did as a way to punish the Ukrainians needlessly. He could have ended all that. He hasn't. He could have not agreed to do direct arms sales to Ukraine. He has. He could have tried to scupper an F16 spare parts deal with the Ukrainians. He hasn't done that either. Most important, because this is what Ukraine needs the most right now. The Germans are providing the Ukrainians, as of last week, 100 Patriot missiles, 125 rockets for rocket artillery, Gimlers, and probably also ATACMs. And the only way the Germans are able to do that is with America's authorization because of the end user agreement on weapons systems. Right. So my argument is this. Let's say Trump continues to say, well, I got to wash my hands of this now. These two rascally combatants don't like each other. I'm done. I'm tired. I got my jet from Qatar. I'm now in the Middle east, baby. I'm through with your. Well, okay, if that's what you do. But then the status quo is maintained, especially if you allow the Europeans to donate weapons that they buy from the United States to Ukraine, then we're not in such a terrible state. The worst case scenario is he says, I'm going all after the Ukrainians. I am tearing up everything, intel sharing. I will not allow Lockheed and Raytheon kit that we sell to Germany and France and the UK to be donated to Ukraine. That would be a real escalation in favor of the Russia. And if he does that, though, Tim, in the absence of any grand bargain, there's going to be resistance, not just from the Europeans and not just from, you know, ourselves and people who support Ukraine in the United States. But you notice there are sort of cracks in the GOP MAGA coalition here. Ben Shapiro goes to Kyiv, sort of is taken with Zelensky, does his podcast and says, actually, you know, there's all pressure on the Ukrainians, not on the Russians. The New York Post, their entire team editorially, is very pro Ukraine. They will push against this Fox News hits. Every once in a while, Jack Keane and others will get on air and say, this is ridiculous. You know, we're just gifting the Russians everything in exchange for nothing. It's going to be a little problematic. That's not to say he won't do it because he's a sociopathic narcissist and he just does whatever the hell he wants. But there are institutional things in place that are going to make it a little more complicated for him to do that. So that's the best case scenario I can envisage for Ukraine that we continue to arm either directly or indirectly, and it sort of becomes A back of the New York Times story which would benefit all. It's off the front page. Right?
- [37:45]
Tim Miller
Well, and I mean, I think that there is a potential petulant Trump element to this, that he's annoyed that Putin didn't give him what he wants, because I can imagine that they were friends and expected that Putin was going to give him an easy way.
- [37:56]
Michael Weiss
Exactly.
- [37:56]
Tim Miller
What's the status of the war, just like militarily has much changed since we last talked.
- [38:04]
Michael Weiss
No, it's not. I mean, it's very static. I was just meeting with Valeri Zaluzhny, the former Commander in chief. He's now the Ukrainian ambassador to the UK I was meeting with one of his advisors, and I said, well, what is the ambassador? He said he's convinced there's a 15 kilometer sort of buffer along the contact line, which is just. It's a no man's land of drones on both sides. It makes it impossible for either side to have a major breakthrough. I mean, what the Russians are doing is they're actually. They're not using heavy armor, they're putting soldiers on motorbikes and kind of raiding Ukrainian positions across the line. And that can be kind of tactically a little bit dangerous for the Ukrainians. But by and large, things have remained the same. I mean, the Russians are struggling to move forward. Now there's all this scuttlebutt, including from the Ukrainian side, about a. A potentially massive Russian offensive that could be waged in the summer using fresh meat from the recruits that are being 30 to 40,000amonth. They're being called up by the Russians and paid fairly well. We'll see. I mean, I've seen this story play out before. The Russians, they're really gearing up to do something massive, and then the time comes, and it's rather anticlimactic. But I have to be honest, it's not that bad for the Ukrainians right now. You know, it's not great, but it's not catastrophic. And it could be a lot better for them if we sort of saw the facts as they are and saw the weak position that Russia is in and just made it even weaker. But we choose not to do that, or our president chooses, of course, not to do that.
- [39:44]
Tim Miller
I want to update through on just two other things really quick that have been hard for me to follow because there's so much happening in the news. The first is on the Houthis. I just kind of want to frame up our conversation with the Houthis. Our Secretary of Defense, who, you know, is in my business. A couple months ago, he gave a speech in front of any of his soldiers here this morning. I just want to play a little clip from it.
- [40:04]
Michael Weiss
We're restoring the warrior ethos. No more political correctness, gender pronouns, dei, crt, or climate change.
- [40:16]
Tim Miller
Change. No climate change.
- [40:18]
Michael Weiss
We're in the business of war fighting. Accountabilities, standards, warriors, and lethality.
- [40:25]
Tim Miller
Lethality war fighting sounds good on the Houthis, though. There's a New York Times story, by the way.
- [40:30]
Michael Weiss
He sounds like he's announcing Wrestlemania. Are you sure?
- [40:32]
Tim Miller
That's like, we are war fighting against those Houthis. We are war fighting. Here's the result of our war fighting so far. Under Hegseth, we spent about a billion dollars for nothing in the campaign against the Houthis. We had two planes fall into the sea. Houthi air defenses nearly struck an F16 and F35 fighter. They did shoot down seven MQ Reaper drones. And Donald Trump decided, we're just going to kind of chill. So that didn't sound like a huge upgrade in war fighting from what we saw under previous administrations, But I don't know, maybe I'm interpreting that wrong. What do you think?
- [41:05]
Michael Weiss
No, and not only that, but withdrew from this campaign without informing the Israelis he was doing it. I mean, coming back to our original discussion of who he's willing to throw under the bus, including his closest quote, unquote, allies and friends. Yeah. Look, I mean, it's not a bad thing to stop a terrorist organization from badly disrupting international commerce. I don't know the intricacies of this campaign, why it failed. From what I understand, without actual boots on the ground, without a real intelligence capability in Yemen, which the Israelis haven't got to the degree that the United States has, is going to be a very heavy lift for the Israelis to do alone what we were doing on their behalf or in concert with them. But it's interesting, too. I mean, I think of that series of emojis that I guess Hegseth put into the signal chat. Jeffrey Goldberry with two fists and a big kaboom and an American flag.
- [41:59]
Tim Miller
American flag, fire.
- [42:02]
Michael Weiss
Now. It's kind of like the emoji. Where's this gone?
- [42:07]
Tim Miller
Like the big eyes, bottom emoji.
- [42:09]
Michael Weiss
And notice Trump's response that, oh, the Houthis, they're tough hombres. They're quite brave. Bravery, I think was the word he chose, that they withstood this merciless campaign against them. Yeah, I mean, look, I see a man who does not want long term or any kind of strategic confrontation in that part of the world. Tactically, he's willing to do certain things. He took out qasem Soleimani and 2020 had wide lasting repercussions. We are still seeing the repercussions of that play out to this day, I would argue, including and especially in Syria. But this is not a guy who wants to go to war. Right. And he certainly doesn't want to be lured or dragged into a war as second party to an ally in the region that may start one or finds itself in that position. So, you know, what do you see? You see a kind of American recessional.
- [43:02]
Tim Miller
You saw this with India, Pakistan too, which we're not going to get to. But like, just like the whole JD Vance one says this is none of our business. And then the next day it's like, holy shit.
- [43:11]
Michael Weiss
It's very on brand for this administration to have a vice president who's probably his entire policy framework for India, Pakistan is. Jesus Christ, what can I do not to get my in laws to move in with me? So I got to put out the flames of this thing real quick. I mean, is this a permanent ceasefire too, or what happens if things flare up again over Kashmir or something else? I mean, is Donald Trump your man to put a lid on that? I don't know. I have my opinion.
- [43:42]
Tim Miller
I just think, yeah, it just shows the weakness of their position that it's just like, look, I'm not saying that we should be intervening in India, Pakistan. It's just the shallowness of this switch that we were talking about earlier, right? It's like one day it's like, oh, well, this is none of our business, they're going to default to this is none of our business. And then it's like, oh, wait, well, sometimes events intervene, it has to be our business because we have a nuclear issue there, or sometimes we get a bribe. So it's our business again. Now it's not coherent. Back to your point earlier, it's a feeling that we should not be involved until events intervene.
- [44:13]
Michael Weiss
Yes. All the MAGA guys made a big hue and cry about we got to pivot to China, we got to deter the Chinese. And does anyone realistically think that if China invaded Taiwan tomorrow, Donald Trump is coming to the rescue here? No. No. And I mean the Chinese, funnily enough, are in favor of a 30 day ceasefire for Ukraine. So they're more pro Ukraine than the President of the United States, at least in terms of where this coalition or this sort of aligned interest and more.
- [44:41]
Tim Miller
Capitalist Than the capitalist, something we discussed yesterday.
- [44:44]
Michael Weiss
Exactly. So, yeah, no, I mean, it's ad hoc, but it's also kind of predictable. Whatever he feels is his own bottom line, whatever he feels is going to flatter him and enrich himself and his family. That's the play.
- [45:02]
Tim Miller
I just need to go to Michael Weiss school really quick. So I saw the news item come across about the Kurds bkk, and they've, I guess, stopped fighting.
- [45:11]
Michael Weiss
Yeah, that's a big deal.
- [45:12]
Tim Miller
I don't, I have no idea what's happening. My note here is ask Michael Weiss what is happening with the Kurds. So that's, that's my final question for you.
- [45:18]
Michael Weiss
So I think a lot of this also has to do again, you know, the Sultan Erdogan has, has played a blinder in, in recent days. I mean, Syria, Libya, clearly his relationship with Trump, also his relationship with Zelensky and the Ukrainians, which doesn't really get much attention, although I've tried to put a spotlight on that. The Turks are actually much more pro Ukraine than they appear, even though they get on okay with the Russians. But look, when I explained why the Turks allowed HTS to go on the offensive, it's because they could not get Assad to do what they wanted with respect to the Kurdistan Workers Party or its Syrian affiliate, which goes by the name of the ypg, or if you are Centcom orientated, you call them the Syrian Democratic Forces. We like to make a big show that actually. Oh, it's very integrated and you've got lots of ethnicities and there's Arab. I mean, the PKK runs. It's the upper echelon of the sdf. In fact, a lot of the guys in the Syrian Democratic Forces are not even Kurds from Syria. They come from the Kandil Mountains. Right. Turkey has been at war with the PKKK for over 40 years. It's been a pretty nasty insurgency and counterinsurgency. A lot of bloodshed on both sides. PKK used to blow up police stations and do motorcycle bombings in southeastern Turkey. And the Turks would just bomb the shit out of them, as Donald Trump might say. Also not only in the Kando Mountains, but now increasingly, we've seen them go on the offensive against them in Syria. What's happened is, well, the Syrians have a new government. That government has made an offer to the PKK Kurds of Syria, knowing that the United States is going to leave. And if the United States leaves and there is not some kind of rapprochement there, that the Turks will pour in and just put everyone to the sword. Right. So I think the PKK has sort of seen the writing on the wall and said our interests are now political more than they are military and we have to do a deal. And if this sticks, I mean, it's the Middle east after all. What happens on Monday is undone on Tuesday. But if it sticks, it is a kind of momentous event. I mean, it's one of the longest, most kind of broiling conflicts in the region. Doesn't get much attention in the west, but certainly in Turkey it's everything. And if it comes to an end, then that's a good thing. It doesn't make Erdoan any less of an authoritarian or any cuddler. I mean, he's still throwing journalists in prison, he still cracks down on political opponents, et cetera, et cetera. But that's a net positive, by the way. Nothing to do really with us, the United States. I mean, honestly, some of the best things that have happened in the Middle east recently are almost as a direct result of benign neglect by Washington, not any kind of intervention. So I guess your Winnie the Pooh Maga friends who say, oh, America, stay out. Well, there's a little bit of legitimacy. There's when we do less, more tends to occur, at least under the current political establishment.
- [48:18]
Tim Miller
I'm for less.
- [48:19]
Michael Weiss
I'm for less too. Look, I'm for less.
- [48:21]
Tim Miller
I mean, I have my hawkish former Republican tendencies at times, but there's certainly certain occasions where I'm for less. It's just the whole the notion that we are going to rearrange the world and it's no longer going to be in line with our values, but instead it's going to be aligned with like brown paper bag passing. I'm pretty skeptical again about that new world order, like the Mexican president trying to get the cartels to come to the table by buying them off. I'm not sure that's going to play out well in the long term.
- [48:53]
Michael Weiss
Right. And you know, I mean, the Syrians, they never asked for Iraq style occupation and nation building. They just wanted the assistance to get rid of the dictator. And now he's gone. We're probably the last beneficiaries of this because we were so late to the table, but they're very pleased with how this is shaken out. And you have quite a lot of pro Trump Syrian Americans who were pro Trump before because they saw that things were tending in this direction, if only because of his relationship with Erdogan and his belief that America should just leave and let the region sort itself out. And also, Iran is on the back foot, right? So they're in a very weakened pro straight position, not prostate position at the moment, which is probably why they want to come to the table and do a nuclear deal. So. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not necessarily averse to some of the things that are happening in that part of the world, but the real tragedy here, Tim, is that we have a country does share our values. A natural ally, the strongest army in Europe by orders of magnitude. All they're asking for, no American lives to be sacrificed or put in harm's way. All they're asking for is just give us the tools to finish what we, you know, what we didn't even start. But our enemy and your enemy started. And we treat them like the help. What have you done for us lately? You owe us, you know, you thanked us.
- [50:18]
Tim Miller
That's a good place to leave it. Michael Weiss. Never prostrate. Appreciate your brief as always. Getting me smarter on this.
- [50:25]
Michael Weiss
My long winded brief, you mean to say.
- [50:27]
Tim Miller
No, it was good. That was a brief. It was Good. A tight 40 for us today.
- [50:31]
Michael Weiss
A tight 40.
- [50:34]
Tim Miller
We'll see you again soon. All right, have a safe flight.
- [50:36]
Michael Weiss
Sounds good, man. Thanks.
- [50:37]
Tim Miller
All right, everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast.
- [50:41]
Unknown Speaker
The Eiffel Tower built a smaller scale. The freshest oxygen I'd ever inhaled. I tapped the bottle against the safety rail can time. And you were like a walking compliment. Tall in stature and exceptionally red in dummy glasses and a cardigan. Oh, come on. But though so empty, were the faces of the dealers and the waitresses all around. You said that all these things you've learned to ignore. The hidden cameras on the casino floor and what gets paid for behind hotel doors. Come on. Then you pretend every slot machine is a robot amputee waving hello. The people staring, two dies and the they feed them little pipe and then they go.
- [51:55]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.