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- [00:01]
Host
All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Bartesian.
- [00:09]
Tim Miller
Bartesian.
- [00:10]
Host
It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites, too. I just got it for 50 off. So how about a Cosmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita?
- [00:21]
Tim Miller
I'm thirsty.
- [00:22]
Susan Glasser
Watch.
- [00:22]
Host
I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength and wow.
- [00:26]
Tim Miller
Beginning to feel more seasonal in here already.
- [00:28]
Host
If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off.
- [00:40]
Tim Miller
Tis the season to be jollier.
- [00:44]
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- [01:00]
Tim Miller
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- [01:13]
Host
I asked Stewart from accounting about his weekend. Even though I don't care, I updated.
- [01:18]
Tim Miller
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- [01:25]
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- [01:27]
Tim Miller
The Chumba Life. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Stick around at the end. I've got a few thoughts for you on the arrest of Luigi Mangione, the UHC assassin, as well as the verdict in the Daniel Penny case. We got a mini mailbag. But first, staff writer at the New Yorker, where she writes a weekly column on life in Washington. She's also the co author of the Divider, a history of Donald Trump in the White House, no longer a history, which she co wrote with her husband, Peter Baker. It is, of course, Susan Glasser. Welcome back. How you doing, Susan?
- [02:10]
Susan Glasser
Hey, it's great to be with you again, Tim.
- [02:12]
Tim Miller
I guess since everybody's talking about it, I'm saving my thoughts from the end. But do you have any deep thoughts or hot takes about Luigi or about Daniel Penny? Do you have anything you want to get off your chest on the issues everybody's talking about?
- [02:25]
Susan Glasser
You know, not beyond the blindingly original observation that, you know, we live in a terrible, terrible timeline and maybe everybody needs to be a little bit less online and a little bit more connected to people.
- [02:42]
Tim Miller
That's great. That is not original, but true and important and kind of related to what I'm going to get to at the end. So that is right. Go touch some grass, people. Go, you know, go meet some neighbors. It's not as bad out there as it might seem. You've renamed your column back. Renamed, yes, we renamed it New Yorker back to a Letter from Trump's Washington, which obviously brings with it the implication that it is Trump's Washington again, in which you live. I'm just wondering how you're processing that.
- [03:12]
Susan Glasser
Well, first of all, I mean, I would say it feels more like an undigested, unprocessed lump so far. But, you know, I think it does speak to the moment that we didn't even need to wait, wait until the inauguration to do this. And that is really the reality in Washington, as I think we've experienced it these last few weeks, is that it was, in effect, an instant psychological transition. I've never seen a lamer lame duck than Joe Biden in terms of just a sense, an almost instant sense of irrelevance. Now, of course, that's, I think, compounded by the fact that he didn't run for reelection. Maybe it would have been different if he had run and lost. But in this moment, Trump is doing things that would have been, of course, head exploding even in the first Trump transition. He has essentially taken on the role and function of president without the responsibilities, without the information. Here he is flying to Paris, meeting with other world leaders, openly conducting a foreign policy for the United States that is in some ways at odds with the actual current foreign policy of the United States. It's really, there's a reason why we have the idea of only one president at a time. And I think that's another one of those norms that's just being thrown out the window, actually.
- [04:35]
Tim Miller
Is there anything Biden could have been doing to unlaim himself at this point? I kind of suspect no. Part of it is just the nature of just how big of a departure Trump is and how unwilling he is to kind of abide by the types of transitions that we had had throughout our lives before 2016. But part of it is really, I think that Biden's age and kind of lack of forcefulness speaking, and he almost kind of conceded the status to Trump when they had their White House meeting. So I don't know what. Is there anything you feel like that the sitting president should or could be doing to offset this.
- [05:13]
Susan Glasser
Yeah. If it was a different president, it would be a different transition. In fact, look at Barack Obama. I think he had a very different transition. If you'll call. I mean, again, there was so much more kind of shock and upset and surprise at Trump's victory in 2016, but I think people were really hanging on. What did Obama have to say? How would he frame this very kind of threatening moment up for his supporters? Remember, he made a big trip. His final trip was to Europe and to Germany, and then he went to Athens and he spoke about democracy in a big speech. So it was a different transition for a different president and a different moment. I remember watching Trump's initial inauguration in January of 2017 from gathering at the top of a hotel in Washington that had a kind of panoramic view around the city. And that moment when Obama's helicopter flew away and it's just Trump now, that was a real, wow, what are we in for? Kind of a moment. And I don't think it's going to be that way this time with Joe Biden.
- [06:24]
Tim Miller
Do you have any thoughts on the swirling conversations around preemptive pardons, any reporting, anything you're hearing, any notions within your own mind?
- [06:35]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, this is a, very, obviously, it would be quite a break, I think, with precedent to do so for people who have not even been accused in any way of crimes, in fact, who would be very offended at the idea that they need a pardon, many of them. And I have run into several people just over the last week here in Washington who are on that 60 person enemies list compiled by Cash Patel, Trump's nominee to head the FBI. And to a person, they were very adamant. I don't need a pardon, I don't want a pardon. Please do not give me a pardon. This is my country. I'm not leaving the country. I would like to stand and fight. And so that's the kind of pushback I've heard. Perhaps there are others who aren't vocal, who are privately urging the White House to consider this. I think that it's. We'll see. I'm skeptical about it. But then again, I also very much am in the belief that Democrats continue to underestimate Trump and those who surround him and that that in some ways, I think was the failure that led to his reelection. But it also would be a potential terrible error to make when he's openly threatening to jail his opponents. His comments the other day about January 6th and that the real criminals were the January 6th committee that investigated him, that was something to pay attention to.
- [08:06]
Tim Miller
Talk more about that notion that the underestimation of Trump led to his reelection. In what sense do you mean that?
- [08:14]
Susan Glasser
Well, I mean, look, you can follow the chain back as far as you'd like to, but in my view, one of the fatal errors of the Biden. Biden presidency occurred in the very initial weeks and months of the Biden presidency, which is this notion that Donald Trump couldn't possibly come back. And I should say that's not just a mistake of Democrats, of course, many Republicans who wish to see Trump gone. That is Mitch McConnell.
- [08:40]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Mitch McConnell's on the top of this mistake list.
- [08:42]
Susan Glasser
Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Absolutely. I think that was a crucial error, a judgment by many, many, many people in Washington and around the country. And I've been haun this quote in the latest Woodward book, it's a quote that he attributes to Ron Clan, Biden's first White House chief of staff, sometime in that initial period, essentially saying, Donald Trump, forget about him. He's just a sideshow. He's irrelevant, essentially. And you know that. That was a mistake.
- [09:16]
Tim Miller
I love Ron, but yeah, that's. That one hurts. Okay. I want to talk about your latest column, which is about how the scandal in the Trump Cabinet appointees isn't just personal failings. It's easy to focus on their personal failings, of course, because there are many among pretty much all of the Cabinet appointees, with a couple exceptions. I'm wondering, as you kind of assess the Cabinet, what are the greatest concerns that you have? What are the scandals that you think people should be focused on?
- [09:44]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, look, to be clear, obviously the personal failings are something to focus on as well. It's as if Trump went out of his way to seek out potential nominees who had an array of allegations against against them as a group. I've never seen so many potential senior officials in the US Government accused of sexual misconduct.
- [10:07]
Tim Miller
It's even the women, even Linda McMahon as part of a cover up related to sexual misconduct.
- [10:11]
Susan Glasser
I mean, come on. Right. It's pretty remarkable. It's as if Trump seeks to benefit from the relativity. Right. If all these other people have been accused of so many terrible things, maybe the terrible things I've been accused of in my personal life won't seem so bad. So I don't mean to minimize those allegations because taken together, they suggest a cabinet that should be disqualified on that basis alone in many instances. Certainly if Trump sought to further annihilate any respect and admiration that Americans would have for senior leadership of their government. One way to do it is to appoint people with such a collective set of alleged moral failings and personal failings. But putting that aside, what's notable to me, and I think it can get lost partially probably by design in the kind of serial controversies, is the collective real extremism of this group of appointees. And in that I think they are very reflective of Trump's own path here. This is where it is a different potential presidency than it was in 2016. If you look at in many of the key positions in 2016, what was Trump seeking to do? He was seeking to reassure a Republican establishment, if not a Democratic one, that was still very uncertain about him. That's why he sought out figures with kind of brand name stamp of approval. People like the CEO of ExxonMobil, Jim Mattis, incredibly not only decorated but admired former four star Marine general. His economic appointees were Wall street leaders who had served in Goldman Sachs, the kind of marquee Wall street brand. So that was Trump 1.0. Trump 2.0 is a collection of essentially MAGA first, second and third tier celebrities whose only claim to the job essentially is a personal loyalty to Trump, an ability to rally and excite his electorate, his bas base and a willingness and even a desire essentially to blow up or as Steve Bannon put it, to take a blowtorch to the very institutions that they're being named to lead. And this is a big shift that may go underappreciated at a moment when we are again understandably focused on gee, is the chief of the Pentagon the largest, most formidable bureaucracy and most powerful military that the world has ever seen. Is this guy capable of managing a 20 person veterans group? No.
- [12:57]
Tim Miller
Let's talk about him. Pete Hegseth, the weekend Fox anchor that is supposedly going to be leading our military, you kind of mentioned in your column about how there's a little bit of an under appreciation for the threats about using the military to go after the enemy within, the quote unquote enemy within and how chilling that is. I also want to talk about the military use with regards to deportations and I want to listen to this is Stephen Miller on Laura Ingraham the other night. And I think that if you listen to his tone, it is out of step with what you are hearing in the prevailing conventional wisdom about what to expect on the deportations issue. Let's listen to Stephen Miller.
- [13:37]
Stephen Miller
Everything in the world, everything in the world is going to change on January 20 because the President of the United States is going to use every single legal, diplomatic and financial tool to halt the entry of all illegal aliens into this country. There will be no benefits. There will be no entry. There will be no asylum. There will be no admission. You may be prosecuted. You will certainly be arrested, and you will absolutely be deported. The entire world, Mexico, Northern Triangle, Central America, South America, Africa, Asia, the Middle east, will get this message. There is no unlawful route to enter the United States of America. Every presidential authority, including his absolute authority under Article 2 to defend the territorial sovereignty of the United States, will be used from the Department of Defense to the Department of Justice to Homeland Security and every single other lawful authority at his disposal.
- [14:32]
Tim Miller
Absolute authority, using the Department of Defense to deal with this issue. Obviously. I think also the cracking down on protest element will be there. What are your thoughts? What are you hearing about having Pete Hegseth in a position where the president will be using the military in this manner?
- [14:47]
Susan Glasser
Well, first of all, I have to say, Tim, listening to that clip, I mean, my blood pressure, my heart is pounding just listening to that rhetoric. It's very, you know, it's very.
- [14:57]
Tim Miller
This is why I wanted to play that, Cliff, because I do think. Don't you think there's like, a lot of, like, change?
- [15:02]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, everything in the world will change. First of all, that's quite a message to send to Trump's reporters. I mean, talk about expectation setting. It's a pretty remarkable expectation setting. I would point out, by the way, that there are laws, and if you followed Stephen Miller's logic there to their extreme, Trump would be violating a whole host of them in order to carry out what Stephen Miller says he's going to do. It is not illegal to seek asylum in this country. And in fact, it is something that is a legal tool available to people who are fleeing persecution and political violence. And, you know, that is, that is who we are as a country. And by the way, it is not illegal to seek asylum in this country. We have a process for determining whether you're eligible for it or not.
- [15:50]
Tim Miller
Yeah, and that is why I wanted to play it, because don't you sense that there's kind of like a, well, is he really going to do it all? You know, like, is he really going to actually do all this? And, you know, even Trump's rhetoric himself was, I mean, again, on the Trump scale and totally outside the bounds of any normal politician. But on Kristen Welker, like, you could see at times how he would try to modulate things, and he's like, throwing a bone at the dreamers and that sort of thing. Stephen Miller going to be in charge of this deal. Him and Tom Holman. And his rhetoric is unmistakable. And I do think it's important to take that very seriously.
- [16:24]
Susan Glasser
Yes, exactly. For sure. I mean, I am amazed at the ability. I think it says something about human nature, human psychology. But the triumph, you might say, of hope over experience when it comes to Donald Trump again and again and again, people believing that he somehow doesn't want to do the things that he's been very clear in saying that he wants to. You know, I spend a fair amount of time with foreign policy types and believe me, you should hear what they say privately. Even many very stringent public critics of Donald Trump, they just can't really believe that he means to do to Ukraine what he's been saying very clearly and what his backers have been saying very clearly that they want to do. You know, they're still talking about, well, maybe he's going to give Ukraine more aid in order to get a bargaining position. Seriously? Seriously. And so who is saying that? More people than you would realize.
- [17:18]
Tim Miller
You don't embarrass anybody. People that should know better. People that should know better.
- [17:22]
Susan Glasser
You know, again, it's, I understand it. When they look at the problem and try to unpack it rationally, they think about things like Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. How do you Vietnamese to the table? Well, you escalate to de. Escalate. Okay, well, is that an option that's really available in the Donald Trump JD Vance world where you're going to somehow send lots more weapons to Ukraine in order to convince Putin that you're serious about making a deal? You know, color us skeptical. Right.
- [17:55]
Tim Miller
Nixon and Kissinger ain't walking through that door on January 20th. That's Trump and Hegseth. It's not the same deal in Tulsi.
- [18:03]
Susan Glasser
Not the same deal. You know, look, is it true that Donald Trump often talks tough and fails to fully deliver? Sure. Ask him where is that entire big beautiful wall with Mexico that Mexico was going to pay for in December of 2016? Well, he often overpromises and under delivers. You could say that that was the motto of his business. And in some ways, it's been part of the motto of his career. Translating the very unfleshed out threats and slogans and tweets of his 2024 campaign into policy will inevitably leave a lot on the table that is not possible to carry on and to execute. But that's a very different phenomenon than the one you're talking about, which is people who just, they pick and choose they see Donald Trump as a sort of I'll just take all the good parts and forget about all the bad parts. And I think that's going to be a recipe for a pretty big disappointment for a lot of people who may have voted for Donald Trump thinking that he was going to reduce the price of eggs, only to find that he's doing a lot of stuff, stuff that they feel that they didn't vote for.
- [19:14]
Tim Miller
Including the opposite, which is maybe increasing grocery prices with tariffs and deportations and extending the Trump tax cuts is not exactly a deflationary agenda. I do want to get back to Heg Seth, though. The other news yesterday was which, you know, because I'm living in reality, which I previewed for people on this podcast yesterday, I was talking to Iowa Republican friends, none of whom thought Joni Ernst was going to be the key person that spiked Heg Seth. In the end, she put out a statement yesterday afternoon. I appreciate Pete Higs responsiveness and respect for the process. Following our encouraging conversations, Pete committed to completing a full audit of the Pentagon and selecting a senior official who will uphold the role and value of our service men and women based on quality and standards, not quotas, etc. Etc. So Joanie seems like she's going to kind of find a rationalization to get there here based on some promise by Pete Hegseth that he won't, you know, ban women from the military. Not surprising, but I think telling of where things are going in Trump's Washington. I just, I wonder how you assess kind of the Heg Seth nomination and what Joni said at this point.
- [20:19]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, look, Hegseth decided to fight and took a page out of the Kavanaugh playbook and, you know, is just sort of brazening through, aided by the kind of MAGA media mob that has proven to be a sort of, you know, the MAGA media mob, which has proven to be a very effective police force for the Senate Republican Conference. These guys are desperate not to be the face of resistance. They all know what happens to the resistors. They're isolated, shunned and forced out of office in Donald Trump's worldview. And so math, however, still math. And they actually have a pretty tight margin here. They can only afford to lose three Republican senators, assuming all Democrats hang together on any individual nomination. And it strikes me that perhaps the Ernst's and Collinses and Murkowskis of the world are waiting, biding their time, hoping that an actual FBI background check, an actual committee process turns up material in writing in fine print that you can't dispute that makes it more possible for them to get rid of this nomination if it actually comes to a vote. I think it will be very hard for these senators to publicly oppose Trump at the very beginning of his presidency. But I don't think it's a done deal yet on Hegseth in particular, because there is a paper trail here. And what are they going to do when they're confronted in writing with that whistleblower report that my colleague Jane Mayer reported about in the New Yorker? I think it's a pretty damning indictment. Hegseth and his allies have misrepresented what these allegations are claiming that it's simply the word of a single disgruntled employee could not be farther from the truth that would be confronted. I think they would. Then the senators would have to confront the fact that Hegseth has been publicly misrepresenting and not telling the truth about what these allegations even are, even since he's been nominated by Trump. So I don't think it's a done deal yet. But I agree with you that anyone who is expecting the Republican Senate to grow is fine and to be in a confrontational mode from Donald Trump from day one. They are totally misreading the politics of this and the situation.
- [22:48]
Tim Miller
It's possible, at least in the case of Tulsi and rfk, that there might have to be a couple more Republicans that dissent because there's some reporting yesterday that Bernie might be open to supporting Tulsi and RFK nomination. I think Fetterman, potentially, at least in the case of RFK as well, I think Cory Booker maybe even allowed some openness. I kind of find that hard to believe, but tbd. All right, guys, let's be real. Wearing hard pants, it's not the greatest. Wearing nice dress pants, stiff, uncomfortable fabric. It's, you know, it's a pain. So I've got a holiday gift for me to you. Those days are finally over. Public Rex Daymaker Pants are here to make sure you stay comfy and classy this season. They feel like your favorite sweats, but look like tailored pants. Super stretchy with an elastic waistband so you can rock them anywhere. Whether you're kicking back with holiday movies, making your way through leftovers, or watching bowl games with the boys, these pants have you covered. Covered. Give the gift of comfort to yourself or someone you love this holiday season with Public Rec's Daymaker pants. And for a limited time, you can get 20% off your entire order with code thebullwarkublicwc.com that's 20% off when you use promo code thebullworkublicwreck.com I grabbed a couple of these. I got some brown pants. I've been trying to move away from khakis. I'm not a khakis man. You know, I'm trying to look for some alternatives out there to the Janes that I've been telling you about. And I love these, like brown public rec pants. They're slim, they look dressy ish. We live in times where people want comfort. All right, that's just, it's post Covid. Donald Trump's going to be president again. You might as well be comfortable. And these brown little public rec pants I got have me looking skinny, comfortable, and I've been wearing them all over the place. So stop suffering in regular pants and give the gift of comfort. This holiday season, for a limited time only, our listeners get 20% off when you use code theBullwork at checkout. That's 20% off with the code theBullwork@Publicwreck.com after you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you say goodbye to pants that put up a fight. Because when comfort meets style, you found public wreck. You did some reporting kind of as is of your expertise, like from abroad. What our allies are saying, what foreign diplomats are saying. There was a delicious quote from a French ambassador in your column about the nomination of two of Trump's daughters, father in laws to ambassadorships, one of whom Charles Kushner, who he had pardoned, the other Tiffany's father in law. I'm wondering what you're just kind of hearing out there about just that, you know, that group broadly also, if anything specifically about Hagseth.
- [25:27]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I mean, I think, look, the world of diplomacy is not shocked this time about Trump. They've been preparing for it. I think maybe some of them have taken some of the Wrong Lessons from Trump 1.0. The current thing that I'm seeing right now in kind of foreign policy land is an absolute proliferation of op eds that all have the theme of here's how Donald Trump, you brilliant man, you could win a Nobel Peace Prize, followed by insert the foreign policy person's favorite policy prescription. And so, I mean, literally, like whether the topic is the Middle east and Iran or it's Ukraine and Russia, you know, there's a lot of dear Donald, you know, I'd love to help get you your Nobel Peace Prize if you only follow my prescription to do exactly the opposite of what you have said you are planning to do. But putting that aside, I think that, you know, there is a view that Trump is pretty transactional. I think there is a fairly clear eyed sense that especially for Europe, that, you know, it's going to be a longer term, almost a structural shift away from the kind of deep partnership that the US has built with its allies in Europe over the last few decades, that that is coming to an end in some way and will be fundamentally rearranged both by our growing economic nationalism and protectionism, which has been true to a limited extent even in the Biden presidency, and also by just absolute louder and louder demands again in both parties that Europe pay more for its own security. So that's, I think, one big realignment that's happening. I think there's a sense of fault lines emerging inside potentially the new Trump administration on issues like what to do about Iran, negotiate or go all in and tough on Iran. Same thing with China. I think there are a real constellation of opinions about China and, you know, some super hawks on China and Taiwan who are going to be entering, entering the Trump administration. But then Trump himself, who, as you know, is constantly wanting to make a deal with Xi, whom I must say I find it hard to believe Donald Trump is ever going to be going to war to defend Taiwan. Very big difference from many of the hawks that he's put inside his own.
- [27:56]
Tim Miller
Administration just for posterity's sake. The quote from Gerard Arad, who is the French ambassador of the US Was in the madness of Trump's nomination, there is expressed the near total contempt for human respect, customs and law. They do it well. They do it well over there.
- [28:10]
Susan Glasser
Girard is a very, very pithy ambassador. And by the way, he was the French ambassador here to Washington in the first Trump term. And I will never forget at the end of Trump's first year in office, his annual holiday party. He hung the Christmas trees upside down in the French ambassador's residence.
- [28:30]
Tim Miller
He has taken a page out of Mrs. Alito's playbook. I want to go back to the Ukraine conversation you were, you were mentioning earlier. There's maybe some gullible hopefulness in some quarters. But, you know, J.D. vance has kind of laid out an outline for what they think a, you know, the end of the war would look like having maybe a demilitarized zone stopping at the current lines of combat, a promise that Ukraine's not going to join NATO. I mean, that would be a clear loss for Ukraine. I've had on the spot, Michael Weiss and Bill Kristol. Recently, I've had several people on the podcast who are not quite as confident as everybody. El seems to be that Putin is actually going to go along with whatever deal Trump wants, that maybe he might think that this is an opportunity to push further. I'm wondering what you are hearing and what you think the state of play is.
- [29:19]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, that's right. I think they're right to spotlight that as being a big question. Why would Putin want to hand Trump an enormous win on the very front end of his presidency? Putin defines his conflict, conflict, and I think it's very important because it's underappreciated here in this country. He says to his own public that he is at war not with Ukraine, but with NATO and the United States. So Putin has defined Russia as being in a state of armed conflict and war with the United States and NATO. And I think that that's an important reminder when thinking about, well, what would cause Putin to stop being in that war now. It's an incredibly costly and painful war. There are literally thousands of Russian casualties every day, every week. It is long term unsustainable, but in the short term, perhaps more sustainable for Russia than for Ukraine. Trump Reminder has promised to end the war in 24 hours. There's essentially no one who believes that that is an actual possibility. At the same time, there is a strong view that we may well see a de escalation, a ceasefire in place. Donald Trump, whatever it, we'll call it the greatest peace deal in the history of time. But it's far, far more likely to be not a peace deal that definitively ends the war so much as a ceasefire that would enable both sides to regroup. The big question is what, if any, security guarantees for Ukraine is Trump and other European allies prepared to offer? Because otherwise, it's simply a pause that enables Putin to rearm and to find new ways of going back after Ukraine after some interval of. And so that part is very, very unclear. Donald Trump, as you know, is a longtime skeptic of NATO, he's a longtime skeptic of Ukraine, and is he really going to commit the United States to securing Ukraine's independence and sovereignty in some meaningful way? I mean, I have a lot of questions about that.
- [31:27]
Tim Miller
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- [33:00]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, it is fitting in many ways that Assad ends up in Moscow. Maybe he'll be getting dinner with Yanukovych, the deposed former leader of Ukraine, and they can commiserate. First of all, of course, it underscores the extent to which Assad really was a client and dependent upon Russia as well as Iran for his survival over these last more than a decade of horrific civil war in Syria. And when his backers withdrew their support, he fell with astonishing speed and rapidity. I think you're right to say we should take a breath and note that this is a good day, whatever comes next. And there are very justifiable reasons to be concerned, skeptical, worried about the future of Syria. This was a horrific, horrific dictatorship and it lasted more than 50 years. You know, I've been really having flashbacks the last few days to the fall of Saddam Hussein, which I covered on the ground for the Washington Post. And I remember interviewing prisoners in the prison that they had been tortured in in the southern city of Basra within hours of their jailers departing. And that for me was an unforgettable experience and a reminder, you know, that this is how these dictatorships rule is, through fear and torture and a kind of repression that is almost hard to imagine. And so I think it's really important to take note of this. Watch the scenes of these prisoners desperately searching in the Sednaya prison in Damascus. It's something really powerful and important that's happening. But to the point about the geopolitics of this, it's going to force Donald Trump to immediately make a series of decisions, and you don't really know what the right answer is going to be. It looks like Iran is seriously weakened. It looks like Russia is seriously weakened. And by the way, not only were they propping up Assad, but they had their major naval base in the region. That was a way for Russia to project power not only in the Middle east, but also into Africa with its mercenaries that were based there. It looks like they're going to be losing that. And I think it's the kind of blow that a more traditional American foreign policy leader, whether Republican or Democrat, would absolutely see opportunity in this. But remember, you know, Trump is the guy who seems to admire the autocrats and adversaries and be very dismissive of the allies. So it's not clear to me what he'll do. You saw his all caps, hands off, not our problem missive the other day on True social. Of course it's our problem and our concern. This very directly concerns America's ally, Israel. It very directly concerns America's interests throughout the region. And it's a little worrisome to have somebody whose basic instinct is to stick their head in the sand or to want to be treating with the dictator, Vladimir Putin, who made that civil war possible for the last few years.
- [36:08]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And it matters to the hundreds of troops that we have still in Syria, which he might not know about or care about. Who knows? The other thing, to me, the other kind of glimmer of hope. And you tried to bring us back into Trump. I'm taking this away from that. All right. We just. It is what it is. We'll see what Trump does with this in January. But you posted a picture of Assad at the Arab League. Like that was in 2023. I guess it was. And to me, this is kind of a lesson about, again, not to be Pollyanna about who ends up taking over Syria or what that looks like, but about the smarties don't always exactly know what's going to happen. And we don't have to submit to just total cynicism in all of these cases, like, positive developments can happen, change can happen. And it's darkly funny that right at the moment that Assad was kind of being welcomed back into the League of Nations, because people are just like, well, I guess there's nothing we can do here. We're stuck with this guy, we're stuck with this butcher. And it is pretty shortly after that moment that he's toppled. And I think there's a lesson there.
- [37:16]
Susan Glasser
No, I mean, that image really has always stuck with me. That was just. I believe in May of 2023 that Assad was welcomed back to the Arab League. There he is featured in that family photo. Remember, many of those leaders in the Middle east are the ones that Donald Trump and his family feel most comfortable with. Those are the hereditary Gulf Arab Arab potentates that he may be well soon making deals with again. But it's also a consequence. It's not just like this happened and it was some sort of miracle from above. I mean, one of the proximate causes of Assad's falling was the backlash and the war that was triggered by Hamas's terrorist attack against Israel on October 7th of last year. And so this is absolutely can only be seen in that context of the dramatic weakening of the quote, unquote, axis of resistance that is Iran and its proxies around the region, Hamas. There's also been the war between Hezbollah and Israel, which now is entering a ceasefire, but has dramatically weakened Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon. Iran itself been weakened. And Syria was a major transit point between Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas. This is where and how the weapons and intelligence, that's how the alliance worked, was through Syria. So it's a major defeat for those powers as a direct result of October 7th. But I do also, I know you want me not to talk about Trump.
- [38:51]
Tim Miller
Here, but do it, do it. It's fine. Just.
- [38:53]
Susan Glasser
No, look, I just. I really think that you're seeing in that true social post from Trump in everything that he says and does is a forget about the big, bad, scary world, except that I am strong, Donald, and I'll be out there defending you in it. But he's redefined America first. He's redefined national security threats as not what happens because of instability in Syria, but what happens here in the United States. And I think this quote that he said in mid October of the campaign did not get nearly enough attention. But to me, it is the story of what he's really going to be doing in this next term. And he was asked about these Ukraine, Russia, whatever. What did he say? He said, we have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China. Russia. Russia and all these countries.
- [39:55]
Tim Miller
That is chilling. I want to just close by circling us back to the topic of the top about the lame duck president because something just said there about how the response to October 7 precipitated a lot of this. You can imagine a different world, a different president where the US President was, I don't know, crowing right now or talking about American influence and how much influence we have in the world. World. Right. I mean like between Ukraine and the assistance we've provided Ukraine and Israel and the assistance we've provided Israel, like the strategy that has been put forth, while obviously not perfect, we're not without flaws. Things to criticize has succeeded in weakening Russia and Iran and their malign influence. And I feel like nobody like wants to give any credit for that. Like the Democrats don't want to because some of them are don't like the way that Israel's conduct the war. Neocon Republicans don't want to give Biden any credit for anything. Maga Republicans obviously don't want to give him credit for anything. Biden doesn't want to take credit. I don't know. It is. I do think it's noteworthy though that we've seen this diminishment of our foes and it's almost like as if the American role there is barely even part of the conversation.
- [41:16]
Susan Glasser
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. It's the squeeze. What's happened as a result is that, you know, Biden, even his foreign policy legacy, for someone who was so experienced as a foreign policy leader who made that a big part of his selling point, it's not clear, you know, that there's anything permanent to look at that says, you know, here's what he accomplished. That's true in Ukraine, despite vast amounts of aid, despite shoring up Ukraine when it mattered, unable to provide sufficient amounts. And you could say, well, that never was possible or conceivable or politically doable. But whatever the reasons, you know, Ukraine is, is not winning that conflict right now and is now facing an American president who seems to want to withdraw support. Same thing in the Middle East. Israel is prevailing, but at enormous and horrific cost. And it's been at a political cost for Biden inside his party. One thing I would spotlight in these next, I think it's about 40 days between now and the inauguration. A lot of chatter about the prospects for a hostage deal with Hamas. There are still, still, it's unclear how many, but there are still living hostages, both Israeli and some American inside Gaza. I'm sure The Biden administration is working all out to make that happen. They really want to have another sort of accomplishment to point to before Trump comes in. I don't know if it's possible or not. We've been living on fumes of false hope for a really long time when it comes to the hostages.
- [42:46]
Tim Miller
Susan Glass, thank you for, you know, reporting on Trump's Washington for me so I don't have to. So I can view it from afar in New Orleans. I appreciate you and hope to have you back. We certainly will have you back in the new year, Tim.
- [43:01]
Susan Glasser
It's great to be with you. If we have to go through this, at least we can talk it through together. And you are an incredible voice. So thank you so much.
- [43:10]
Tim Miller
I look forward to it. Everybody else, stick around. I've got a couple ranks for you. All right, guys. Everybody's talking about Luigi Mangione and Daniel Penny and Penny's acquittal, Luigi's arrest. I want to talk about something in particular that has bugged me about the conversation around these two instances, incidents. It's centered kind of around this word radicalized. It's in vogue these days to talk about how people are being radicalized by events. I feel like this might have started in 2016. Does everything leave back to Trump? Maybe. But how MAGA voters were radicalized by the wars or NAFTA or Brett Kavanaugh, by people being too mean to Mitt Romney and how that rationalized their support for Trump. Robert Evans, who I like a lot as far left of me, but he writes today about how Brian Thompson's killer, Luigi Mangione, was radicalized by his pain, by his back pain. There are so many people I've seen on the right, including Meghan McCain in particular, discuss how they're being radicalized by the treatment of Daniel Penny. I think that all this radicalization talk is just simply fancy excuse making for people who are living in decadent times. It is creating an environment that gives people a rationalization for defending horrible actions or for acting horribly or for voting for somebody that they know is bad. In some cases, it even romanticizes horrible actions as being part of some existential good. We've seen this in the case of Mangione. I want to push back against this, beginning with Luigi. We're going to learn more about this guy's motivations in the coming months. So some of this might be wrong, but we know that he disappeared a couple months ago in November. Family and friends were looking for him, so he possibly had a psychotic break. I don't know. We know he was reading pain books and the X ray of his back. On his Twitter header, we read his little minifesto. I'm not calling it a manifesto. It's like, it's like two pages, okay? It's more of like an outline, a rant. So his little minifesto, he rants about the health insurance industry, but the media he was consuming, if you look at his social media feeds, was not like anti capitalist stuff. It was more kind of like center right podcast, bro, like rfk, Rogan world type stuff. So based on that, you know, we don't know exactly what Luigi's pain was. It may have been debilitating. I saw a report from a roommate that said he couldn't have sex because of it. That's not great. Wouldn't like that. His Goodreads account, as I said, indicates he was kind of searching for solutions for this pain. But it kind of doesn't matter really how bad his pain was in the context of radicalizations. Because in a world where, where people are putting out everything as romantic super cuts about a killer because he's got abs and trauma, then that gives everyone a rationale to kill. That gives everyone the opportunity to feel like they can become famous if they kill. I mean, have you seen these things? It is way over the top and it is leading us to a very bad place. This is not a world that we want to live in where you get to rationalize your pain, your trauma, the bad experiences of your life into vigilante murder. I'm sorry to be harsh about this, but Luigi's got pain, you got pain, Everybody's got pain. All right? This type of radicalization, origin story could justify basically anything. All right? You could imagine me doing something like this. A decade of being indoctrinated by teachers and priests telling me that I was a sinner who needed to deny myself alone love and be alienated from my family. If I was going to, you know, do what I felt was right for me, that wasn't great. That felt painful. You might say it was radicalizing even. I don't get to kill the archbishop over it. All right? I've got middle aged guy pals who deal with really horrible, like, debilitating pain from past accidents that they were in when we were younger or bad genes. I feel horrible for them. I wish I could do more to help them alleviate it. I don't wish that they could start capping fools, all right? If you get in a car wreck and somebody rear ends you and you have long Term back pain. You don't get to go kill the CEO of Ford or the person that rear ended you like that is bad luck. It sucks. It's life. The US health industry also kind of sucks. Plenty of people have had bad experiences with it. US healthcare system also performs miracles every day. There is this romanticization of healthcare systems abroad. And let me tell you, healthcare systems abroad have bad outcomes too. You know, I was reading Noah Smith's column about this where he's talking about how people have various complaints about the way that the system works in Australia and in England, which are. Which have more socialized healthcare systems. You know, there are dehumanizing ways that we treat people in our healthcare system and that people are treated that way elsewhere. Elsewhere. Any system of care is going to lead to bad outcomes. All of us eventually get pain. All of us eventually die. Sometimes the system can't do for people what we wish it could. Does that mean that we just accept those bad outcomes? No. Should we have serious discussions about how to reform it and make it better? Yeah. Should we raise awareness about particular areas of our health care system that don't work? Should we steal ideas from other countries where certain parts of their system work better? Should politicians campaign against the failures? Should you write polemics about healthcare executives that inspire change? Sure. All of that. Sure. Murder on the street? No. And that takes me to Daniel Penny. This is another thorny, complicated situation in life that people don't like to contend with. My colleague Kathy Young wrote about the complexity of this case a while back for the Bulwark. I'll put the link in the show notes, but the short of it is this. Jordan Neely was on the subway acting erratic. He was threatening and menacing people. He had a history of such behavior. In this instance, Penny intervened, tried to subdue him as a result of that exchange where other people, by the way, came and helped Daniel Penney, including a black person. For those who want to make this all about race, Jordan Neely died. This scenario is a tragedy. Daniel Penny is not really a hero in any meaningful sense. He's not a premeditated murderer, obviously. He's a guy who tried to restrain a threat and ended up killing the person that was the threat. It is a tragedy that I'm sure will haunt him and that will haunt the family of Jordan. Neil Mealy. This is not a hero villain story in our woke culture wars. There's nothing that should be radicalizing about this. This is a up situation that happens in life. There's just something childish, I think about all this, I can kind of talk about people getting radicalized by things like this. That, like, people want to be characters in a children's story. They want a Robin Hood, a good guy and a bad guy, a evil monster who must be toppled. They want Avengers to come and right all of the wrongs that have been done by them. I get that impulse, but Donald Trump is not bringing the coal jobs back. Okay. Just because you were radicalized because you live in the Rust Belt and your towns have been hollowed out, like there are ways to fix that. Deciding that a total Griffith should be the president isn't going to do it. I'm sorry. We don't live in a fairy tale. Brian Thompson's murder. It isn't ushering in a new era of more humane socialist healthcare. I'm sorry, Red Rose, Twitter. That's not how this stuff works. Things are complicated. There are tragedies in life. We all need to work together as a society to try to improve them gradually over time. That's the solution to all of this. It is not as satisfying as being in a superhero movie. Or, you know, it is not as satisfying as saying like, hell, yeah. Ripped abs guy. Taking down the man. It's hard. It's complicated. It requires dealing with gray areas and recognizing that sometimes people get boned by life. It doesn't mean we shouldn't have empathy for them. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to fix things. It just means that we should be serious about it and not try to tear down the fabric of our society by putting in a cacistocracy to run the country or by supporting random vigilante murders against rich people we don't like because we think that's going to make everything better. It's not. It's taking us towards a dystopia and we should resist it. Okay, I'll be back here tomorrow. We got another double header on the Bulwark podcast. Friend of the pod. Very much looking forward to it. I'm over. Some people might have noticed this on YouTube. We had a little with a little mix up with a little communications error. I'm going to have Scott Galloway on this pod sometime soon. I'm on Scott Galloway's pod today, so you guys should go check that out as well. He's great. We're going to have a nice exchange for everybody else. We'll see you right back here tomorrow. Appreciate you very much.
- [52:40]
Musical Artist
Peace Bad tattoos on never turn skin Jesus Christ on a plastic sign.
- [52:48]
Tim Miller
Fall.
- [52:48]
Musical Artist
In love again and again Whining roads doing manual drive Bad tattoos on leather tan skin Jesus Christ on a plastic sign early nights in white sheets with lace curtains Capri in the distance Tattoos on leather tan skin Jesus Christ on a plastic sign all in love again in the game Winding roads through manual drive Bad tattoos on leather tan skin Jesus Christ on a plastic sign all in love and gain in a game Winding road through manual drive early nights and white sheets of lace curtains Capri in the distance In a place that can make you change Fall in love again and again early nights and white sheets of lace curtains Carp in the day distance in a place that can make you change all in life Everything is romantic Everything is romantic Everything is.
- [53:58]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. Lights are going up. Snow is falling down. There's a feeling of goodwill around town. It could only mean one thing. McRib is here. People throwing parties. Ugly sword sweaters everywhere. Stockings hung up by the chimney with care. It could only mean one thing.
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G
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Tim Miller
I'm thirsty.
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Tim Miller
Feel more seasonal in here already.
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Tim Miller
Tis the season to be jollier.
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Tim Miller
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