← The Bulwark
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- [00:02]
A
Hi, Bill Kristol here. Pleased to be joined for this bulwark on Sunday by Tom Joslin. We've done this a few times, lead author of the January 6 committee report a few years ago and been writing and speaking about the Trump administration's version of, well, not version of the Trump administration, which turns out to be the January 6th administration, as Tom and I both discussed, I think maybe over a year ago on this podcast. And both of us have written about. I mean, they, one of the first things he did was pardon all the January 6th or give clemency to a few, but all the January 6th insurgents and assailants, right. I mean, and now here we are a year and a half later, and what I want to talk about is it's, it seems like the, let's call it the January 6th type agenda, the authoritarian agenda, is chugging right ahead. I mean, Trump, for all of his occasional tax to, you know, not doing something too unpopular. This week, he nominated Bill Pulte to be Director of National Intelligence. Nominated. Well, selected him because to make the acting Director of National Intelligence, so there's no confirmation issue. Nominated Todd Blanche to be Attorney General. Both things that even a couple of weeks ago, a lot of people who were watching the administration, I think, wouldn't have expected kind of bold moves towards just saying, you know what it's all about loyalty to me and me grabbing power. But I don't know if people really come to grips with the implications of, of those two moves as well as others. That's what I want Tom to explain to us. So where are we here? A year and a half in.
- [01:34]
B
Yeah, you know, I don't know why anyone would be surprised by any nominations at this point. I mean, you know, part of what we talked about when we talked about this being the January 6th administration, is that Trump was going to pick up where he left off. And the lesson of January 6 was that if he has people around whom are going to say no, who aren't total sycophants, who aren't total loyalists all the way, you know, bend the knee no matter what, that his plans can get interrupted. Right. The people could throw up roadblocks, whether it be Vice President Pence or Department of justice officials or state officials or anyone. Right. And so what he's been doing is looking for loyalists and installing loyalists everywhere he can. And, you know, with Pulte and Blanche, those are two loyalists. These aren't guys who are going to be put in these positions because of their expertise. It's not because of their Savvy. It's not because they have some great agenda that's going to serve America. It's purely about serv. Trump's interests. And that's why we have to ask, you know, a few months out from the midterms and then ultimately a couple years out from 2028, what exactly are those interests?
- [02:29]
A
That's well said. I mean, let's talk about Pulte, who's the most astonishing selection since he's, you know, utterly unqualified for the job and really unlike anyone who's ever served in that position. Let's talk a little bit, you know, the intelligence community. Well, you did a lot of work in the back of the day on counterterrorism against. Against ISIS and Al Qaeda, and. No, you know, dealt a lot with the parts of the intelligence community. I'm not going to actually talk about that. But, I mean, what does it mean to be that he's director? Why. Why is it important to Trump to have Bill Pulte, of all people, as Director of National Intelligence?
- [03:00]
B
Well, you know, I've been critical of having an ODNI for years. You know, I don't even think we need one. You know, I think this was just sort of adding a layer of bureaucracy. But, you know, I think it's important to put into context a little bit before Pulte. You know, Tulsi Gabber was. Was the Director of National Intelligence. Right. And, you know, what she's been doing is she turned odni, this Ministry of Truth, this propaganda organ for Trump. And I was just reviewing some of the stuff that she put out, you know, as odni. You know, for example, she put out these memos where she was accusing the Obama administration of basically subverting Trump's election victory in 2016. She put all these memos, and I put them out. And obviously, readers can't see what I'm holding here, but take my word for it. What it's based on is this idea that the intelligence community found before the election and then after the election that, you know, Russia had not hacked our machines and flip votes, Right? And she says, well, that's what they were saying before and after the election. And then they come out with this intelligence assessment saying Russia did interfere, so therefore they flipped this whole story on them to try and, you know, frame Trump and to basically undermine Trump's victory. It's all nonsense. I mean, it's a really stupid claim, because the intelligence assessments that were done under the Obama administration as Obama was heading out in late 2016, into early 2017 held constant that, you know, Russia did not hack machines and flip votes. Russia interfered in other ways, which is what those assessments said. But be that as it may, Tulsi Gabbard went forward with this ridiculous propaganda claim that basically the Obama administration had committed treason on the way out. Now, it's not a really full fleshed theory. It's kind of nonsense, but that's what. It's definitely nonsense, but that's what she did. Now flash forward a little bit further. Remember, you know, some months ago, she took part and supported the election raid in Fulton County. This was the raid on getting full county ballots and all the other election materials. You know, she said before the Senate, I think it was, that Trump asked her to attend that route, that raid, which is crazy. You know, they're taking up all these ballots, everything else. And you have to ask yourself, so now you've. You're trying to undermine, you know, what the Obama administration and what the Democrats were doing around the 2016 election, trying to say that they were doing something, you know, treasonous. Then you're trying to undermine the credibility of the 2020 election. Now comes in, which Trump lost. Now you have Pulte coming in. And what Trump says about Pulte is, well, and he said this directly. We may find out more about the 2020 election, how it was rigged. This is what Trump said about Pulte being put in this. In this place. So that's one of the things I think Trump expects from that Pulte, as. As the sycophant, as this loyalist is going to carry water for him and basically continue lying about the 2020 election. And the question then becomes, to what gain, right? Is this more than just the sort of the. The stupid propaganda that he's putting out, or is this really part of some attempt to undermine the midterms and ultimately 2028?
- [05:39]
A
Well, just. And. And the reason it could be, and is, in my opinion, is the excuse for the Gabbard gave and the excuse Trump loyalists will give for. Why is the Director of National Intelligence involved in this at all? This is not a foreign policy, you know, issue. It's not a Director of National Intelligence supervises the CIA, the nsa, all these organizations that are not supposed to meddle in domestic politics. Whenever you think of the FBI going out to Fulton County, Georgia, in theory, if there were law enforcement issues, the FBI could show up somewhere and say, we need to examine something. I mean, it was nonsense. But. And the reason the excuse, though, is foreign interference. Right? This is one reason I Mean, they both want to deny there was any Russian interference, but they need to claim, I think going forward the possibility or the threat or the attempt of foreign interference. Maybe it's Iran, maybe it's China.
- [06:24]
B
They can.
- [06:25]
A
But she, she controlled. And then Pulte now will control these assessments which do then justify because it is true. I mean, in theory, it's the national government would have to deal with foreign interference. You can't really ask the state of Georgia. It doesn' have the capacity to judge intercepts about whether they are interfering in the election or doing some of this. So that's the excuse and that's why Pulte matters. Right. The excuse of foreign interference is the ground for getting our intelligence community involved in election supervision and maybe election subversion.
- [06:58]
B
Yeah, I mean, this is beyond excuse. It's a pretext to do what they want to do.
- [07:03]
A
Right.
- [07:03]
B
The idea going Back to Pre January 6, in the months between the election in 2020 and January 6, 2021, one of the conspiracy theories that they favored was this idea that China or others had somehow interfered on Joe Biden's behalf in a way that tilted the game against Trump. And it never added up. None of the assessments by ODNI or anyone else who briefed Trump or others at that time backed up that claim. In fact, you know, Trump fired Chris Krebs, the head of sisa, you know, because why? Because he wouldn't back up his claims that there were any kind of anything, anything happened with the machines with foreign intelligence or anything else.
- [07:36]
A
CESA is the agency that super that actually monitors and supervises this.
- [07:40]
B
Yes, it's the cyber something or other, you know, anyway, you know, but it's one of those four, four letter acronym agencies. But, you know, so now going forward, what we've seen from Trump is a couple executive orders and bunch of statements where he wants the federal government, his executive branch, to take control of or have power over elections. Federal elections. Now we know under the elections clause of the Constitution, that's a big no, no. But the states have power over the elections and Congress can weigh in, but the executive branch and the presidency has no say over. Over federal elections. Done. Zero. And so what this is is looking for a pretext by saying, well, you know, there was this foreign interference from China or whoever. Therefore we have to get involved. As you were saying, Bill, we have to get involved and make sure that there's no such interference going forward and really secure our elections. It's a completely Orwellian way of looking at it. Right. It's Flipping the truth on its head. We're going to invent this lie in order to justify what we want to do, which is a complete abrogation of the constitutional authority.
- [08:34]
A
I mean, one hopes that people in the national intelligence community won't go along with this. And we don't know, I guess, really what's going on in there. There have been some firings. Dod, there are many firings. We'll get to that in a minute. Maybe about sort of the whole question of how much they can succeed in their efforts to do whatever they want to do in 2026 and 2028. But before we get to that, let's talk about Todd Blanche, the other big nomination news of the week. Trump's former personal lawyer and then has been serving as Deputy AG for a year and a half now, is nominated to be the full time, the, the, the actual attorney General. Not, not the act, not the, he's now acting Attorney general. With the departure of Bondi, nominated to be the actual, so to speak, attorney General. Again, people are focused on the dictative prosecutions that he's been doing to, to please Trump. And I think that's worth, we've talked about them elsewhere, but I talk a little bit, but I'm struck also, DOJ is also involved in trying to get its hands on voter rolls and do other things that lay the groundwork for saying, oh, well, the vote here looks suspicious. We have to go in and recount the ballots. I'm making this up, but, I mean, you know, not make it up. I'm saying there, there are many, many, many ways this could happen. It's hard to game out all the scenarios, but say a word about what a Todd Blanch as attorney general might do in this case.
- [09:51]
B
Yeah, I mean, he's another loyalist. I mean, even under Pam Bondi, the DOJ was doing what Trump wanted the department to do with respect to elections. And I think what you're, what you're driving toward, Bill, is you, we have to take seriously that they have something nefarious afoot, that Trump really is going to use all the powers, the levers he has across the executive branch to do something crazy when it comes to elections because he's entertained crazy stuff all along, including up to January, including January 6th. And he's not bound by the Constitution or anything else. And what DOJ has been doing under bonding now, Blanche is basically harassing states for their voter rolls to get all this data they want to put into like a centralized federal database for voters and then tell states who are citizens who aren't, who basically who can vote and who can't. That's essentially what they want to do. And they've run into a lot of roadblocks in the courts and some states have told them to pound sand. They're not going to do it. But that's what they're driving toward. That's what they want to do with this, is they want to accumulate all this data. To what end? Right. To basically tell, say, who can vote and who can and to sort of cook the books. Now, again, as you said, they may or may not succeed in that regard. But it's another branch of the, the federal government, another executive branch that's pushing toward Trump's will. And Todd Blanche is a guy who's going to do that. He's not going to say no. Todd Blanche is already going after Trump's political, perceived political foes. Todd Blanche helped cover up the Epstein files, of course, and has had unbelievable statements he's made on the record about the Epstein files. Crazy stuff that just doesn't add up. And so this is not, and he was of course, Trump's personal attorney. He's not going to say no to Trump. If Trump wants to keep pushing in any way, these that really friends the state.