Bill Kristol: Stop the Stupid Infighting, Dems

Summary

The Bulwark Daily – Episode Summary

Episode Title: Bill Kristol: Stop the Stupid Infighting, Dems
Date: August 3, 2026
Host: Tim Miller
Guests: Bill Kristol, Margaret Donovan (occasional), Nicole Saphier
Key Theme: A sweeping, candid review of two tumultuous political weeks: Trump administration scandals, Congressional dysfunction, the widening Iran war, Democratic missteps, and why Democrats must unify and focus on fighting Trumpism rather than infighting.

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Episode Overview

The episode provides an unflinching inventory of political chaos during Tim Miller’s vacation: escalating Trump administration corruption, the disastrous Iran war and its global repercussions, faltering Democratic strategies in Congress, GOP moral collapse, and anxiety-riddled Democratic primaries. In a packed conversation with Bill Kristol and comments from Nicole Saphier and Margaret Donovan, Miller and guests urge Democrats to refocus on the existential threat of Trump rather than petty internal squabbles.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Cascading Trump Administration Scandals

(01:41–07:05)

• Summary of Developments:
  • Escalating US casualties in the Iran war; Brent crude spikes above $100/barrel.
  • Cyberattacks targeting U.S. water supply—likely Iranian—inexplicably blamed by Trump on Minnesota.
  • U.S. bails out Japan due to war-induced economic chaos in Asia.
  • Trump’s nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, continuing autocratic abuses.
  • Corruption and incompetence: Jay Clayton appointed DNI despite no experience, Blanche’s DOJ nomination mired in controversy, Secret Service illegal surveillance on Jim Comey (re. “seashells”).
  • Trump family accused of taking bribes through early access to social media “market-moving” posts.
  • DOJ admits “reflecting pool vandalism” was shoddy work, not a crime.
  • Sweeping anti-immigrant crackdowns and moves to deport Haitians to a crisis zone.
  • Federal encouragement to deny asylum hearings; resignations in protest.

Bill Kristol [05:13]:
"A lot of corruption, a lot of lying, a lot of bad government... it does give you a sense of the magnitude and the breadth and depth... of what's happening in the Trump administration. The lying, the corruption. It's not one little place."

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2. Scale and Systemic Nature of Corruption

(07:05–13:50)

• Not Just the Top:
  • Corrupt practices have spread across all agencies, not just the White House.
  • MAGA loyalists now fill multiple layers of government (Department of the Interior, DOJ, FBI, etc.).
  • Even prosecution of political enemies (reflecting pool case; Comey surveillance) is driven from the top and executed down the chain.

Tim Miller [09:32]:
"The graft that is happening in this administration is uncomparable to the first term. And extremely uncomparable to anything else in modern American history."

• Senate Confirmations as a Sham:
  • Senate cave-in on controversial appointees like Blanche (DOJ), Clayton (DNI), Hegseth (Defense), Mullen (DHS), and Patel (FBI).
  • GOP claims “if we don’t confirm him, who knows, Trump could pick someone worse”—abdication of accountability.

Kristol [10:15]:
"We have now Blanche of Justice, Clayton at ODNI, Hegseth at Defense, Markwayne Mullen at DHS, and Patel at FBI—key national security agencies all involved in justifying corruption, lawlessness, election subversion..."

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3. Dangers for American Security

(11:53–14:43)

• Incompetent Security Leadership:
  • Security posts filled by loyalists lacking competence, e.g., Hegseth (Defense), Jay Clayton (DNI), Kash Patel (FBI).
  • Reports of leaks, mismanagement, and lack of preparedness for homeland and allied security.
  • Trump administration’s “imperial” record abroad: stuck in Iran war, regional instability, weakening alliances.

Kristol [13:50]:
"Very aggressive authoritarianism at home...abroad, sort of incompetent imperialism, if you want to call it that."

Nicole Saphier [12:24]:
"We're not prepared now for counterattacks against us, against the homeland, against allies in the region."

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4. Political Implications for Democrats

(14:43–17:08)

• Republican Abandonment of Oversight:
  • Only two Republicans, both retiring, offered minimal resistance to corrupt DOJ nominee Blanche—then folded.
• Key Message for Dems:
  • Democrats must hammer home that only a Democratic Congress will check Trump.

Bill Kristol [15:13]:
"A Republican Congress will never stand up to Trump. You don't like Trump—Trump has hit the Bush line, Trump has a 34% approval. You want him checked. ...But we will check Trump and the Republicans won't."

• The Fake "Fig Leaf" Document:
  • Sham paperwork supposedly limiting abuse of DOJ funds, with no real oversight mechanism—just more GOP enabling.

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5. Democrats’ Continuing Resolution (CR) Blunder & Voter Frustration

(17:15–20:54)

• Bipartisan Spending Bill Criticized:
  • Dems join GOP to pass a short-term spending bill funding Trump’s government, with virtually nothing in return.
  • No safeguards on ICE, unlimited war funding, money funneled to Trump pet projects.

Tim Miller [18:06]:
"Why would the Democrats go along with anything?...Let them have the shutdown fight...Not one cent would be my position."

• Disconnect from Voters:
  • Miller and Kristol argue these moves explain progressive/protest voter frustrations (e.g., Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed surge).

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6. Republican and Military Accountability—Dan Sullivan Critique

(23:03–26:12)

• Case Study: Dan Sullivan:
  • Alaska GOP Senator, chair of International Republican Institute (“Advancing democracy worldwide”), is silent on Trump’s anti-democratic actions and the Iran debacle.
  • Indicates moral collapse as even “responsible” GOP foreign policy hands now go along quietly.

Tim Miller [24:44]:
"Dan Sullivan: Is there a more pathetic figure than him? ...He goes along with everything Trump wants to do...No complaints about the election, the war, nothing."

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7. Iran War Escalation & Foreign Policy Fallout

(26:23–32:15)

• Dangerous Spiral:
  • Regional war widening; Russia now aiding Iran, Ukraine conflict intersects, Saudis plead for restraint, U.S. alliances crumbling.
• Desperation in U.S. Defense Circles:
  • Internal memos call for "creative, unconventional ways to pressure Iran"—reflecting confusion and lack of direction.
• Corruption Infects Military Hierarchy:
  • Accounts of political maneuvering for top jobs, potential corrosion of military professionalism (New York Times exposé on Chief of Naval Operations appointment).

Bill Kristol [29:55]:
"The way in which the Chief of Naval Operations got the job is horrifying...basically the worst kind of political campaigning for this job, which worked, and now he's head of Naval Operations."

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8. Authoritarian Tactics: Surveillance and Abuse of Power

(34:05–37:33)

• Jim Comey Surveillance Scandal:
  • Secret Service, at Trump’s direction, illegally surveils former FBI director.
  • Brazen, comical, yet chilling echo of Watergate—shows deeper bureaucratic capture.

Kristol [36:01]:
"It is worse than Watergate...in Watergate, they couldn’t really penetrate the agencies quite that well."

• Implications for the Rule of Law:
  • Buffoonishness does not lessen the danger; continual subversion of democratic norms.

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9. GOP Hypocrisy and Abuse: Max Miller Story

(37:32–43:02)

• Domestic Abuse Allegations:
  • Max Miller (OH Rep.), close Trump ally, faces serious allegations from Republican women, scant GOP response.
  • Miller’s defense is callous and disturbing ("If I had assaulted her, would she have cooked me empanadas?").
  • Other party scandals (Epstein, sexual abusers) round out a portrait of GOP moral rot.

Tim Miller [41:38]:
"If I had assaulted her, would she have cooked me empanadas? I mean, like, this is like from a fucking 80s movie villain."

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10. Generational Reckoning: McConnell, Incapacitated Elders and Senate Dysfunction

(43:36–45:44)

• Mitch McConnell Absent:
  • Public has no knowledge of McConnell's condition; the U.S. Senate allows indefinite medical leave.
  • General frustration with Congress dominated by feeble or absent seniors.

Margaret Donovan [44:54]:
"We are going to have...a massive generational rebellion against the old people in both parties...you cannot just have the attitude of you’re there forever till you become feeble and die."

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11. Polling Collapse for Trump: "Bush Line" Moment

(46:32–49:10)

• Multiple Polls Put Trump at 34% Approval:
  • For Kristol/Miller, a key inflection point: Trump’s sliding numbers mean the Senate is in play.

Kristol [46:51]:
"A couple of them of registered voters...all four of them under 35%. I mean, that's pretty astonishing. That's really a drop..."

• Dems’ Core Message:
  • Hammer Republican complicity, avoid distraction with bipartisan deals, and center the threat of Trump.

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12. Democratic Infighting: Miller & Kristol’s Unified Plea

(48:00–50:15)

• Stop the "Stupid Internal Fights":
  • Democratic factional and personal conflict is dangerous, “almost irresponsible.”
  • Remain focused: The 2026 midterm is not about choosing between progressivism and centrism, but about checking Trumpism.

Miller [48:20]:
"A pox on both sides, or all the sides, of the fight within the Democratic side. ...that's not what the 2026 election is about."

Kristol [49:02]:
"It is the most important thing."

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Bill Kristol [15:13]:
  • "A Republican Congress will never stand up to Trump... We will check Trump, Republicans won't."
• Tim Miller [13:32]:
  • "We're not prepared now for counter attacks against us, against the homeland, against allies in the region."
• Nicole Saphier [36:23]:
  • "The total assault on civil liberties in this country and the authoritarian nature of it—Jim Comey should not be spied on because the president doesn't like him. That's what was happening."
• Tim Miller [48:17]:
  • "I find it almost irresponsible. And I think that it's a pox on both sides or all the sides of the fight within the Democratic side."
• Kristol [49:37]:
  • "The political imperative and the substantive imperative are the same."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:41–07:05: Rundown of past two weeks’ scandals
• 07:05–13:50: Scale of corruption, government-wide
• 13:50–17:08: National security implications, dangers of loyalist staffing
• 17:15–20:54: CR/budget news, Democratic rank-and-file anger
• 23:03–26:12: GOP Senators’ complicity, Dan Sullivan critique
• 26:23–32:15: Iran war escalation and U.S. military risks
• 34:05–37:33: Surveillance of Comey, broader authoritarian tactics
• 37:32–43:02: Max Miller scandal, hypocrisy in Trump’s GOP
• 43:36–45:44: McConnell absence, generational accountability in Congress
• 46:32–49:10: Trump polling collapse, strategic focus for Dems
• 48:00–50:15: Plea for Democratic unity, rejection of infighting

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Tone and Style

Cynical, ironic, and at times darkly humorous—direct, urgent, and frequently explicit in language and calls for accountability. The hosts are frustrated, alternately shocked and resigned, but insistently focused on the existential threat posed by the Trump presidency.

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Conclusion & Takeaways

Big Picture:

• The Trump administration is more corrupt and unrestrained than at any point in history or in his first term.
• GOP “oversight” is dead; only Democrats, however imperfect, can serve as a check.
• Democrats must resist the urge to fall into destructive infighting and keep the focus on defeating Trump and his enablers.
• Both subtle and overt authoritarian tactics are metastasizing throughout government agencies—remaining vigilant is essential.
• The primary battle in Michigan (and others) represents legitimate tensions but must not degenerate into sectarian warfare; keep sight of the common enemy.
• The 2026 midterm is a referendum on Trump; unity and message discipline are crucial.

Kristol [49:02]:

"It is not just politically useful to make it about Trump because he's at 34%. It is correct to make it about Trump. It is the most important thing."

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For listeners who missed the episode:
This installment lays bare the magnitude of government-wide dysfunction and looming threats under the current administration, while delivering a forceful plea to the pro-democracy camp: focus on the urgent, unite against Trumpism, and “stop the stupid infighting, Dems.”

Transcript

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[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily.

[Nicole Saphier]

We'll get to that.

[Tim Miller]

I'm Tim Miller. Thanks so much to everybody who sat in while I was away. You know, we brought Fever Dreams back. You know, Sarah did multiple heads, Bill is everywhere, Bill Crystal doing multiple podcasts for me.

[Nicole Saphier]

So I appreciate that. Appreciate the POD production team for working while I was getting tan.

[Tim Miller]

We'll do a little vacation talk, explain

[Nicole Saphier]

the new POD logo and name, and I got some thoughts on the Michigan elections. We'll do all that at the end. But first, it's Monday. And so he's back again.

[Tim Miller]

It's Bill Kristol. Hey, Bill.

[Bill Kristol]

Good to be with you, Tim. We missed you. The audience missed you. Everyone was all anyone could talk about. There are two main topics here. Where's Tim Miller and the Odyssey? They were close.

[Tim Miller]

I don't believe that's true. I really tried to bubble myself as

[Nicole Saphier]

much as possible while I was gone. And so thanks to the producers here, thanks to Ansley, I really pulled together

[Tim Miller]

a list of the things that happened since I bubbled myself. And I just kind of want to go through them with you and then we can pick whichever topic you want

[Nicole Saphier]

to start with, you feel like is most pressing.

[Tim Miller]

Two weeks I was going more US Casualties in the Iran war, which was

[Nicole Saphier]

supposed to be over very quick as I recall.

[Tim Miller]

Number of service members killed in the

[Nicole Saphier]

war is now up to 18.

[Tim Miller]

The regional war is expanding. Trump is pretending like we're close to

[Nicole Saphier]

a deal again, but I guess last week had promised the biggest attack since World War II. So that's kind of a little bit same as it ever was with what's going on with the Iran war.

[Tim Miller]

Brent crude did get back over $100 a barrel. While it was gone, there were cyber attacks on our water supply that experts say point to Iran. But Trump said it was Minnesota that did it. So that's concerning the Saudis. We have a deal with the Saudis to go nuclear.

[Nicole Saphier]

That doesn't seem great. They're still imprisoning foes of the regime. I don't really know if we want them having a nuclear weapon.

[Tim Miller]

We're bailing out Japan for some reason. Jay Clayton, a man with no experience for the job and no integr. He was tapped to lead dni. The GOP centers all went along with it because he was better than the other person that they had previously put up who had less experience and less integrity. Todd Blanche was on the ropes for a second. The Secret Service illegally surveilled Jim Comey over the seashells. We found out Trump's social media company is now giving early access to his market, moving tweets to banking clients. So otherwise known as taking bribes, the Trump family is taking bribes to give financiers early access to his announcements. The DOJ admits that the reflecting pool problems were caused by shoddy work, not vandalism. So they dropped the case against an innocent man they were going to put in jail for 10 years for going after the reflecting pool. Even after they dropped the case, Trump administration officials are still pretending like the

[Nicole Saphier]

vandalism was happening and doubling down against the people that they had falsely accused.

[Tim Miller]

Federal agents around the country were told that the FBI would no longer investigate confrontations with immigration agents. The Trump administration has launched plans to channel more asylum seekers into deportation proceedings without hearings. The Haitians are going to be deported.

[Nicole Saphier]

Their plans for that putting them on deportation flights back to crisis stricken Haiti.

[Tim Miller]

That's coming. The executive director of the Office of Homeland Security Statistics resigned, saying that there is a war on immigrants and they're using the statistics for ill. Trump kind of sort of hit the Bush line. Socialism is coming back to the upper

[Nicole Saphier]

Midwest and I don't even want to know what's happening at the dnc, tried to brief me, and I don't. I want to continue bubbled from whatever's happening there.

[Tim Miller]

So that's, that's a summary. Where, where, where do you want to start? Does that cover everything? Was there something I felt, you feel like I missed?

[Bill Kristol]

I think those are the high points,

[Margaret Donovan]

or maybe we should say the low points.

[Bill Kristol]

Right?

[Nicole Saphier]

Yeah, low and low.

[Bill Kristol]

A lot of corruption, a lot of lying, a lot of bad government. And you know, what's good about that list, actually, which I hadn't really thought

[Margaret Donovan]

of since I have been kind of

[Bill Kristol]

following it stupidly, you know, getting too

[Margaret Donovan]

involved day to day is it does

[Bill Kristol]

give you a sense of the magnitude

[Margaret Donovan]

and the breadth and depth, I guess, is the way I put it, of what's happening in the Trump administration. You know, the lying, the corruption. It's not one little place.

[Bill Kristol]

It's not just the White House.

[Margaret Donovan]

It's not one department, Department of Interior, who thought about them at all.

[Bill Kristol]

It turns out Doug Burgum is also,

[Margaret Donovan]

you know, lying, or his people are lying to the Justice Department and they're

[Bill Kristol]

all together lying to the court.

[Margaret Donovan]

And then.

[Bill Kristol]

And the Secret Service is calling the Air Force One to report on Jim Kobe. I mean, the degree of.

[Margaret Donovan]

It's bad, it's bad. That's my conclusion.

[Tim Miller]

The way that the corruption and just

[Nicole Saphier]

the incompetence all ties together, it's like looking at the list, I cheekily said we're bailing out Japan for some reason.

[Tim Miller]

We're really bailing them out because of the Iran war.

[Margaret Donovan]

Right.

[Nicole Saphier]

Honestly, because we got into a stupid war. And the Japanese yen is now down to the lowest point it's been since the 80s. And that a lot of Asian countries, including our allies, are having oil crises because it's more acute for them as far as receiving oil for the oil that goes to the Strait of Hormuz versus how it impacts us domestically.

[Tim Miller]

So all these things, the insider dealing,

[Nicole Saphier]

the insider trailing, it ties to the Blanche story, which I papered over because

[Tim Miller]

I think that's what we should start on first. Ostensibly, the objection to Blanche, which was,

[Nicole Saphier]

I guess maybe the one besides Trump hitting the Bush line. The one green shoot from the news update from the last two weeks was that Blanche had been briefly held up by Republicans in the Senate because they're like, this slush fund is too far.

[Tim Miller]

This is like Trump family taking bribes through his social media company. That's no big deal. Or taking bribes from Middle Eastern countries

[Nicole Saphier]

that now we're giving nuclear access to

[Tim Miller]

that's not a big deal.

[Nicole Saphier]

But Trump literally taking tax dollars and giving it to insurrectionists was a step too far for two Republicans.

[Tim Miller]

And so last night, Cornyn and Tillis

[Nicole Saphier]

fold on this because Blanche has promised, put out on a piece of paper, the Sledge Fund is not going to go forward. Money isn't going to be dispersed to allies of the administration. But they did not do anything to take back Trump being able to avoid being audited for his taxes.

[Margaret Donovan]

And the idea that this was the only reason to object to, or really,

[Bill Kristol]

honestly even the main reason, it was

[Margaret Donovan]

one that they latched onto, and it was good that they did, I guess. And I was happy when they were objecting to Blanche. It would have been better that he not be Attorney General. But, I mean, as you said, he's busy prosecuting innocent people, not prosecuting ICE agents who are attacking both American citizens and people who are here lawfully and for that matter, people who are here in an undocumented way, but minding their own business and living peacefully. The Epstein thing, unbelievable. And the meeting you had with the

[Bill Kristol]

Epstein survivors, maybe you were already away for that.

[Margaret Donovan]

Really extraordinary to talk to Danny Bensky about that. Just what it was like in person, the kind of contempt he had and whom he had covered up, you know,

[Bill Kristol]

had no intention of not even.

[Margaret Donovan]

Not doing anything, but not even making them feel heard. I mean, really.

[Bill Kristol]

So.

[Margaret Donovan]

But anyway, they caved predictably.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, they caved predictably. And it's a ridiculous prospect to put him in for those reasons you just laid out. But just in the grand scheme of things, the slip up from his confirmation

[Nicole Saphier]

hearing where he is, like when John Kennedy said, are you in Trump's Friends? And he's like, I'm Trump's lawyer.

[Tim Miller]

And it's like that's how he sees things. You were just talking about the scale of corruption.

[Nicole Saphier]

They're doing sham investigations, whether it be over the Reflecting Pool or of a comey, et cetera, they're doing plenty of sham investigations against foes they're not investigating. Like you said, the ICE agents.

[Tim Miller]

Think about all the other stuff they aren't investigating, though.

[Nicole Saphier]

The scale of public corruption right now is unimaginable.

[Tim Miller]

One of the other stories that briefly

[Nicole Saphier]

pierced my peaceful bubble was how corporations are going into Trump, and it's like, you got to give a million dollars to the MAGA super pacs in order to get kind of favorable treatment on regulation, et cetera.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, the graft that is happening

[Nicole Saphier]

in this administration is uncomparable to the first term. And Extremely uncomparable to anything else in modern American history.

[Tim Miller]

And it's like to put a person

[Nicole Saphier]

in charge of the Department of Justice amidst all that under party line vote, that's just like going to act as a henchman for the President is insane.

[Tim Miller]

It's insane. And these guys, like, you know, the only two people that offered tepid pushback are people that are retiring. What is their point of folding now? What's the point of folding now? And I think that these guys are so deep, speaking of bubbles, they're so deep in their own bubble that I do think that they've convinced themselves that.

[Nicole Saphier]

Blanche.

[Tim Miller]

I gotta go with Blanche, because if it's not him, who the hell knows

[Nicole Saphier]

who it could be?

[Tim Miller]

It could be somebody worse.

[Margaret Donovan]

Yeah. That was the attitude that led them to quickly confirm Clayton for Director of National Intelligence.

[Bill Kristol]

So we have just to step back, as you say. We have now Blanche of Justice, Clayton

[Margaret Donovan]

at odni, Hegseth at Defense, Mark Wayne, Mullen at DHS, and Patel at FBI, key national security agencies, all involved in justifying corruption, lawlessness, election subversion, incidentally, which Blanch's Justice Department's been plugging ahead on

[Bill Kristol]

as much as they can. They're losing a fair amount in the lower courts.

[Margaret Donovan]

But I was talking to a couple

[Bill Kristol]

of state secretaries of state last week, and, you know, they're getting a lot of pressure. Some of them are resisting, but the pressure has some effect. Maybe it deters some people from voting, too.

[Margaret Donovan]

If you scream and yell enough about how you're going to get in deep trouble if you make a mistake and vote when you shouldn't. And they're not sure if they're correctly registered anyway. The whole thing is it's very bad.

[Bill Kristol]

I mean, we have a really bad

[Margaret Donovan]

administration full of true Trump loyalists who

[Bill Kristol]

are, some of whom are not totally incompetent, unfortunately. And I guess the other thing I'd say is it's clearly, when you read about the Reflecting Pool case, for example, it's penetrated down.

[Margaret Donovan]

Right.

[Bill Kristol]

It's not like there are Interior Department staffers who provided the bad information to Justice Department staffers, who in turn provided it up to Piro. There are people at the second, third,

[Margaret Donovan]

fourth, fifth levels who are going along

[Bill Kristol]

or who are enthusiastic in some cases,

[Margaret Donovan]

if they were hired as MAGA loyalists, enthusiastic participants in all of this, and then the White House, obviously.

[Bill Kristol]

So the degree of danger over the

[Margaret Donovan]

next two and a half years, I think, from the executive branch is just kind of confirmed by the confirmation of Blanche. And it wouldn't have Mattered that much,

[Bill Kristol]

incidentally, if he didn't get confirmed, it's not like Trump was going to put

[Margaret Donovan]

someone good in there.

[Bill Kristol]

But Blanche, probably a little more dangerous

[Margaret Donovan]

because he knows what he's doing. So that's really the bad news.

[Tim Miller]

Let's go to the security side of

[Nicole Saphier]

that, because you're right, and I do think census gets lost. And when you on Thursday had a podcast that focused on the Department of Defense, I don't know what's happening with Hegseth, which is really good. And you say that. Well, sure, they do have some competent people in some of these offices. I think Blanche's like the velociraptors, who's learning how to open the doors, and he's learning how to do it. And you've got Miller and the immigration. They've got some competent, nefarious people in

[Tim Miller]

immigration and other places. From just a security standpoint, the incompetence

[Nicole Saphier]

at the top of Dodge, where Hagseth has no idea what he's doing, there are now leaks coming out about the ways in which we're not prepared now for counter attacks against us, against the homeland, against allies in the region.

[Tim Miller]

And then you pair that with Jay

[Nicole Saphier]

Clayton, who was just like, had one of the most buffoonish, clownish confirmation hearings I've ever seen. Being at odni, you have Cash at the FBI, you have the president of

[Tim Miller]

the United States going back to that rundown, saying that what was seems like an attack on the homeland, a cyber attack from Iran, Ike's pretending is from Minnesota. You know, who knows? Maybe we'll get out of this. Good luck, you know, maybe. Maybe, you know, for whatever reason, you know, good fortune will fall on the country and that we won't face threats from. From foes. But, like, it is truly madness thinking

[Nicole Saphier]

about kind of that, like just the Hegseth Clayton Cash kind of leadership in these security offices.

[Margaret Donovan]

No, totally.

[Bill Kristol]

And especially when you have a president

[Margaret Donovan]

who's it's all gone to his head. The imperial vision is now much more part of where he is than in the first term, where he had all kinds of other terrible visions and prejudices and inclinations and policies, but that really wasn't quite as much part of it. Now it's clearly central. And now he's got himself in the hole in Iran. He can't get out and won't do the things he would have to do to minimize the damage. Yeah, so we get the worst of all worlds, right?

[Bill Kristol]

Very aggressive authoritarianism at home.

[Margaret Donovan]

Some of it, unfortunately, with some prospect of Succeeding, at least for a while. And then abroad, sort of incompetent imperialism, if you want to call it that, authoritarianism.

[Bill Kristol]

If you were just staying at home,

[Margaret Donovan]

at least one would feel like, okay, maybe it's not great policy and our alliances are getting weaker, but one can imagine it just being a gradual process. But the Iran war really has. You've made this point several times. It's put an exclamation point on the retreat abroad and on the incompetence abroad. And every ally and every opponent we have around the world is looking at

[Nicole Saphier]

us and thinking, well, no unintended consequences. I want to do a little bit more on Iran in one second. Let's just really quick close on Blanche, because you had in the newsletter this morning trying to make lemonade out of lemons.

[Tim Miller]

It was a good effort.

[Nicole Saphier]

I appreciated the effort. It's pretty sour out there.

[Tim Miller]

But why don't you make the case

[Nicole Saphier]

for people that haven't had a chance to read it?

[Bill Kristol]

Well, just, it does force all these

[Margaret Donovan]

Republican senators to vote for Blanche, maybe with the exception of Collins. They need to get 50 votes and several of them are on the ballot. And then, of course, in the open seats, the Republican challengers are going to gas this week and they'll say they support Blanche's confirmation. I don't know that Blanche is a

[Bill Kristol]

huge voting issue, but I think it

[Margaret Donovan]

does bring home what for me is the key issue for the next three months that Democrats just need to hammer. A Republican Congress will never stand up to Trump. You don't like Trump.

[Bill Kristol]

Trump has hit the Bush line. Trump has a 34% approval.

[Margaret Donovan]

You want him checked.

[Bill Kristol]

Whatever you think of us Democrats, you

[Margaret Donovan]

don't have to love us, God knows. But we will check Trump and the Republicans won't.

[Bill Kristol]

And here's the latest instance. It looked like they were going to

[Margaret Donovan]

check Trump and they didn't. Right.

[Bill Kristol]

I mean, so it's good to go out into the recess with a capitulation

[Margaret Donovan]

to Trump in that respect. I think from a political point of view.

[Tim Miller]

And I think it's good to just

[Nicole Saphier]

make the point also then that they really didn't stand up to Trump at all. Not only did they confirm him, they did it based on this fig leaf, like total sham document.

[Tim Miller]

Like the.

[Nicole Saphier]

Did the document ever have legal standing? Really? Could it have held in a court before? No.

[Tim Miller]

But like, this isn't signed by all the parties to the original agreement.

[Nicole Saphier]

Like, it's just Blanche.

[Tim Miller]

Right. And you know, Trump has certainly broken a lot of handshake deals before and

[Nicole Saphier]

it doesn't seem as if Trump was on board for this.

[Tim Miller]

And again, like, even the stupid piece

[Nicole Saphier]

of paper he put out didn't do anything to address, like, the other corruption about this, which is immunity for Trump on the tax side.

[Tim Miller]

And so the whole thing is fake. And what Trump wants to spend his

[Nicole Saphier]

time and focus on in the next two years is just going to be more and more examples of this enrichment of himself and his allies.

[Tim Miller]

That is his agenda.

[Nicole Saphier]

That's what is left of his agenda. I mean, I do think that using Branch is an example of that for some of these House and Senate races is sensible.

[Margaret Donovan]

It's still tough, especially the Senate, though, because they literally will vote for him and hosted in Ohio and Moody in Florida, and they really will have to cast that vote. And it's not a great vote for them. I don't think Sullivan in Alaska, Sullivan in Alaska.

[Bill Kristol]

It can make a marginal difference. And I do think it fits into the theme if it keeps Democrats on message, which is, you need us to check Trump as much as we can. They shouldn't oversell it.

[Margaret Donovan]

This corruption, it's gonna be hard to stop it, but at least you're not gonna facilitate it, turn a blind eye to it, go along with it. So that's gotta be their core message.

[Bill Kristol]

I would add.

[Margaret Donovan]

I say this in the morning shots.

[Bill Kristol]

I don't know if you agree with this, maybe I overstated. But meanwhile, yesterday, this is before the

[Margaret Donovan]

capitulation on Blanche, and there's some chance that Blanche still doesn't make it. Other Republicans might have problems, et cetera, and Democrats should fight it hard and drag it out all week and make a big fuss about it, assuming he does make it through.

[Bill Kristol]

Democrats yesterday announced they had an agreement on a continuing resolution. They're going to fund the government through December 11. It totally confuses their message that the message should be, the Republicans are terrible. All they want to do is accommodate Trump. But you know what? We're going to kind of deal with them totally unnecessarily now before they go home. So they can go home and saying, you know, we're governing responsibly. Look, the Democrats just voted for a bipartisan way to keep the government open.

[Tim Miller]

I was going to rant about Dan

[Nicole Saphier]

Sullivan, but we'll just.

[Tim Miller]

We'll get to it.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, please. Okay. You rant about it.

[Nicole Saphier]

Well, no, we'll get to Dan Sullivan next. We're going to do the cr.

[Tim Miller]

Cause I couldn't believe this.

[Nicole Saphier]

I texted this to you yesterday. I got my little.

[Bill Kristol]

You did. You were the One I had noticed,

[Tim Miller]

I turned my alerts on, you know, they're all off. And it was like the punch bowl news alert.

[Nicole Saphier]

And it says this.

[Tim Miller]

Congressional appropriators have released a short term spending bill that will fund federal agencies through December 11, attempting to avoid a pre election day shutdown. The bipartisan bill is expected to be taken up in the Senate this week. It's like, why? What? Why, why, why would the Democrats go along with anything? And this is like, we're doing Michigan

[Nicole Saphier]

at the very end. You understand why people are gonna go for Abdul Al said when the stuff like this happens.

[Tim Miller]

Honestly, like what? What could plausibly be the rationale for

[Nicole Saphier]

signing on to a bipartisan effort to fund this government with the way that Donald Trump is spending the money on his fucking triumphal arch and on masked

[Tim Miller]

murderers in the streets. Let them have the shutdown fight. Do the same thing you did the last two times. Talk about you're not gonna fund the government because you want to spend people's taxpayer dollars on helping taxpayers get healthcare, get things that they need, not, you know, fund Donald Trump's fucking pet projects. Like it's crazy.

[Margaret Donovan]

And they get almost no concessions in this. So they don't get to. There are no limitations on what ICE does. There's no question the war will be funded. All the things the Democrats could have

[Bill Kristol]

made a real fuss about, A and B. Just to make the point even more obvious, I mean, the current funding runs through September 30th. If they feel on September 26th that

[Margaret Donovan]

it's too hard to shut the government down and they're better off doing a short term cri, you know, I could. That will be a case to be made.

[Bill Kristol]

Doing it now two months early, giving the Republicans this nice out to say they're being bipartisan and they're being responsible. And look, we're working with the Democrats. The Democrats are saying we just suck up to Trump. But no, we're working together on. It's beyond. I looked around last night. I thought maybe after you sent me the thing that I started to read about it.

[Margaret Donovan]

This is crazy.

[Bill Kristol]

There must be something I'm missing. And I looked around, but so far

[Margaret Donovan]

I have not found a compelling argument the other way. Maybe I'm missing something.

[Nicole Saphier]

If you're a Democratic Senate staffer, I'd be glad to hear a counterpoint to this.

[Tim Miller]

But I'm looking at the bill. It's like we're going to fund the National Security Department of State and Related Programs Appropriations Act. Why? Why would the Democrats be funding Marco Rubio's coups. That's what Marco is going to spend money on for the rest of the year. He's planning his finishing his Cuba coup. It includes DHS funding, it includes Interior, which I think is funding the Arch. Why? Well, not one cent would be my position.

[Bill Kristol]

I mean it's a cr, so it includes, I think it includes all of them basically.

[Margaret Donovan]

And again, there are ways to, it

[Bill Kristol]

says if you want to keep stuff

[Margaret Donovan]

open in late September, there are ways to selectively keep the key departments that service people open. There are ways to do even a short term cr, maybe get some, insist on some concessions on some of these things, as you're saying. But this is really kind of crazy and I do, yes, you're right. I mean honestly, why are Democratic voters

[Bill Kristol]

unhappy with Democrats in Washington and the Democratic establishment?

[Margaret Donovan]

That's why they are right.

[Tim Miller]

But one of the other moments of clarity I had on vacation was thinking about how I'm going to prioritize my time going forward. You guys know, if you're longtime listeners,

[Nicole Saphier]

one thing I don't do. Iron.

[Tim Miller]

Life's too short to iron.

[Nicole Saphier]

Here's another thing that life's too short to do.

[Tim Miller]

Spend a Saturday wandering around a blind store. Not going to do that. Not interested in that.

[Nicole Saphier]

That's an hour that could be spent for higher and better purposes.

[Tim Miller]

I want to spend my Saturday brunching

[Nicole Saphier]

with my gays or with my child at the park or I don't know, doing a bulwark take for you guys. That's useful.

[Tim Miller]

So what can you do instead? Think of a better way to blind shop with three Day Blinds. They're the leading manufacturer of high quality custom window treatments in the US and right now, if you use my URL3dayblinds.com thebullwork they're running a buy one get one 50% off deal. That's a good deal. We can shop for almost anything at home.

[Nicole Saphier]

Might as well shop for blinds at home too.

[Tim Miller]

Three Day Blinds has local, professionally trained designed consultants who have an average of 10 plus years of experience. They provide expert guidance on the right blinds for you in the comfort of your home. Just set up an appointment. You'll get a free no obligation quote the same day. And if you I'm not going to

[Nicole Saphier]

go shopping for blinds on a Saturday.

[Tim Miller]

You know I'm not going to do that. One thing I'm sure is shit not

[Nicole Saphier]

going to do is actually put the blinds up myself. DIY projects. That's not it. That's not where my time is being

[Tim Miller]

spent the expert team at three Day Blinds, they do all that.

[Nicole Saphier]

They design, they measure, they install.

[Tim Miller]

So you can just sit back, relax,

[Nicole Saphier]

rage, tweet, leave it to the press right now.

[Tim Miller]

Get quality window treatments that fit your budget with three day blinds. Head to three day blinds.com the bulwark for their buy one, get one 50% off deal on custom blinds, shades and drapery for a free no charge, no obligation consultation. Just head to 3dayblinds.com the Bulwark one last time. That's buy one, get one 50% off when you head to the number 3D a Y blinds.com the Bulwark I'm going

[Nicole Saphier]

to go back to just the blanche vote because I think you did make a good point and I was a little cheekily dismissive of it about these

[Tim Miller]

senators having to confirm him. I just the Dan Sullivan you were talking that got me going. So I pulled up Dan Sullivan's Twitter feed and I pulled up his little

[Nicole Saphier]

press release thing to see what he's doing.

[Tim Miller]

And is there a more pathetic figure than him? Dan Sullivan tried to run in a

[Nicole Saphier]

Tom Cotton esque kind of oeuvre as like that he was going to be a national security kind of responsible steward, strong US Military type of senator.

[Tim Miller]

And it's like he's nowhere. He is just he's the invisible man in Washington. He goes along with everything Trump wants to do in these hearings. It doesn't seem like he has any concerns about somebody being the head of

[Nicole Saphier]

ODNI who has absolutely no experience, who is offensively dismissive about questions of basic facts about the election and other matters.

[Tim Miller]

No complaints about the concerns of DoD

[Nicole Saphier]

that you covered on Thursday's podcast and the issues that we have with materiel.

[Tim Miller]

Like nothing. He's posting like, oh, he was at the Blueberry Festival this weekend in Alaska. He's got two posts about him and Mike Rowe having an event. It's like nothing. He goes weeks without putting out anything. What is his position on the Iran war? Who knows? I guess pro he doesn't say anything about it. These guys are so unbelievably pathetic. Trump is at 34%. He's up for reelection. You have no concerns about the way things are going if you're Dan Sullivan? Apparently not.

[Nicole Saphier]

Mary Peltola for Senate Once you've gone

[Margaret Donovan]

along so long, you don't it's just too hard to break. And maybe it wouldn't help him to break this leg because he's gone along with everything.

[Bill Kristol]

As you say, though, he's actually I knew him a Little bit back in the day. You know, obviously senior person in the military, knew a lot about defense, seemed to care about it sincerely. Also was incidentally kind of a McCain internationalist. I think he joined the board of IR, didn't need the International Public Institute.

[Margaret Donovan]

Maybe he's chairman even now. I'm not too sure. I've lost track of. It's become a pretty ineffectual and pathetic organization during the Trump years.

[Bill Kristol]

But it was once a place that

[Margaret Donovan]

kind of was a home for internationalist, conservative, internationalist Republicans. Yeah.

[Nicole Saphier]

He's the chairman of iri. Yeah.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah.

[Margaret Donovan]

And he wanted to be part of that.

[Bill Kristol]

But has he spoken up against all the other stuff?

[Margaret Donovan]

No.

[Tim Miller]

Tell people, just so people can understand

[Nicole Saphier]

my laughter, tell people what IRI was supposed to be about.

[Tim Miller]

Like what was iri?

[Bill Kristol]

They're part of the complex of organizations

[Margaret Donovan]

that get some money from the government and then conveys money on their own to do things like election observance, helping

[Bill Kristol]

civil society groups, especially in Ukraine, but in places where there are conflict or where there's authoritarianism. And it was. They and the Democratic equivalent did some

[Margaret Donovan]

pretty good work over the last two, three, four decades.

[Bill Kristol]

And you have a sort of.

[Tim Miller]

Do you know what their tagline is?

[Nicole Saphier]

It's right here. Pull it up.

[Tim Miller]

Advancing democracy worldwide. It's under attack everywhere with Donald Trump leading the charge.

[Nicole Saphier]

And like Dan Sullivan, who is ostensibly the chairman of this group, has nothing to say about it.

[Tim Miller]

It's just like unbelievably pathetic and cucked.

[Margaret Donovan]

Yeah, I didn't know.

[Bill Kristol]

He's out of my head there.

[Sponsor Narrator 3]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

I'm glad we circled back to Dan Sullivan. A good five minute hate on Dan

[Nicole Saphier]

Sullivan is a nice way to return. Where was I? Oh, I wanted to talk more about

[Tim Miller]

the war and you covered some of this.

[Nicole Saphier]

But in some ways this is a little bit of Groundhog Day with Trump making threats and then backing down.

[Tim Miller]

But there have been some real developments. The Ukraine war, Iran war, quasi merge would be an overstatement, but Ukraine attacked an Iranian ship.

[Nicole Saphier]

Increasing evidence that Russia is providing targeting

[Tim Miller]

intel to Iran, going after our troops

[Nicole Saphier]

and our bases, and then in addition to that, kind of trying to figure out how to get out of it. There's a CNN exclusive this morning that says that there was a request from a senior officer at the US Military command that said, quote, we are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran. So that's where they're at.

[Tim Miller]

It really is spiraling.

[Nicole Saphier]

I mean, there's a bunch of other stuff that happened, you know, as far as, you know, the expanding regional war and the ways in which Saudi was getting involved in other countries.

[Tim Miller]

Well, at some level, it's kind of the same as it ever was. Story like, it is worsening.

[Margaret Donovan]

Yeah. Iran turns out to be stronger than we thought, even two months ago when we knew that they hadn't been obliterated. But we thought, I did think at least. Well, maybe they really have been set back, though, and they got a few

[Bill Kristol]

drones and a couple of missiles. But it turns out they have quite a lot of missiles and quite a lot of drones and quite a lot of capability to strike all over the place.

[Margaret Donovan]

And they're working closely, it does look

[Bill Kristol]

like with China actually, behind the scenes

[Margaret Donovan]

and with Russia, and they've got other neighboring countries totally intimidated. And MBS called your friend.

[Bill Kristol]

MBS called Trump Saturday to urge him

[Margaret Donovan]

not to escalate the war against Iran. The Saudis don't like Iran and they don't want to make it even worse.

[Bill Kristol]

I mean, we have just destroyed the

[Margaret Donovan]

alliance structures that we have in Europe and the Middle East.

[Tim Miller]

Remember when they're getting in the Abraham Accords?

[Margaret Donovan]

How's that working out?

[Nicole Saphier]

Yeah, everything was great.

[Tim Miller]

Jared Kushner piece in our time.

[Nicole Saphier]

It's mockable and concerning. There's a memo going out around the security agencies. It's like, wanted new ideas for how

[Tim Miller]

to go after Iran. Like, as if. As if there hasn't been like, what, a half century of war gaming on this. Like, there isn't, you know, people in the bowels of DOD that have been coming up with different ideas for decades. But the reason why that is, like, we're harming our Asian allies. Like, economically, the Arab allies are being targeted and Israel is in a different

[Nicole Saphier]

boat than the rest of them. But, like, that's why I think that they are, like, we need to come up with creative ideas because they still feel like they need to put on pressure, but they don't have support for doing. And I don't even think Trump wants to do what would need to be done to escalate.

[Margaret Donovan]

And the military has gone along with an awful lot, it seems to me. It's hard to judge from outside. Maybe there was more resistance than I realized, but certainly on the show I did Thursday when I was pinch hitting for you with Margaret Donovan, I mean, it was a jag. And the decade ago, the fact that we have no report, no public acknowledgment that we hit the girls school and how that might have happened, at least

[Bill Kristol]

a classified report for Congress, but also

[Margaret Donovan]

a Public report that's been done many, many times in the last two, three decades as we fought wars and made mistakes and hit civilian targets.

[Bill Kristol]

Obviously that's just disgraceful, really.

[Margaret Donovan]

This is what got me freaked out about that conversation. The degree to which the military itself could be getting corrupted. I hate to even say it, I hope it's not happening. And I think the military is more resistant than almost anything else in the US government. You get the firings, you get the politicized promotions, you get the message that goes all the way down. If you want to get along, you go along. But maybe you even suck up.

[Bill Kristol]

That New York Times story when you

[Margaret Donovan]

were gone about the way in which the guy who's Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Caudle, got the job is horrifying.

[Nicole Saphier]

I missed that story. What was it?

[Bill Kristol]

So it's a nightmare of what everyone

[Margaret Donovan]

who's worried about a third world politicized military.

[Bill Kristol]

He basically saw that Hagseth was going

[Margaret Donovan]

to fire the Chief of Naval Operations. I think it was Admiral Frank Eddy, I think that's her name, is her name. And he decided he could get it.

[Bill Kristol]

And he spent weeks sucking up to Hegseth, hiring Parlatore, who was Hegseth's lawyer,

[Margaret Donovan]

to be his lawyer, saying he didn't like all that DEI stuff. I mean basically the worst kind of political campaigning for this job, which worked and now he's head of Naval operations.

[Bill Kristol]

So that's at the very top level, four star. But then of course, God knows what's

[Margaret Donovan]

happening at the one star level and at the colonel major level and so forth to get promoted. I mean, I'm much more worried and I think Margaret was in this conversation about the degree to which in 18 months.

[Bill Kristol]

18 months is not a short amount of time. Another 24, 30 months.

[Margaret Donovan]

You're going through a whole promotion cycles here, right? People have three year assignments, usually Hex.

[Bill Kristol]

That's more incompetent than the rest of

[Margaret Donovan]

them, I'd say compared to presumably the grown up lawyers at justice and even to Mark Wayne Mullen probably at dhs. But he's pretty determined to do what

[Bill Kristol]

he's doing and he's getting no pushback. And that gets us back to Dan Sullivan, your friend. I mean there are people in the US Senate who know something about the military and some of them, many of

[Margaret Donovan]

them are actually Republicans.

[Bill Kristol]

And this is a place where they can say, look, we love Trump, we love this, we love that blue, you can have all the corrupt graph you

[Margaret Donovan]

want, but you know what? We are going to get serious about not letting you ruin the United States military, kind of an important institution. Right. And they're not doing, so far as I can tell, almost nothing.

[Nicole Saphier]

It's pretty telling that Cash and Hagsett are still in there.

[Margaret Donovan]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

You know, I mean like with all

[Nicole Saphier]

of the stories that came out about cashes incompetence and the Atlantic, the people from inside the house, even maga, FBI agents just talking about how clownish it is. And then again with all the reporting you were just talking about about DoD and with the obvious disaster that the

[Tim Miller]

Iran war is, you would think there

[Nicole Saphier]

would be like that's where one of the scalps would be. And I think that the fact that it hasn't been and that there isn't

[Tim Miller]

really even buzz about it, it's pretty alarming.

[Nicole Saphier]

Right. As you look ahead to the kind of things to be worried about in 2028, Trump wants people that are pliable in charge of those ministries in those

[Margaret Donovan]

two cases, obviously people who are more

[Bill Kristol]

than pliable, who are eager to participate in all the anti democratic and really. But I'm serious, when you think about it, it's really terrible that they're there. I couldn't agree with you. Why I really thought about the fact

[Margaret Donovan]

that they're still there. But you're right, that is Lost Bondi.

[Tim Miller]

No telling, right? You know.

[Margaret Donovan]

Yeah. Gabbard.

[Tim Miller]

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You've heard me talk about BetterHelp for a while now, but I don't know we ever talked about how much people love the service when they use it. You can check it out [e-mail] reviews to see amazing customer reviews in real time. The reviews are updated every day with hundreds of people saying how much they love betterhelp and how helpful it's been to them. Speaking of which, have you given this podcast a positive review lately? You probably should right now. Just go ahead and do that and go read the [e-mail] BetterHelp has an average live therapy session rating 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client session reviews. The feedback from people who have actually used the service speaks for itself. BetterHelp therapists have at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands on experience. They also hold all required education, training and certifications across a range of mental health specialties. And BetterHelp makes it easy to get started, answer a few questions, get matched with a therapist based on your needs, and switch therapists at any time if

[Nicole Saphier]

it's not the right fit, see the

[Tim Miller]

reviews see what stands out and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com thebullwork that's betterhelp.com thebullwork

[Nicole Saphier]

I want to go to other news.

[Tim Miller]

One more thing from the things that

[Nicole Saphier]

I missed that I would be remiss to not cover.

[Tim Miller]

Briefly, the surveilling of Jim Comey, that

[Nicole Saphier]

story from our friend Carol Linnig at msnow and others apologies to whoever else

[Tim Miller]

was on that story. It's like this combination of shocking and alarming and it's also like the boobishness of it.

[Nicole Saphier]

I mean it's like it had a little bit of a Watergate feel to it that it was like this was very menacing and also like so boobish and like crazy.

[Tim Miller]

But like Trump's on the plane on Air Force One, I guess going to the Middle east and the Secret service folks in D.C. are getting messages from the plane that like redacted figure is very interested in the surveillance of Comey and where Comey is and that this is a big topic of discussion on the plane. What are we going to do? And so they said surveilled him on his drive home from the beach to his house in Virginia and surveillance house. He got his phone, they're pinging where his phone was like illegally no warrant based on emergency, a supposed emergency notion that he might be threatening the President.

[Nicole Saphier]

That is really just sheer madness.

[Margaret Donovan]

Yeah.

[Bill Kristol]

I guess the Secret Service got involved

[Margaret Donovan]

because the claim was it was a

[Bill Kristol]

threat to the president. And the Secret Service deals with those.

[Margaret Donovan]

So they have expertise on that. Now the way in which they investigated it. Justice was comical, of course, trying to get some old 86 year old mobster to say that 86 does mean rubbing someone out. Which it doesn't. It didn't. He said, I think.

[Bill Kristol]

But, but no, but it does illustrate also, doesn't it?

[Margaret Donovan]

I mean how again it goes down through the ranks.

[Bill Kristol]

So some third level, you know, Secret

[Margaret Donovan]

Service guy gets a call from his buddy on the plane and he's involved

[Bill Kristol]

in the investigative side of things in the Secret Service and suddenly they're all doing this stuff which they should not be doing.

[Margaret Donovan]

Right.

[Bill Kristol]

And in that respect it is worse

[Margaret Donovan]

than Watergate, obviously, because Watergate, they couldn't really penetrate the agencies quite that well, you know.

[Nicole Saphier]

Right.

[Bill Kristol]

That's what makes me worried. I mean every part, every place you

[Margaret Donovan]

look it's happening and it's often buffoonish. The Federal Communications Commission, the post office with the ballots.

[Bill Kristol]

But they've, you know, it's a Pretty sustained government wide effort to for corruption,

[Margaret Donovan]

for prosecution of enemies and for election subversion.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And the buffoonishness just doesn't negate just

[Nicole Saphier]

the total assault on civil liberties in this country and the authoritarian nature of it. Right.

[Tim Miller]

It's just like Jim Comey should not

[Nicole Saphier]

be spied on because the president doesn't like him.

[Tim Miller]

That's what was happening.

[Nicole Saphier]

That is what happens in authoritarian countries. Doesn't seem like this is happening at scale yet here, but the fact that

[Tim Miller]

it was happening at all is an unbelievable scandal.

[Nicole Saphier]

You always do the, oh, if Obama did this, blah, blah, blah, and it's kind of stupid, a dog bite the man thing.

[Tim Miller]

But really, if you look back to

[Nicole Saphier]

another administration of our lifetime besides the

[Tim Miller]

two Trump administrations, the idea that the President of the United States directed the Secret Service to spy on a political

[Nicole Saphier]

foe, it would be an administration embroiling scandal.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, people would resign over it. There's that sense in Nixon.

[Nicole Saphier]

But anything akin to it.

[Tim Miller]

We'll talk about a couple other Republican crazy stuff that's been happening. I'm happy to see that the Max Miller story has burst into public consciousness. It's something that we've been talking about on this show.

[Nicole Saphier]

But for people who missed that or don't remember, he's the Ohio congressman that has two credible domestic abuse allegations against him. And, and they're particularly credible because the first is from Stephanie Grisham, who was Donald Trump's spokesperson. And the second is from the daughter of Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno.

[Tim Miller]

So two Republicans, MAGA folks, are in the Trump orbit saying that he assaulted them. And the strange thing was this was not getting any attention really. And he's up for re election. It's a winnable seat potentially for Democrats, I think. Brian Poindexter is a Democratic candidate in that district. And Moreno hadn't said anything like the

[Nicole Saphier]

allegations from his daughter about Miller throwing scalding hot water on her. And their pictures, she submitted pictures of like the burning on her skin and other kind of bruises came out like two years ago. Her dad hadn't said anything. He finally put out a statement yesterday saying that Miller shouldn't be in Congress.

[Tim Miller]

I haven't seen a whole parade of other senators or congressmen joining on for

[Nicole Saphier]

all of the Graham Platner drama.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe belatedly, all the Democrats, even his close allies, came around to saying that the allegations were too serious for him to run. The Miller accusations are at least as serious.

[Nicole Saphier]

And I guess the only person to have said anything so far is the father of the woman who made the allegations. I guess I should say I do

[Tim Miller]

think it's potentially meaningful. You don't have to hand it to

[Nicole Saphier]

Bernie Moreno, who waited two years to

[Tim Miller]

do this for some reason, but it's potentially meaningful that he did so. Because I do think him not saying anything was cover for the other Republicans to not say anything.

[Nicole Saphier]

Because they're like, if the girl's dad, woman's dad, excuse me, isn't going to say anything, then why would I? I think there's more pressure now on them to do so, but we'll see. It's another one where you look at the senators, John Husted.

[Tim Miller]

It'd be interesting to see what he has to say. Ohio Senate race.

[Margaret Donovan]

Yeah. I do wonder if this is a much bigger story in Ohio, obviously, than. I mean, now. It's a big story nationally, but it's already big. Yeah.

[Bill Kristol]

What does Houston say? What does Speaker Johnson say when they get back?

[Margaret Donovan]

He. So far as.

[Bill Kristol]

Oh, no, I guess there's an ethics investigation.

[Margaret Donovan]

Just want to take a close look. I mean, it's really appalling. It's horrifying.

[Bill Kristol]

Who's that other guy that's in there? There was another.

[Margaret Donovan]

I forget his name, always.

[Tim Miller]

Corey Mills.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah. Who's another?

[Nicole Saphier]

He's probably thinking of.

[Bill Kristol]

They're just all happily there. And Trump's gop, you know, sexual abusers and stuff. But of course, it fits in with the overall Epstein thing, too.

[Margaret Donovan]

So the Democrat guys just need to say, this is Trump's gop, and then

[Bill Kristol]

they'll let the decent ones say, oh, no, that's not me.

[Margaret Donovan]

But fine, if it's not, you distinguish

[Bill Kristol]

yourself from your buddy there, Max Miller,

[Margaret Donovan]

whom you're clowning around with in the House Republican Conference every day, you know.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Among the other things, I guess he

[Nicole Saphier]

held a gun to her head, threw hot water at her. Police are also conducting an active child abuse investigation.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, it's terrible. It's terrible.

[Nicole Saphier]

Reporters reached out to several high profile Ohio Republicans, including John Husted, and they didn't. They didn't give a comment.

[Tim Miller]

So I don't know how long it'll

[Nicole Saphier]

be able to last, but we'll keep watching.

[Tim Miller]

These guys have absolutely no integrity. They don't care at all. Miller's put out a lengthy video defending himself yesterday. There was one part of it that particularly caught my interest that I want

[Nicole Saphier]

to play for people.

[Tim Miller]

He doesn't really give an alternate explanation of what happened in the scalding hot water incident, but he does try to

[Nicole Saphier]

provide an alibi for himself.

[Max Miller (clip)]

Let's listen the very next day, we had a friendly phone call about our daughter's upcoming hospital procedure, and I drove in from Washington to be there for it. Six days later, she offered to cook empanadas for me for dinner. If I had assaulted her, would she had offered to cook me dinner six days later, would she have invited me to spend an afternoon at the playground with her and our daughter?

[Tim Miller]

If I had assaulted her, would she have cooked me empanadas? I mean, like, this is like from a fucking 80s movie villain. That is insane.

[Margaret Donovan]

Yeah, and we know that that's often, unfortunately, the way, you know, victims, they're

[Bill Kristol]

in a tough position.

[Margaret Donovan]

They feel that they have to get

[Bill Kristol]

along with this guy for a while. He's stronger than they are.

[Margaret Donovan]

He's a member of Congress.

[Bill Kristol]

He has powerful friends.

[Margaret Donovan]

She's worried about her daughter. Maybe he invite him to the playground for a couple of hours, maybe cook him dinner or something, you know, if it keeps him from doing even worse. This is much studied, obviously, by those who know much more than I do.

[Tim Miller]

She cooked me supper. If I roughed her up a little bit.

[Bill Kristol]

It's just the idea that that's the defense. And now we have, I guess, these other tapes. No, there's no defense.

[Margaret Donovan]

I at one point thought, look, I don't want to jump to conclusions. A few weeks ago, I don't know. I don't know any of these people, and who knows what happened in these cases? But it's pretty clear. And Moreno, I mean, I do think that's where Moreno makes a difference. Right. He was very reluctant to say anything. I don't think he's covered himself in glory, incidentally, as a, If I may say, as a father, by rallying to the defense of his daughter, publican privately, I think he was with her on her side, so to speak, trying to help. Do we seriously believe that Moreno and his daughter are all in some conspiracy to drag down Max Miller? I don't think so.

[Nicole Saphier]

Yeah, and it's really like if the writers of Mad Men would have been like, we need to go back to the drawing board on this one. It's too on the nose.

[Tim Miller]

Would she have cooked me some dinner if I had punched her?

[Nicole Saphier]

It's like, what? Fucking sick, sick guy. Big race there in Ohio. It's another one to look at.

[Tim Miller]

Hopefully we can rid ourselves of Max Miller.

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[Tim Miller]

I want to talk about Mitch McConnell. Not a lot has changed since I left on that front. He did issue one more proof of life photo. We've not heard him speak. Putting everything else aside, the paid medical

[Nicole Saphier]

leave is pretty good in the Senate. I don't know if anybody else would get to just disappear from their job

[Tim Miller]

for months on end without getting that. Maybe like Mitch McConnell, I don't know, maybe that should be increase his interest in healthcare reform if he's to come back to the Senate, which I don't expect we have. Kay Granger also died while I was gone.

[Nicole Saphier]

She was the House Republican from Fort Worth.

[Tim Miller]

She spent the final months of her

[Nicole Saphier]

House career in an assisted living home in Texas.

[Tim Miller]

These people need to understand who they are representing and what their job is. I don't understand how they can rationalize

[Nicole Saphier]

that this continues to be okay.

[Tim Miller]

And I guess we're coming up on August 6th. Is that the idea that Mitch McConnell

[Nicole Saphier]

that like, the rules in Kentucky on how it gets replaced or stuff are different coming up in the next few days. But if they do that, if they

[Tim Miller]

try to pull this where and Chicano

[Nicole Saphier]

finally drops out right after the deadline,

[Tim Miller]

it is a total offense and affront

[Nicole Saphier]

to the people that they're supposed to be representing. Including people that don't vote for them.

[Margaret Donovan]

Yeah. The degree to which we are going to have, don't you think, a massive generational, I mean, a real rebellion against the old people in both parties though, including healthy ones. But it has to be a presumption now that you cannot just have the attitude of you're there forever and you're there till you become feeble and you're there till you die. It's too. I mean, after everything we've been through,

[Tim Miller]

shouldn't we know where, like what Mitch McConnell's status is? I don't know. I mean, I felt like when I was, when I left there was like some rumblings like whether Andy Bashir should be a little tougher on this. I do kind of feel this way. Like, shouldn't the governor of Kentucky, like, know if the senator from Kentucky is compos mentis?

[Margaret Donovan]

Well, yeah, he doesn't. He says. And do any Republican senators know? I suppose John Thew knows he's just keeping mum. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, it is kind of astonishing.

[Tim Miller]

All right, well, I've got more stuff for people. I've got little business, you know, podcast

[Nicole Saphier]

business I want to share with people. I've got a very lengthy dissertation on the Michigan Senate race, which I'm sure people are really excited about. What else?

[Tim Miller]

Is there anything else from the past that I missed? Bill, anything else you want to get off your chest? Reflecting pool.

[Margaret Donovan]

Otherwise, Reflecting pool was amazing. And again, just the kind of degree to which all kinds of people at Interior and Justice and the White House were lying. The lying, the continued lying, the shamelessness of the lying. We shouldn't forget about that. It's stupid to even talk about because it's been so obvious for years. But again, we shouldn't neglect that. I suppose it is quite something, the lying, the corruption, the incompetence.

[Bill Kristol]

So on the one hand, it's all bad. I guess the one thing I would

[Margaret Donovan]

say is the Bush line. I mean, the good news is last week they really were several polls and respectable polls, a couple of them of registered voters and said, not just adults. Trump has typically done a little better with registered voters, all four of them under 35%. I mean, that's pretty astonishing. And that really is a drop down

[Bill Kristol]

from the 40 was bad or 40 you start. That's when I started to think the

[Margaret Donovan]

Senate, that's really in play. 35. I mean, now presumably he gets a

[Bill Kristol]

little bounce back from that.

[Margaret Donovan]

And Ron Brownstein was on the bulwark on Sunday yesterday.

[Bill Kristol]

You just do the math. And we know quite a lot about

[Margaret Donovan]

how approval ratings correlate with the vote in an off year election. If you do the math of what Trump's approval rating must be in the different states that we've been talking about,

[Bill Kristol]

it's going to be better than 35. If he's 35 nationally, his approval rating

[Margaret Donovan]

in Ohio is 45, they'd be right.

[Bill Kristol]

10 points better than the nation, probably. For Republicans, it's not about 50. And there's a lot of evidence that

[Margaret Donovan]

if you get the president below 50, the senator or the senatorial candidate from his party has trouble, especially when that

[Bill Kristol]

party is so closely linked to Trump. It's why the Democrats have to make

[Margaret Donovan]

it all about Trump. They have to.

[Bill Kristol]

If I can, maybe I'll close out with this, not go along with stupid, unnecessary compromise bills to keep the government open two months before you have to

[Margaret Donovan]

pass anything about keeping the government open and why they have to just hammer The Republican going along with Trump in this just a rubber stamp for Trump in the most shameless way, I think.

[Tim Miller]

Can I add one thing to this? Because it's what I'm going to rant about next.

[Nicole Saphier]

But I just want to get your

[Tim Miller]

take is and also the tying to Trump is also just keeping the eye on the ball about what this midterm election is, is about Trump. I just like to the extent that my bubble got pierced, the amount of factional infighting and nitpicking, I find it almost irresponsible.

[Nicole Saphier]

And I think that it's a pox

[Tim Miller]

on both sides or all the sides of the fight within the Democratic side. I understand the notion that the Democrats need new, fresh thinking in the future if they're going to win presidential majorities again. I hear that. But that's not what the 2026 election is about.

[Bill Kristol]

I totally agree. Apart from the fact, yeah, it's analytically stupid. I mean, that is to say what 20 in the sense that obviously Democrats need to have a positive agenda, et cetera, in 2018 for the presidency. And obviously they should fix various things about the party and about liberalism's message and figure out who's right between the progressives and the centrists on a whole bunch of issues, et cetera, et cetera. The one thing they have to do

[Margaret Donovan]

in 2728 is stop Trump from further as much as they can stop Trump from further ruining the country.

[Bill Kristol]

It is not just politically useful to

[Margaret Donovan]

make it about Trump because he's at 34%. It is correct to make it about Trump. It is the most important thing.

[Bill Kristol]

But we're in this, like, crazy world.

[Tim Miller]

It's not even closed, by the way. It's not even closed.

[Bill Kristol]

No, not yet. Totally. I mean, well, the Democrats really have to work a little on the health

[Margaret Donovan]

care thing because they're like, Medicare for

[Bill Kristol]

all is kind of good, but it's kind of problematic. What about this? You know what? Fine. Think tanks should do that. Individual members should do that. They have staffs, they have their own committees. I'm all for that. They should be ready to go with good legislation in 27 won't go anywhere probably in 28, but certainly in 29. And that's all fine, but it is not the fundamental thing. So this is a case where the

[Margaret Donovan]

political imperative and the these, what would we call it, substantive imperative are the same.

[Tim Miller]

I think it's such a comfort to be back with you, Bill, extremely aligned. Thanks again for your assistance while I was on holiday.

[Nicole Saphier]

And we'll catch you next Monday. All right, everybody else, stick around.

[Tim Miller]

I got more for you.

[Bill Kristol]

Yeah, stick around, though.

[Margaret Donovan]

This is going to be a good rant from Tim.

[Tim Miller]

All right, so a couple of items just between me and y'. All. You may have noticed, whenever it matriculates into your pod feed, we've got new art, we've got a new Bulwark website. It's looking great. Go to the bulwark.com, sign up if you haven't. We also have a new name for the podcast.

[Nicole Saphier]

Kind of ish.

[Tim Miller]

It's the Bulwark Daily. Now, I've been wanting to do this for a while because this show is

[Nicole Saphier]

really more than a podcast. It's in part my engagement with you guys.

[Tim Miller]

It's obviously video. It's on YouTube. I'm surprised by how many people who say they listen to the podcast tell me that, then subsequently tell me they didn't realize it was daily. So I think that's good for the branding, for people to know I'm here every day. People need everyday material. I also noticed some of the other podcasts like mine have started calling themselves video podcasts lately, and there's something about that that just makes my skin crawl. It just feels wrong. Video podcast. I don't even like to say it. I thought for a second about the Bulwark Show. I felt weird. I don't know why.

[Nicole Saphier]

Just didn't read right.

[Tim Miller]

So anyway, the Bulwark Daily, we're here every day.

[Nicole Saphier]

Nothing else is changing but just a little brand refresh for everybody.

[Tim Miller]

And also I want to acknowledge and

[Nicole Saphier]

appreciate everybody that comes every day because I do think that it is a

[Tim Miller]

different type of thing, a different type of relationship when I'm talking to you

[Nicole Saphier]

guys every day and hearing from you guys every day. And I think that is something that I value about what we're doing here. So hopefully it doesn't spook you too much. I know some people don't like change.

[Tim Miller]

I know we're all never Trumper OGs,

[Nicole Saphier]

you know, the small c conservatives out there. We don't like change. We get uncomfortable. But I think it'll ring right after a minute.

[Tim Miller]

A few vacation big thoughts. Before I wax poetic about how great

[Nicole Saphier]

it is to have two weeks off on vacation, I do just want to say I realize that I'm really lucky

[Tim Miller]

you guys make that possible for me. So I appreciate that a lot of

[Nicole Saphier]

people have jobs or financial situations or

[Tim Miller]

family situations that don't allow them to just gallivant for two weeks.

[Nicole Saphier]

And so I'm really grateful that I was able to do that.

[Tim Miller]

And I think it was important because I feel like I found a lot of clarity in week two. Week one, you're still on vacation, you still have the stress, you're still tense. I was partying a little bit. Week one, Week two, there was a piece.

[Nicole Saphier]

There's a piece.

[Tim Miller]

There was a lot of time for reading and thinking. I felt like I got a lot of that. I felt like I got some clarity of mind about what our purpose is here that is useful. I feel like I was able to do some learning again, which is nice because you got to be able to consume, to provide new kind of thoughts and ideas and perspectives to people.

[Nicole Saphier]

I was able to learn in particular

[Tim Miller]

a lot about bananas. So you're going to be hearing a lot of banana facts in the next few podcasts. I don't know if you guys knew this, but we gave people when they got to Ellis Island a banana for a period of time when they got off the ship. One of the big fruit companies that then did the coups did that, but I thought that was kind of nice. Usa. I wanted to, in particular, though, right now talk about one element of the clarity that I just previewed for you with Bill Kristol. The distance gave me a lot of feeling of the pointlessness of the fights that I find myself embroiled in, sometimes on social media or even on the comments of this here video. I don't know if, if it's the phones, we have to know everything about everybody, or if it's trauma from a decade of Trump, or if it's like this feeling that the stakes are so high that anyone who doesn't see things

[Nicole Saphier]

exactly like you do as a traitor.

[Tim Miller]

If it's something else, it's some combination of all that. But it feels like there's a fraying

[Nicole Saphier]

of the opposition right now, and there's a lot of really personal, petty, nasty fighting that is happening that I just think is extremely counterproductive and stupid and a waste of time when we are still two and a half years away from January 6, 2029.

[Tim Miller]

It's August 3, 2026. We know what happened on January 6, 2021. There's a lot of months, a lot of weeks, a lot of days and

[Nicole Saphier]

hours for him to fucking create problems.

[Tim Miller]

And that is the focus of what we're doing here. And I just think that is what should be everyone's focus. And we talked about this a little bit with Nicole before I left, and

[Nicole Saphier]

I think that it's something that I have professional admiration for about her show,

[Tim Miller]

which is just like her eye is on the ball television show is different from a podcast.

[Nicole Saphier]

And I'm still going to talk about

[Tim Miller]

all this other stuff.

[Nicole Saphier]

It's not as if you should ignore what's happening and there are important things happening in Democratic politics. I'm about to talk about it a little bit. But

[Tim Miller]

the anger and the rage and

[Nicole Saphier]

the energy should be channeled against the person that is trying to turn us into a right wing authoritarian dictatorship. And I think that in some ways it's obvious, but when you get into the day to day, you can lose sight of it. And so that's one of the I

[Tim Miller]

had a lot of what's the movie line, what alcoholics call a moment of clarity. I had a lot of moments of

[Nicole Saphier]

clarity while I was gone.

[Tim Miller]

That was just one of the moments of clarity. So you'll hopefully hear some of the others as the days move on. And this takes us to Michigan though.

[Nicole Saphier]

I really hate the Michigan Senate race a lot. It makes me sad.

[Tim Miller]

And so before I get to that,

[Nicole Saphier]

I do want to shout out a Michigan House candidate as a little palate cleanser.

[Tim Miller]

I got to meet Matt Mosdam, who's

[Nicole Saphier]

running for The House of Michigan 7

[Tim Miller]

a couple months ago now at Slotkin's old seat.

[Nicole Saphier]

This guy, if you don't know him,

[Tim Miller]

he held the nuclear football for Obama.

[Nicole Saphier]

He's a Navy seal.

[Tim Miller]

He has organized labor and slack in behind him.

[Nicole Saphier]

So he unites the tribes a bit.

[Tim Miller]

He's got this personal profile of masculinity

[Nicole Saphier]

that people tried to project onto Platner but is actually legit and doesn't have

[Tim Miller]

the baggage with it. It's fucking hockey, dad.

[Nicole Saphier]

And the dude has his priorities straight. I was watching one of his ads this morning and he's talking about how his top priority is for fighting corruption

[Tim Miller]

in D.C. and like that is just correct. That is the correct focus for somebody

[Nicole Saphier]

who's going to the House of Representatives in 2030.

[Tim Miller]

Are there many other issues that are going to be important for the Democrats to hash out like? Yes. But right now for these guys are getting in January of 2027 through the end of Trump, through the beginning of the post, Trump investigating their corruption, fighting

[Nicole Saphier]

it and getting our democracy back is the top priority. And this guy gets it.

[Tim Miller]

I just think he's exactly the type of dude Dems need. You can check him out. If you live in Michigan 7 I'd encourage you to give him a look. Primary election is tomorrow. There are some other candidates in the race, but I'm partial to mastum, so check them out. I also put a list of candidates a couple weeks ago that I think are worth supporting in the triad. I want to put a link to that again in the show notes, in case you missed it. Go check it out.

[Nicole Saphier]

I think we're going to update that some. Some point here once all the primaries are done. But looking at candidates who are across the ideological spectrum, I think are strong candidates who are running in places where the Democrats haven't had a lot of success recently, where I think that they could have success. So there's the positive.

[Tim Miller]

Now we get to the Senate race. The story of my thoughts on the Senate race starts with a troubling tweet

[Nicole Saphier]

I sent in the Charlotte airport lounge before I did a cross intercontinental flight.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know if you guys remember the story of Justine Sacco. My elder millennials remember this. She tweeted. I don't remember what it was. I thought about looking it up this

[Nicole Saphier]

morning, just kind of, who cares at this point.

[Tim Miller]

She tweeted something that was either racist

[Nicole Saphier]

or quasi racist or interpreted as racist about her trip to Africa. And then she got on a plane and people saw the tweet and they started piling on her. And then a hashtag started about, like, when does Justine land? And so, like, she. Her flight lands and she gets off the plane and she realizes that she's been canceled, that everybody hates her for.

[Tim Miller]

The tweet that she sent, I had kind of a micro version of that before my vacation, nothing racist. I tweeted that Haley Stevens was growing on me. And it's like, it was kind of cheeky. She had this funny riff, and I

[Nicole Saphier]

wish I could do her voice.

[Tim Miller]

She's like, we're gonna let it rip. We gotta let her rip. And she's just kind of mad. And I don't know, there's just something about it that made me giggle. And, you know, I'm stuck in an airport lounge. I'm just like, you know, fire it off. I'm fucking firing off tweets all the time. Fired off this.

[Nicole Saphier]

She's growing on me.

[Tim Miller]

What happened after that? I guess I don't know, because who cares? But my understanding is, like, some people who follow me also tweeted that she was growing on them. And then some other people started tweeting that sarcastically or mockingly. And then this all happened while I'm in the plane. And then Track APAC somehow got on the jump to conclusions. Matt was like, this must be an op. And then somehow somebody decided that we were getting paid $1,500 to tweet that Haley Stevens was growing on us. And Wajahat Ali is, like, tweeting insane accusations at me about how I'm taking money for my tweets. And Rashida Tlaib is tweeting about this, and it's like, this is all crazy. It was all crazy. It's like, I don't. I think it was the second nice thing I've ever said about Haley Stevens. There's something she did, the debate, I liked. I don't really remember what.

[Nicole Saphier]

But I've been nasty to Haley Stevens

[Tim Miller]

mostly for most of this campaign. I. One of her friends, like, chastised me

[Nicole Saphier]

after a panel that I was on

[Tim Miller]

because I was comparing her to egg from Arrested Development and being very critical of her. This is not a Haley Stevens person, really, But I thought the clip was funny. And so this thing spirals out of control, though, and it's like, there are memes about this, and it's like, okay, well, so this is part of my personal growth. I land in Berlin, and it's like, okay, like, a lot of congresswoman and a lot of people, apparently, I think

[Nicole Saphier]

I'm taking money to say that Haley

[Tim Miller]

Stevens is growing on me.

[Nicole Saphier]

Just like, why would they pay me for that? I don't.

[Tim Miller]

The whole thing is insane.

[Nicole Saphier]

Insane.

[Tim Miller]

So whatever it's worth, I don't take money from anybody for any tweets. Certainly no campaigns or allied groups. The only people I take money from or we take money from at the Bulwark are those and the sponsored ads that you hear. If you're not a Bulwark plus member, shout out our friends at Three Day blinds and Laundry Sauce, and they're disclosed as such. People send me things and they're like, will you tweet this? Or whatever, like, flax. But, like, I almost never do.

[Nicole Saphier]

I never do. If I disagree, obviously, every once in a while, somebody will flag me for

[Tim Miller]

me, something that I. That I like, and so I'll share it, of course. I think most flacks are, like, scared

[Nicole Saphier]

of me because I used to be

[Tim Miller]

a flack and I don't care.

[Nicole Saphier]

And this podcast would be fucking boring

[Tim Miller]

if I was, like, saying things that the press secretary for Haley Stevens wanted me to say. Like, it's great. The whole thing is lunacy. But I wanted to share some lessons from number one. I sent one tweet trying to correct the record.

[Nicole Saphier]

Probably shouldn't have even done that, put my phone down, let people lie about me,

[Tim Miller]

and moved on. Went to Berghain. I think that's personal growth and I think that just kind of in general, keeping focus on the things that matter is smart for all of us in these stupid social media wars. I will say another lesson here might be be a little bit careful of what influencers you follow. If there are people that are randomly doing false smears against people that are

[Nicole Saphier]

ostensibly on their side because they want to win some internecine factional fight, maybe that should raise questions about whether you should trust them on other matters.

[Tim Miller]

And three, I think the Senate primary,

[Nicole Saphier]

these Senate primaries have caused everybody to

[Tim Miller]

take their eye off the ball. As I got into with Bill, like for the people who are like professional

[Nicole Saphier]

moderates or professional dsa, like their eyes

[Tim Miller]

are so far off the ball right

[Nicole Saphier]

now like that they aren't even in the same stadium. And I know the DSA people aren't even going to listen to me on this. So I try to say this to my moderate buddies, but it's just like

[Tim Miller]

going to the mat with personal nasty attacks on people who are part of

[Nicole Saphier]

the broad anti Trump coalition right now In August of 2026, I find to

[Tim Miller]

be totally irresponsible and wrong.

[Nicole Saphier]

And I think everybody's got to take a breath.

[Tim Miller]

And I think the people that are

[Nicole Saphier]

engaged in this should also go on a two week vacation if they can.

[Tim Miller]

Or maybe two days, it's going to walk around the block and it's time

[Nicole Saphier]

to re, like get, get the ship

[Tim Miller]

back on course here while I'm mixing my metaphors. But the threats are so great right now. The threats and the risks, like what we talked about with Bill about the

[Nicole Saphier]

buffoons who are running the national security,

[Tim Miller]

they're still killing people in the streets. We're about to do mass deportations of Haitians. They're spying on Jim Comey.

[Nicole Saphier]

Why possibly would you prioritize like bickering over something that's like not even like we're going to, like Bill said, we're

[Tim Miller]

going to bicker over what your health care plan is. It's like nobody's health care plan is bidding passed. Donald Trump is fucking president. Okay? So like fight about that in 2029, we have to defeat Donald Trump. So having a good message for people that's good and arguing about what that message should be, that's fine. But these sort of low blows and lies and smears about people we're going to need to have on our side like this year. And going forward to me is crazy. And so to the Senate race itself, here's my thoughts. I Don't really like either candidate that much. For Abdul, I know that a lot of people really like him. He's got a huge fan base. I like the people get excited about candidates. I think that's good. I think it can be dangerous. You don't want to get into a cult. But I want people to be excited. I don't want everybody to be jaded. It seems like younger people are excited

[Nicole Saphier]

about Abdul in particular in Michigan, and that makes me happy and so like

[Tim Miller]

that part of it.

[Nicole Saphier]

I don't want to yuck anybody's young.

[Tim Miller]

I worry a little bit. Just my personal worry is that he's

[Nicole Saphier]

like an inverse Fetterman and he makes the life hard for the next Democratic

[Tim Miller]

president from the left in 2029.

[Nicole Saphier]

There's going to be narrow majorities.

[Tim Miller]

We're going to have to do stuff. Does he really seem like a team player? I don't know.

[Nicole Saphier]

But I also understand why he's resonating.

[Tim Miller]

The people are really pissed. He's got a message for people that are pissed.

[Nicole Saphier]

And his focus message, he's a good message.

[Tim Miller]

Talking about healthcare, corporate influence, the way

[Nicole Saphier]

that we're wasting money on these stupid wars. I think that that message is right and so I understand.

[Tim Miller]

The cultishness though again is part of what concerns me with him. The fact that he had to send out a tweet telling his own fans

[Nicole Saphier]

to stop doing misogynist hits on Haley Stevens isn't great. The fact that they're regularly making up

[Tim Miller]

lies about their opponents. I don't like the fact that many of the people that were sending me messages and posting on my Instagram posts

[Nicole Saphier]

about my vacation, about how I'm a

[Tim Miller]

Zionist, I'm taking blood money from the Zionists and I'm worse than maga. It's like, guys, if you think that Haley Stevens is a MAGA or a worse than maga, you've lost your mind.

[Nicole Saphier]

You've totally lost focus on the plot. And I just. I think that that is the part

[Tim Miller]

that worries me about El Said and his supporters.

[Nicole Saphier]

They think that the enemy is the center of life, Democrats and not maga.

[Tim Miller]

And I'm concerned about that. I'm a little bit concerned about the election with him. We'll get to electability at the end. As for Haley personally, she doesn't seem like she's kind of a strange cat. That's what the whole growing on me thing was about. She seems to have been a totally competent House member. I think that she'd be a total team player in the Senate. It's hard to imagine Haley Stevens, like, not voting for whatever the policy priorities are of the next Democratic president. You know, she seems to care about Michigan, get things done for Michigan. That is a totally fine person in the Senate.

[Nicole Saphier]

There are a lot of people in the Senate like Haley Stevens. As I said with Bill, I'm concerned some about some of the ways that

[Tim Miller]

these people want to make too many deals with the MAGA Republicans. That would be something I'd have concerns about Haley with.

[Nicole Saphier]

But all in all, I think in the grand scheme of things, she'd be a broadly inoffensive senator.

[Tim Miller]

I understand why people are mad about the Apex stuff, and I do want to just talk about this really quick. I just think that in general, if any interest group puts tens of millions

[Nicole Saphier]

of dollars into one race, I think

[Tim Miller]

that should become an issue in the race.

[Nicole Saphier]

I do. And whether that would be AI or

[Tim Miller]

Big Oil or whatever, it's too much. It's too much influence. It is distorting the democratic process. We should reform it. There should be campaign for finance reform. This was a bipartisan thing when I was coming up. This was McCain's thing.

[Nicole Saphier]

And after Citizens United, things have gotten out of control.

[Tim Miller]

And it's going to be tough for the Supreme Court to do stuff.

[Nicole Saphier]

Appeals need to come up with ways to make changes. And until we can make changes, the

[Tim Miller]

best that can be done is to make it a political issue.

[Nicole Saphier]

And so I think that no matter what the interest group is, the idea that there would be that much money flowing to one person feels like a totally relevant issue in the race. And it's something that I understand why

[Tim Miller]

people would be like, I don't want

[Nicole Saphier]

to vote for somebody that is getting propped up by that kind of money from interests.

[Tim Miller]

The Israel thing in particular, the AIPAC thing in particular, it's like, okay, again, people have to live in reality. The Democratic Party rightly is upset about a lot of the ways in which

[Nicole Saphier]

America and Israel have conducted foreign policy. Like the fact that Israel, that Netanyahu

[Tim Miller]

is in our Situation Room arguing for this disastrous war. That's terrible. The way that Israel has prosecuted their actions in Gaza. And then with the settlements, I have came on talking about what's happening in the West Bank. People are pissed about it. People are pissed about the way that we are involved with it. And so if you're going to have an interest group that is supporting closer ties to this foreign country, that people are upset about some of their actions recently, that's going to be a problem in the campaign. This is going to become a campaign issue. And I just think that this is where this whole race has devolved into this sectarian religious war, which is just not how our campaign should be run.

[Nicole Saphier]

Things aren't going that great in the Middle East.

[Tim Miller]

I don't really want our primaries to

[Nicole Saphier]

be Israel, Palestine and Jews versus Muslims.

[Tim Miller]

I don't think that's healthy. We're in a pluralistic society. I don't think that interest groups or

[Nicole Saphier]

PACs that are pushing the interests of any foreign country should be having that

[Tim Miller]

much influence in our elections. Like a pack that is backed by Qatari Americans or Saudi Americans or Saudi Americans or Belgium. That is not healthy for democracy. And so it's become an issue in the race.

[Nicole Saphier]

I think it should have become an issue in the race.

[Tim Miller]

And I don't know that the pushback results in less money flowing to these races because it's not effective, because it backfires. I think that's probably a good thing. Look, everybody has their free speech rights in this country. Everybody should be able to advocate for the candidates they want.

[Nicole Saphier]

But I just think that in this moment where the Democratic Party should be uniting around Donald Trump and uniting around

[Tim Miller]

how Trump has betrayed voters and uniting

[Nicole Saphier]

around a message, an economic message for people who are being left behind and

[Tim Miller]

re establishing themselves as a working class party, turning the party into a Middle Eastern sectarian religious war is ill advised,

[Nicole Saphier]

to say the least. And so I don't think that it

[Tim Miller]

was wise for AIPAC to spend 30 million in this race. I think it ends up being self harming to their interests and to the interests of American Jews who are concerned about anti Semitism, all that.

[Nicole Saphier]

I think that it backfired and I think that as a result, Abdul said it's going to win this race tomorrow. So I don't know that my opinion matters that much. I'm a little concerned about, you know,

[Tim Miller]

I think it's a little risky on the electability front. I think that, you know, Michigan has elected Gretchen Whitmer, Alyssa Slotkin, Dana Nestle, like a lot of people that are of the Haley Stevens profile.

[Nicole Saphier]

And I think that any bad year

[Tim Miller]

for Trump, like I think that Haley Stevens would win easily. I think that Abdul will probably win, but I do think it'll be incumbent on him to really work to win over the voters of the people that

[Nicole Saphier]

voted for Alyssa Slotkin, who you might Remember won in 2024 when Kamala Harris lost. So figuring out how to talk to those voters who may have concerns is

[Tim Miller]

something that he's got to focus on.

[Nicole Saphier]

And I think that that is going to take a vibe shift from acting as if the central left Democrats are the enemy to focusing on Donald Trump being the enemy and how central left

[Tim Miller]

Democrats need to be on board with that.

[Nicole Saphier]

So that'd be my advice to Abdul and to fight agency and to the folks that are excited about his campaign.

[Tim Miller]

So that is that long show. I have a lot to say tomorrow we're going to be live on the next level as the results come in.

[Nicole Saphier]

So that'll be great if you want more Michigan Senate content. Wisconsin it's going to be a doozy of a night tomorrow night.

[Tim Miller]

I've got a really great socialism rant going for tomorrow night's next level. I have so many rants that I've been kind of bubbling up in the

[Nicole Saphier]

old brain after a couple rose at the beach.

[Tim Miller]

So get fired up for that. And I don't think it's gonna be

[Nicole Saphier]

what you think it's gonna be, by the way. So hope to surprise you.

[Tim Miller]

Appreciate everybody very much. Good to be back. I'll take your comments, criticisms, compliments in the comments. See you back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Daily. The Borg Podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.