Susan Glasser: The Irredeemable Republicans

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Bulwark – “Susan Glasser: The Irredeemable Republicans”

Date: August 7, 2026
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Susan Glasser (Staff Writer at The New Yorker, co-author of "The Divider")

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the state of the Republican Party under Donald Trump’s continued leadership, the moral and political consequences of his administration’s policies—particularly immigration and economic strategies—and the party’s transformation into what Susan Glasser deems an “irredeemable” entity. The discussion ranges from personal anecdotes to critical policy breakdowns and reactions to breaking political news, reflecting on what remains of U.S. democratic norms, the consequences of moral abdication, and the failure of ‘moderate’ Republicans to serve as any real check on Trumpism. The episode closes with broader concerns about U.S. dysfunction in the face of an ascendant China and global threats.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Framing the Moment: Trump’s Goldification and Historical Parallels

• [02:22–05:24]
  • Glasser and Miller reflect on the surreal experience of living in a “gold-maxed” Washington, D.C., with Trump’s emphasis on monument-building and gilded symbolism.
  • Quote: “Apparently, it's the gold fingering of existing statues. What we're living in here is the gold maxing of Washington, I guess, by Donald Trump.” — Susan Glasser [03:18]
  • Historical analogies are drawn between Trump’s ego-driven projects and Napoleon, dismissing the parallel as “Donald Trump is to Napoleon as Donald Duck is.” [05:24]

2. Mood of the Country: Economy, Jobs, and Distraction Tactics

• [07:09–10:18]
  • Discussion of worsening economic data: job losses, manufacturing decline, and layoffs, along with the public’s sour mood.
  • Trump is said to be distancing himself from the Republican brand when politically convenient, exposing party fractures.
  • Quote: “Even Donald Trump is distancing himself from Republicans, which probably not the best political strategy.” — Susan Glasser [07:09]
  • Miller searches for “silver linings”: at least government data about bad economic news is still being released.

3. Trump’s Focus: Legacy Over Substance

• [09:12–12:15]
  • Trump is reportedly preoccupied with personal legacy projects (e.g., re-gilding statues) over economic or foreign policy crises.
  • Quote: “[Trump is] not on the economy, not on the war he unleashed in the Middle East... but on his own projects, like the gildification of statues in, in Washington.” — Susan Glasser [09:12]
  • “Every minute that he's screaming... is a minute that he is not spending on further screwing up America.” — Glasser’s concessionary “silver lining.” [09:53]

4. Trump’s Tariff Obsession and Economic Fallout

• [12:15–16:16]
  • Trump’s love affair with tariffs: revisiting failed economic consequences, not only on adversaries but also allies (like Canada) and on American consumers.
  • Quote: “Trump has upended expectations about the economy without being able to create any kind of durable new normal.” — Susan Glasser [13:19]
  • Personal stories (e.g., a coffee shop in Oakland) illustrate how tariffs directly increase consumer prices.
  • Iran war and tariffs compound inflation, affecting all aspects of daily life.

5. Immigration Regime: Policies as a “Moral Stain”

• [21:18–32:25]
  • Case studies highlight the Trump administration’s targeting of Southeast Asian refugees and TPS/asylee immigrants for deportation, often decades after initial infractions.
  • Emotional reflection on the betrayal of America’s history as an immigrant nation.
  • Quote: “A lot of what's happening right now is a moral stain on the United States.” — Susan Glasser [23:25]
  • Reagan’s farewell address is invoked to illustrate the contrast between past Republican ideals and current realities. [25:35]

6. Breaking Down the Political Implications: The Cassidy Vote

• [18:55–22:59, 50:19–56:58]
  • Live reaction to Senator Bill Cassidy’s much-anticipated vote on the Attorney General nominee, Todd Blanche. Despite hope, Cassidy supports the nomination, leading to a scathing critique.
  • Quote: “There are no good angels in our politics right now.” — Susan Glasser [51:43]
  • The “Republican establishment” is declared defunct, acting as “handmaidens” to Trump’s most extreme projects.
  • Quote: “The Republican Party is the Trump Republican Party.” — Susan Glasser [55:54]

7. Political Tactics: Manipulating Opponent Primaries

• [35:36–38:07]
  • Discussion of Republicans funding a Democratic Socialist candidate’s campaign in Wisconsin to promote a weaker general election opponent, reflecting cynicism about both parties’ tactics.

8. Russia, Ukraine, and Global Threats

• [40:50–48:37]
  • Summary of Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia: escalating drone attacks, civilian targeting, and NATO’s vulnerability due to U.S. depletion of munitions.
  • Quote: “Russia is experiencing right now the greatest energy crisis it has since the fall of the Soviet Union.” — Susan Glasser [41:48]
  • Fears that Russia and other adversaries may escalate attacks outside Ukraine, with Western critical infrastructure already being tested or infiltrated. [45:48]

9. America’s Failure to Meet China’s Challenge

• [49:38–59:16]
  • Refers to Evan Osnos's China report: China’s focus on AI, biotech, batteries, etc., while the U.S. is stuck on “tariffs, deportations, building arcs.”
  • Quote: “America's dysfunction is such a five alarm fire that we're really almost unable to process the extent to which... the Chinese... are going to reshape basically the structure of the global economy.” — Susan Glasser [59:16]
  • The U.S. is “blinded by the gold”—both distracted and outmaneuvered.

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Memorable Quotes & Notable Moments

• “Donald Trump is to Napoleon as Donald Duck is...” – Susan Glasser [05:24]
• On deportation policy: “To think that we're gonna deport a woman with four children, small business owner to a place she didn't know, a refugee. It's crazy.” – Tim Miller [22:43]
• On establishment Republicans: “The Republican establishment are the handmaidens of this assault on America’s norms and traditions.” – Susan Glasser [51:55]
• On Cassidy’s rationalization: “I'll be criticized for this vote. What's new? Fuck you, Bill Cassidy.” – Tim Miller [52:32]
• On GOP’s total transformation: “There is no such thing as Republican moderate or Republican establishment.” – Susan Glasser [51:55]
• On American decline in global competition: “America’s blinded by the gold.” – Susan Glasser [61:12]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening Reflection: Gold Statues & Trump’s Legacy [01:41–05:24]
• Economic Doldrums & Distractions [07:09–10:18]
• Tariffs, Inflation, and Iran War [12:15–16:16]
• Immigration: Moral and Identity Crisis [21:18–32:25]
• Live Politics: Cassidy's Vote [50:19–56:58]
• Russian Escalation & Global Cyber Threats [40:50–48:37]
• China's Rise, U.S. Dysfunction [49:38–59:16]
• Closing Reflections [59:09–61:12]

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Tone & Style

The conversation is candid, wry, and often laced with gallows humor reflecting deep frustration with current political realities. Both hosts mourn the loss of bipartisan ideals and the complicity (or cowardice) of establishment figures.

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Takeaways

• No meaningful check on Trumpism remains within the Republican Party.
• Immigration cruelty and economic self-sabotage are not just policies, but evidence of a deeper moral and identity crisis.
• Global threats are growing as American institutions are hollowed out and distracted.
• Miller and Glasser urge listeners to recognize the historic gravity of the present moment—even as the country is “blinded by gold.”

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For more in-depth reporting and pro-democracy analysis, visit thebulwark.com.

Transcript

[Tim Miller]

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[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show, staff writer at the New Yorker, co host of its Political Scene podcast. Our most recent book is the Divider, co authored with. I think there's another book coming. It's Susan Glasser.

[Susan Glasser]

What's happening, Tim? Happy August. It's so good to be with you.

[Tim Miller]

Good to be with you. Our friend and frequent guest of the show, David Frum, posted this on X this morning. I thought it was a good way to frame up the start of the conversation. The war on the Eastern front is lost. The economy is collapsing. His body is decaying. The leader escapes from intolerable realities into fantasies of monument building and renaming things for himself. That's pretty much the story.

[Susan Glasser]

I think it falls into the established genre of if I were a foreign correspondent, how would I cover this madness? And I'll tell you, Tim, because you're not here. I had this classic Washington in the Age of Trump out of Body experience. The other day I was going across Memorial Bridge for the first time in a while and I was in an Uber and I was looking down at my phone and I happened to look up at the exact moment These two gigantic golden statues were literally inches away from my car window. And I couldn't help myself. I sort of shrieked out loud. It was as like, you know, I

[Tim Miller]

got an actual street, like, like, audible shriek.

[Susan Glasser]

I did. And actually the Uber driver was like, oh, my God, are we getting in an accident? I said, no, I'm sorry. It just Trump's goldification, you know, of the. The city. I wasn't.

[Tim Miller]

Is that the gold fingering of the existing statues, or are those new?

[Susan Glasser]

Apparently, it's the gold fingering of existing statues. What we're living in here is the gold maxing of Washington, I guess, by Donald Trump.

[Tim Miller]

Part of my holiday was in Berlin and Paris, so I saw two arches, and it took a little bit of the joy away. It was maybe the only time that I've let him invade my holiday, which was. And the Branden brigade is fine. Those folks who aren't history. The Arc de Triomphe is awesome. But I just found myself thinking about how really all this is. Was just Napoleon's. Napoleon Trump small man syndrome, wanting to create a bigger one. And it kind of took me out of the moment a little bit.

[Susan Glasser]

You know, it's so sad because for me, the Brandenburg Gate and just standing there in that plaza and is a reminder of what I suppose in hindsight was probably the best moment of our lives. We just didn't realize it at the time, which was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the sort of the final end of, in a way, that World War II and the Cold War was in that moment. I was in college when that happened, and I've always felt like it's so rare that you sort of wake up in one world and go to sleep in another. That's what that day in November of 1989 felt. You know, I realize now, of course, that, you know, this. This sense that we had, which we really had, it's hard to communicate that to. To young people today, but, you know, we really had a sense that, you know, this kind of moral arc of the universe that Barack Obama loves to talk about, that it really was bending in the right direction after a lot of twists and turns. And it's just. It's such a fricking tragedy. But for me, standing in that plaza in Berlin is always this incredibly positive thing. So I really, really don't like that you're now connecting it here to.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, okay, I'm sorry. It was really more about the Arc de Triomphe. I felt it more because the Napoleon Trump parallels. Trump has stated them. He wants to be like Napoleon and Stalin.

[Susan Glasser]

Interestingly, what a joke, though. I mean, let's pause for a second to say Donald Trump is to Napoleon as Donald Duck is.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know who is a great duck. I don't.

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[Tim Miller]

We're going to keep working on this.

[Susan Glasser]

Didn't actually Donald Duck. Wasn't there a whole series where they had Donald Duck playing historical figures? I feel like there was a kind

[Tim Miller]

of maybe it's like Darkwing Duck is to Donald Duck. We'll keep working on it. But yeah, no, that's fair. I apologize. I mean Napoleon has some bad marks on his track record, but yeah, to compare him to Trump is rude. The east side gallery gave it to me though I did have some, some moments just like right at the sort of precipice of the east and West Berlin was pretty powerful. I want to talk about the news. Minus 23,000 jobs for the last month reported this morning. Yikes. A lot of that is loss of public sector jobs, local public sector jobs in education, otherwise. But there's no job gains happening. Essentially Fox Business. I was watching their, I like to watch their coverage of it, always see how they do. They were pretty happy about the better the next expected manufacturing numbers. 5,000 manufacturing jobs were created, which would have been just a minuscule number during the Biden age. Huge downward revisions also for May and June in recent months, almost 3 in 10 of the unemployed have been looking for work for more than six months. It's greatest share since the pandemic. We obviously have Kathryn Rappel who goes into the stuff in depth on receipts every Friday. So you can go check that out. But just at the top line, the economic stories is not good.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, I think that's right. There's been a little bit of Hopium going on right in the kind of Fox Newsy corners where they're looking for any explanation that isn't things are really bad in the country and people are blaming Donald Trump and they're blaming Republicans. I saw this morning Donald Trump saying oh no, actually, yes, people are really mad, but they're mad at Republicans. They're not mad at me. Which is a pretty fascinating since he's demanded that the entire definition of Republicanism at this moment be dictated purely by his own whims and gets very angry if you say that MAGA is anything other than whatever pops into Donald Trump's head. So even Donald Trump is distancing himself from Republicans, which probably not the best political strategy. I think the sour mood of the country this close to a midterm election, where history and approval numbers for the president and other fundamentals already suggested it was going to look pretty tough for Republicans. This isn't what you want to see in August. At this point, another distraction, frankly, is probably Donald Trump's best hope. And since he loves to run that play, I would say expect him to do something distracting.

[Tim Miller]

I'm going to try to offer some silver linings on this podcast. I get some feedback from listeners, even from you, even from the guest, that sometimes we're a little too bleak when we get together. Here's my silver lining here. We're still getting bad numbers. I don't know. I think if you'd asked me in August of 2025 and you said, hey, in August 2026, the jobs report is going to be disastrous, do you think that they'll put it out? I think I would have probably said no. So, you know, there's some in the bowels of the government there. I'm probably jinxing it by even bringing voice to this. That's how low we've dropped here. Like, government reports are still being put out. That's a win.

[Susan Glasser]

This is why the silver linings exercise is not always the most constructive one analytically. Look, there is the silver lining here, and I really actually don't love playing this game. But people are so astonished and amazing. It is jaw dropping how focused the President United States is. Not on the economy, not on the war he unleashed in the Middle east, not on the sort of profound disruption of the workforce that AI already portends, but on his own projects, like the gildification of statues in, in Washington. I know people were like, freaking out about Maggie Haberman saying the other day on a podcast that he spent like 70% of his time on these, quote, legacy projects. But there is the upside, which is every minute that he's screaming at Jeanine Pirro about not prosecuting an Olympian for ripping up the reflecting pool, that is a minute that he is not spending on further screwing up America. So, you know, hey, if you're Republican, I don't know if you can turn that into a campaign ad.

[Tim Miller]

But yeah, and some reports from focus groups and folks were watching yesterday. Is that like, even this. I guess this isn't surprising, but just I sometimes worry that I talked about vacation, how I bubbled myself in the news. Sometimes I worry I bubble myself inside. Just like I listen to MAGA news, but kind of inside, high information people news. You know what I mean? It's like, and it's hard for me to put my brain into like, what kind of information is trickling to people that like, don't really read the news that much. And so this focus group was kind of, that it was like some Trump voters that are, that have concerns about him or whatever. And this did come up like the, like the, hey, things aren't going well for us economically. And he seems to be focused on all the gold stuff. Right. Like that part is, is kind of matriculating out, which I think is notable.

[Susan Glasser]

Absolutely. I mean, for me, actually, I do think one of the enduring images of, you know, Maggie and Jonathan's book Regime Change is that image of Donald Trump with a glue gun, personally applying that, you know, tacky fake gold wood to the walls of the Oval Office. This, you know, beautiful neoclassical mansion that is meant to be the architectural representation of this elegant, simple, spare constitution of ours in which we have this checks and balances and instead there's a crazy would be king gluing gold shit all over it. I mean, to me that is like Donald Trump is the metaphor made manifest. Right. And so I do think that, that it's simple and he is a simple, in a way, character which has made him very effective as a political communicator. Except that what he's communicating now is I don't give a shit about you and you know, give me some more gold.

[Tim Miller]

Right. It's kind of a left brain, right brain thing. Because for me, the Maggie thing that sticks with me from that book is she's talking about how the Advisor tells her 70% of his mind share is being spent on renovations. And it's like, okay. And that is evident because unfortunately we get to look into his mind constantly, every minute. The economy. I want to tie a little bit to the tariff stuff too. I saw you posted about this and there have been a couple of tariff items lately. We played yesterday a couple of clips from his rambling with Joe Lombardo on the no tax on tips in Nevada where they were talking about how important it is to be friends with billionaires because they're the job creators. And in an interview with Fox, he was asked open ended question, you're here to talk about the economy. What's your big message? Trump's reply. So tariffs have been incredible. Then kind of goes on and then he gets into the kind of the refunds and he's like, but we're still getting so much money from them. Apparently 100 billion has been refunded. A lot of these companies are just eating though themselves, not getting passed down. What's your kind of Sense on all that.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, I mean, a couple of thoughts. One, I do think that the kind of cycle of willfulness in ignoring Trump's adult lifetime preoccupation with tariffs has been responsible for a lot of misinformation flowed to people. The idea that just because the Supreme Court shot down his tariffs, he was just going to forget about them, was never realistic. He's looking for ever more exotic instruments to impose tariffs. And it's an important example of the kind of bubble reality of Donald Trump and then reality, reality. I noticed that there was a Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, of course, a respected economist in his own right, the other day, pointing out that what has Donald Trump's aluminum tariffs on Canada done, it's coming back to bite American corporations who manufacture things and that they're the ones in many ways who are suffering from this economic assault that Trump thinks he's launching on our neighbor. And, you know, multiply that by industries, by sectors, over time. And I think you have part of the reason why people are so uncertain about the future and in such a sour mood, because Trump has upended expectations about the economy without being able to create any kind of a durable new normal. And how's it going to shake out Donald Trump's theory? The case was somehow that he's going to impose these magical tariffs and, you know, wave his golden Trump wand and companies are magically going to build new factories and create new jobs. Of course, that hasn't happened. Even if it were to happen, it would play out over years and decades. And the evidence, of course, strongly suggests it won't happen.

[Tim Miller]

Do want to shout out my guys at the Crown? It's a coffee shop in Oakland. I think a short list from the best coffee shops in America. We got this email because it was a big frequenter there when I lived in Oakland, announcing why we're temporarily reducing the coffee prices. We've long maintained the tariffs for not just a tax on businesses, but on the people. We're finding creative ways to try and pay back that debt to our customers at the Crown, passing the refund for the full amount of the Crown's tariff inventory onto our customers. Go support the Crown if you're in the Bay Area. But I haven't been getting that email from Apple. I don't think that the iPhone prices are coming back down a little bit. But there was a chart I was looking at about inflation, and inflation really had got down below wage growth in about 2023 towards the end of Biden and had stayed that way to the beginning of Trump. And it was really not until the inflation was still a little higher than people wanted, but it was lower than wage growth. But it wasn't until the Iran war, kind of the tariffs started to tick it up, and the Iran war really gets it over. And that's something that people are feeling, Tim.

[Susan Glasser]

You know, people talk about the Iran war as if it's a simple matter of let's get the price at the pump back down to where it was before. The price of gasoline is essentially the price of all manufactured goods and even much of food in the world in which we live in. And I think that if only it were simply a matter of, you know, how much you pay at the pump, but really it's a proxy. You raise the price of gas, you raise the price of energy, you raise the price basically of almost everything in a modern society. And the history of Trump 2.0 is going to be the history of the folly of this man and what he's chosen to do in the second year of his second term.

[Tim Miller]

This segment is brought to you by the New York Times. One of the things Susan and I get into in this episode, just this brutal story about the real impacts of the Trump immigration regime. But before we give our takes on it, somebody had to report the story. Just like as we had Jonathan Blitzer on a couple weeks ago, to discuss the brutal conditions in the internment camps in Texas. You got to have reporters out there reporting these stories so that we can elevate them, so we can use them to help bring pressure to the political leaders in certain cases, so we can comment on them and provide context or insight around them. It's the reporting that underpins everything. The show and every other show with commentary and current events depend on all that original fact based reporting, whether that's our fantastic beat reporters here at the Bulwark like Adrian and Jonathan Cohn, Lauren Egan, or whether it's the reporters at your local paper or those at the New York Times. The immigration story I mentioned was reported by Amy Chin and Albert sun of the Times. They followed the story of these Vietnam refugees who immigrated the United States from Southeast Asia as children and are now being targeted by the Trump administration. We get into it more in the show. These stories are important. We have to put human names on this so that people like the gentleman in Texas can start to learn a little bit more about the grotesqueries of this administration. That story is just one example of the fact based reporting wherever you seek it out nationally, locally. Support fact based reporting. Thanks to the New York Times we have a rare opportunity on this taped podcast to do a cliffhanger. Okay, are you ready for this? I was going to go to Todd Blanche next and talk about the Todd Blanche confirmation, but Senator Bill Cassidy, right as we were starting taping, tweeted the following. I will announce my decision on the Attorney general nominee at 10:40am Eastern from the Senate floor.

[Susan Glasser]

Oh, my God.

[Tim Miller]

So that will happen while we are taping.

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So exciting.

[Tim Miller]

Just can you feel the excitement? So here it's just for some math for people the Republicans can afford to lose. Four Sen. Well, I guess John Fetterman makes all this a wild card. But four senators, assuming the Democrats all voted against Collins and Murkowski have already said that they are. No. Mitch McConnell's team put out a statement saying that he's alive and out of the hospital and that he'll be back in September. We've still not heard his voice. Strangely, he's been casting tie breaking amendment votes on the farm bill, which is, I think, unusual. Senator Bozeman said that he's spoken to him, whatever that's worth. So anyway, this you cannot do by proxy a confirmation vote. So McConnell's out for another few weeks at minimum. And so Cassidy would be the tie breaking vote unless Fetterman kind of tied it back. So it's an important announcement and I think we'll just do all the Blanche coverage at the end once we hear. Do you want to do a prediction? Should we both do make a prediction?

[Susan Glasser]

No, predictions are bad. Predictions are bad. Let's just say this, Tim.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Susan Glasser]

Bill Cassidy has every reason in the world to vote. No, it doesn't mean he will, but it means that he has every reason to. Not least of which is that he's already proven that the deciding vote, the final vote that got RFK Jr over the top. After proclaiming his deep unease as a physician with the idea of confirming a vaccine skeptic, he went ahead and did it. So is that what Bill Cassidy wants his legacy to be?

[Tim Miller]

Can I tell you something embarrassing? We're in 2026. We're in year 11. My brain knows that we're going to keep being disappointed by these people. But there's a flicker in my heart right now that's like my senator Bill Cassidy might the right thing. I'm feeling it like that he might just do it. And so I might have to be disappointed live. If not lsu, Clemson's coming up in one month kickoff. I'm going to go give him a big. I'm going to go find him at the tailgate and give him a big hug if he does the right thing. So we'll see. End of the podcast.

[Susan Glasser]

You're one of his constituents now.

[Tim Miller]

I am one of his constituents, yeah. What I was planning before he sent that tweet while we were podcasting was I was going to tell people, my fellow Louisianans who listen and there are many of you, to call them and be nice to them and invite them to the.

[Susan Glasser]

All right, well, they've got 16 minutes.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, well, that's not going to work. So we can't, we can't do that now. So if he does the right thing, calm and thank him. So tell him, you know, bring him a little cup of jambalaya next time you see him. All right, we'll see. We'll get back to Todd Blanche at the end. In that case, I want to do. I felt remiss coming back and not doing immigration stories because that is like an ongoing thing. So I just wanted to highlight two stories in particular that I saw this morning. Paging through the the real news, you and your colleagues, New York Times, and even in a surprising outlet that I'll get to actually second, there was some real news. This is from New York Times. We're now back to sending Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian refugees from half a century ago back to Vietnam and other places. The Melissa Tran story stuck with me, really, though she was born in Vietnam. She arrived in the United States in 1993 as an 11 year old after living in a refugee camp in Philippines. So she's a refugee. Her family settled in Fairfax. At age 18, she made a mistake. She stole from her workplace, a doctor's office, ended up getting a four month sentence. And after that, she's had a clean record. She's now 44 years old. She has a husband, she has four children. She's a small business, small business owner in Fairfax. And we have deported her to Vietnam. Place she doesn't really remember or know, know anybody. And this is like where they are now. Like they said, they're going after the criminals, but now, so now you're going after, you know, you're, you're paging through or having AI page through criminal records from 20 years ago, 30 years ago. And it's just like, you know, I did some bad shit when I was 18. I'll tell you. I got lucky that I avoided the long arm of the law when I, I don't. Susan Glasser was probably following the rules when she was 18. But to think that we're gonna deport A woman with four children, small business owner to a place she didn't know, a refugee. It's crazy.

[Susan Glasser]

A lot of what's happening right now is a moral stain on the United States. And it's hard to speak in those terms. And in a political environment in which there's so much incentive to excuse that which is done in your name, if it's by your team, it's very hard to excuse a lot of this. What I find that makes it even more painful is that so much of it is a direct challenge to the idea of America itself. And you know, if you, if you want to be even more bummed out, listen to the speech that Ronald Reagan gave before he left office at the end of his second term. And even if you grew up like I did, not exactly a fan of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, it's a great speech. You should listen to it even more so if you weren't a fan of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, because it will blow your frickin mind and you'll say, what has happened to the Republican Party that it doesn't believe in the core vision of the country that led basically all of our ancestors, with a small exception, to come to this country. And that to me was always the thing that, that actually did unite us, right, is that everybody had their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents come to this country and that we're all a mix and that it was the great opt in society in which everybody had the chance to start over. And I feel like that's what's been under assault these last few years by Stephen Miller and Donald Trump is the basic notion. And the fact, of course, that Donald Trump, you know, is the product of a draft dodger who came here from Germany and had opportunities he could never have possibly had in Germany is, you know, thanks a lot.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I mean, he could have been a prison guard in Germany, probably. What would this be with the Bulwark podcast? Who owed me if I did not play for people? Just a segment of my favorite part of the Reagan farewell address. So we're just going to duck that in right here.

[Audio Clip / Interviewee]

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace. A city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the Walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

[Susan Glasser]

I, I stated Ronald Reagan for you.

[Tim Miller]

You did. I know it's like, okay, this is kind of like when you go to somebody's house and you try to, you know, abide by their rules. You know, they don't wear shoes around the house. You take them off, you know, you abide by their rules.

[Susan Glasser]

I'm gonna talk about Ronald Reagan.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, exactly. They pray before supper. You know, you bow your head in prayer and I'm sure there's some Jewish traditions come to your house. So, you know, that's nice. You come to Bulwark. You said cite Reagan's farewell address. We play a little bit of people. It's a banger. This story. I have very mixed views on it. Has it all. I guess I got to shout out CBS doing it, covering it. It's a guy named John Gannon. He is a 75 year old Trump voter, three time Trump voter who is not happy about his encounter with Trump's immigration deportation police. I want to play you a little bit of the report from this morning. I voted for Trump.

[Audio Clip / Interviewee]

I am saying that they are picking up law abiding citizens, they're destroying families, jobs.

[Tim Miller]

John gannon is a 75 year old

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businessman and lifelong Republican who supported President Trump in 2024.

[Audio Clip / Interviewee]

I wouldn't do that again, not after this fiasco.

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His fiance, 45 year old Venezuelan immigrant Yasmin Toiles Regis, was detained by ICE at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston in late July.

[Audio Clip / Interviewee]

Eight ICE agents swarmed Jasmine and detained her, didn't tell us why, and rustled her off into a car.

[Tim Miller]

Well, Susan, do you want me to go first?

[Susan Glasser]

This is one of those like, you know, leopard face eating party. Were shocked by leopard face eating behavior.

[Tim Miller]

I guess it's one of those things where it's like, it's nice to have John on board. Water's warm for everybody. I hope he votes for James Tallarica. Gina Hinosa in Texas, no empathy for the Haitians who came here legally. Also were smeared. Were told that they were pet eaters. Are going to be now deported back to a hellscape. But okay, if we need the face of kind of the victims of the immigration regime to be a 75 year old businessman whose sugar baby is getting deported, who is here legally via asylum. Maybe that's how we break through in the Dallas suburbs. Maybe James should bring him to a campaign event. But I don't know a lot to unpack. I was Watching the story and I was like, oh, his wife got deported. That's interesting. I was like, oh, okay. Love comes in many ways.

[Susan Glasser]

I'm pro this is their new tactic. And I do think that it strikes me as something that's very, very likely to backfire with people there. There's been a lot of shock videos seen in recent weeks of ICE agents at airports taking people out, that people find that very jarring, disturbing. It's a setting which you don't expect it. And it clearly reflects enormous pressure on these immigration agencies to step up their number of arrests. They've gone very, very far from this idea that we're just going to be deporting what, what Trump would always call the worst of the worst. Obviously somebody's, you know, peaceful, law abiding, employed, 44 year old wife is not the worst of the worst. And people who've been in the country for decades and I think it represents something that's not a surprise to the big news consumers, frankly, on the right or the left. But it's that less plugged in, undecided middle that's vanishingly small that has been deciding elections in this very polarized country. And so I think it's the paradox, right? Like the less, you know, the more power you have in our politics, depending on where you live. So those are the people who are now showing up in these polls. And I do think if you look at these numbers, it's not just that Donald Trump has bad numbers, right? He's always a polarizing figure. It is interesting to me that you're seeing the softening of Trump's support among Republicans, lifelong Republicans, like our friend there on cbs. Republican leaning independents, younger male voters. Exactly. The people who essentially swung the election to Trump in 2024.

[Tim Miller]

The thing that is substantively about that story is that what he mentions is that she came here legally. I do think it's important to just continue to really say that. Their kind of nativist conferences they have, they're like, it doesn't count if you're an asylee, if you're TPS because Biden let you in and that Biden went around the process, blah, blah, blah. But it's like as far as these people are concerned who are living their lives, they didn't swim across the Rio Grande, they didn't overstay their visa, they came through a legit process, had temporary protected status or had a sile status, lived their lives, were engaged to be married. I guess, to correct myself, I guess that was his fiance, worked like The Haitians were working, you know, kids sending their kids to school. And it's like, okay, now you're going to treat them like a common criminal. I think your point about the airport is also good. It's true. People are anxious in the airport. You are anxious about going through security. It feels more like East Germany to circle us back to the top than America.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah. You mean you feel uncomfortable when there's like masked armed men snatching people in the middle of the airport with possibly no legal grounds to do so? Yeah. That's not America. It's a moral stain on our country that people who came here as refugees from some of the worst, most violent, dysfunctional societies in the world, following the rules as we set them at the time, that America is so rich and disdainful that we're going to change the rules after the fact to screw over a bunch of refugees who come from the toughest places in the world. You know, it's very hard to imagine that this is what Americans, whatever your ideological point of view, that this is what you want.

[Tim Miller]

It's hard to believe it, but summer's coming to an end. No, I refuse. I refuse. I refuse to acknowledge it. Endless summer, forever summer. In my mind, some of you people are fall people. Fall people are so strange to me. But some of you people are fall people. Not me. I come from a long line of anti fall people. My mother had a fall funk. My aunt had a fall funk. I was just talking about this. Right now I'm starting to get this pit in my stomach thinking about the kids going back to school, thinking about me going back to school, thinking about the Trapper keepers. But one way to counteract that feeling in your stomach if you're like me, if you've got that pit in your stomach, is to kind of get a good routine going. Get a routine ready, make sure you're feeling good. And one way to do that is with AG1 1. Scoop 8 ounces of cold water every morning before the chaos starts, before the kid hasn't put their shoes on, when it's time to get out the door. You've already had your AG1, so you're calm. You're able to calmly tell them, please put on the shoes for the sixth time. AG1 is a daily health drink with a multivitamin, pre and probiotic superfoods and antioxidants. Helps to maintain energy and support immune health. The next gen formula delivers 75 plus ingredients clinically shown to support gut health, nutrient gaps and improve key nutrient levels within three months. I'M not great at routines myself. I'm not good at complicated wellness regimes, so AG1 works out great for me. Just mix up one first thing in the morning when I sit down to prepare for the pod and I know I'm ahead of the game when I'm starting my day. When it comes to nutrition, if it can fit into my crazy schedule, I know it can fit into yours too. Visit drinkag1.com TheBullWerk and get a free AG1 flavor sampler and a free bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 in your welcome kit with your first AG1 subscript. That's drinkag1.com TheBullwerk A couple other quick political items Again, good news. I'm trying to find us some good news. We can wish Happy trails to Andy Ogles two term Republican Congressman. Earlier this year he posted on social media muslims don't belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie. He's also posted that homosexuality is no place in America. So it's just kind of me and the Muslims on our way out for him. His personal life is not what I would do. He was one of the guys with the Christmas cards with the kids and the weapons. He had to go fund me for a stillborn child's burial grave, obviously that's so tragic. But apparently he stole the money from it. Allegedly. There's some investigation into that. He lost a primary. Republican voters. We've been mean to Republican voters this week because they voted for Thomas J. Smith over the Muslim guy or the guy with the Muslim sounding name. Excuse me, that Trump endorsed. They booed the cop with the Muslim name who died in the line of action. Also a veteran. And so you know, Republican voters not covering themselves with glory this week. But apparently in this district they're like Andy Ogles, that's enough. We've had enough of you. So that's good. Good. No? Nothing.

[Susan Glasser]

Okay. All right. I'll play a sort of Silver Linings bingo here.

[Tim Miller]

Silver Linings playbook. No? All right, whatever. Goodbye Andy Ogles. Peace out. That's all that's good. Done already foreign policy. Just one other thing on political thing on the other side of I guess it's kind of related. The Democrats did this last cycle and there was all of this kind of like elite pearl clutching, I'm not wearing my pearls. Pearl clutching over like oh the Democrats are put money into Peter Meyer's district to support the insurrectionists because it'll make them easier to beat. And you know there were panels on cable news and et cetera Being like bad Democrats. I thought you cared about democracy. And I was just like, you know, that's a tactic. You know, it's a legitimate tactic in politics. And I don't really think a lot of these Republicans that they were opposing had exactly been huge defenders of democracy. And Peter Meyer did the impeachment vote, but then after that like was pretty Trumpy. So anyway, that's neither here nor there. The Republicans are doing that with no because they don't ever do this rending of garments. They don't chastise themselves. And the Democratic side, I'm not sure this has gotten enough attention for that reason. Francisca Hong, the DSA candidate running for governor in Wisconsin who doesn't like any holidays. She has no money, is running no TV ads, but there are TV ads supporting her 3 million plus in Wisconsin right now from Republican groups that are trying to push her forward. They think she's the weaker candidate. So I just wonder if you have any thoughts on that tactic, on that Wisconsin governor's race sayed anything kind of going on in that the Democratic side of the discourse.

[Susan Glasser]

Look, you know, putting aside any value judgments here, of course they're doing that. Of course they're doing that. The woman, as far as I understand it, the way they're portraying her is she's against Thanksgiving.

[Tim Miller]

She did some cleanup on that on Politico and said that she likes very popular holiday.

[Susan Glasser]

I personally favor Thanksgiving. It is my favorite holiday. I like to cook on Thanksgiving and I like Thanksgiving. So, you know, Republicans this year, they're like kids in a candy store when it comes to, you know, the DSA platform and any statements ever made by DSA candidates. I feel like those are the people who are giving all the page views to, you know, the Democratic socialists right now because. Because what else do they have to run up? They're not going to defend Donald Trump's record. It's much easier to scare people than it is to defend indefensible things like dragging people's fiances out of the line in the airport. And of course they're doing that, they would be stupid not to do that.

[Tim Miller]

I do think it should make Wisconsin Democrats just take a second look. If the Republicans are putting 3 million-plus in to try to make her the nominee, it's important seat the governor of Wisconsin. Being a Democrat in 2028 is pretty important. If the Republicans try to do what they did in 2020, it was important to have Democrats or in a couple of cases, I guess, Ravensburg and Camp, a handful of good Republicans in these offices that prevented their attempt to steal the 2020 election. And insurrectionist Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee, he signed onto the lawsuit, the Texas lawsuit that would have negated the votes of Wisconsin citizens. Like he wanted to take away the votes of his own citizens to install Trump as president. That'd be a pretty alarming person to have as governor. And I think that if he wants Francis Colling to be his opponent, that should be a little bit of a wake up call. That election's coming up on Tuesday. JVL might be 1 16th of a doctor I am 0 16th of a lawyer. Not a paperwork guy at all, actually. Famously so. There are some things I end up putting off when I really shouldn't, and one of those is like estate planning. Luckily, our friends at Trusted Will have helped me on that front. They made it easy for even somebody like me to handle. Trusted Will offers affordable attorney design estate plans online that you can create in as little as 30 minutes. Trusted Will's platform makes it easy for you to create your will or trust online. Let me tell you how easy it is. It's easier than getting signed up for a Minecraft account that is an adult and a child. I'm not going to talk about that. That took longer than 30 minutes and as little as 30 minutes. You can create a will that lets you document your wishes for guardians, asset distribution and healthcare planning. And if you need expert input, attorney support is available as an add on to your plan. Best of all, you can easily update your plan at every life stage or transition. Trust and Will's platform keeps everything organized, updated and ready so your loved ones never face the burden alone. Trust and Will Affordable Estate plans Priceless peace of mind go to trustandwill.com bulwark and get 20% off. That's trustandwill.com bulwark to get your 20% off. Trustandwill.com bulwark I want to do foreign policy with you. A couple Russia stories. Moscow is escalating its ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv this week. Ukraine suffering from a dwindling supply of air defense interceptors. On Wednesday, 17 people were killed in Kyiv by Russian strikes. It's all still happening and the Telegraph's reporting. I think we might have talked about this last time you were on, but these reports are still trickling out about how the US intel is warning that Russia is looking into attacks in other NATO territory this fall to try to further disrupt the alliance.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, I mean, I think what's really striking is that it's not just that the war between Ukraine and Russia is continuing, but in some ways it's changed pretty dramatically in recent months. And you've seen on the one hand, Ukraine has had great success in striking deep inside Russia using their drone program, hitting Russian oil refineries, hitting most recently Russia's largest E commerce site. And that's had a huge impact bringing the war home to Moscow and St. Petersburg, making Putin feel the cost of it. Russia is experiencing right now the greatest energy crisis it has since the fall of the Soviet Union. And this is really something remarkable for one of the world's largest energy producers. And so you've had Ukraine kind of untethered. Since we're no longer giving Ukraine any aid, obviously we don't get to impose conditions on their military actions. And so you've seen them really striking hard at Russia. The Russian response though has been to escalate these ballistic missile attacks on civilian targets. I should really emphasize that people may just think sort of on the one hand, on the other hand it's not Ukraine is attacking military and infrastructure targets in Russia. Russia is responding by knocking the crap out of apartment buildings where people live in cities across Ukraine. So that's happening. And there's also a clear sense that what is shaping this US intel assessment that I think is so important for people to understand is what does Putin history? It's when he's in a corner, he tends to escalate. And I think the fear is that Putin, when things are looking even more unwinnable in Ukraine, that he may be looking to take the fight outside of the borders here to poke NATO to show that the US Certainly is not prepared to respond to an attack on a NATO member. In the Baltics, for example, there have been increasingly worrisome probing attacks that I feel like had gotten almost no attention here in the U.S. for example, just the other day there was what appeared to be an explosive filled drone at an airport in Germany near a Ukrainian aircraft. I think you've seen other examples of drones that may be associated with Russia disrupting civilian air traffic in other airports across Europe in the last last couple years. And you could see more cyber attacks. You could see a lot of ways in which Russia may seek to take the fight outside of Ukraine in the next few years. And I think we're not really prepared for it. European publics are probably not prepared for it. And frankly, I just think it's a

[Tim Miller]

matter of time when you talk to other people and obviously for people who don't know, you spent a lot of time in Russia covering It and still speak to foreign policy experts and electeds and leaders in Europe. What is their scale of concern about this?

[Susan Glasser]

I think it's enormous. I think there is a recognition that there is essentially a time clock that we're on. We don't know exactly how long it's going to be. But look at Iran's success as well as Ukraine's in modern asymmetrical warfare. Right? I mean, that's what's happening here. You're taking drones in the case of the Iranians that cause maybe $40,000 shooting them off of small boats in the Strait of Hormuz. And the United States military has been expending $2 million interceptors to shoot down those $40,000 drones. Unsustainable. A lot of people warned about that at the beginning of this conflict. Sure enough, we're now seeing stories come out of the pentagon that the U.S. supply of these munitions has dangerously dwindled. That means not only fewer munitions for the US in its conflict in the Middle east, it means fewer things like that for its partners in Europe. Even if Donald Trump woke up tomorrow and decided he wanted to give more concrete assistance and atacms to the Ukrainians, he doesn't have them anymore to give. That's a moment that Russia and possibly China may find just simply too tempting not to take advantage of. The security environment in the world right now is far, far more unstable and dangerous than it was a year ago

[Tim Miller]

in the grand scheme of things. If you're going to catastrophize, some of the stuff has been relatively limited. But kind of what Iran has done on airports and hotels in Kuwait and Qatar and Bahrain, if Russia did decide to do that, to test. I don't want to bring this into existence by name a specific country, but just started, you know, doing those types of attacks against countries that were supporting Ukraine supplying weapons for Ukraine.

[Susan Glasser]

It's not catastrophizing, Tim. It's happening. The seven different states found their water systems the target of hacks here in the United States already. Remember, this is the one you might have missed.

[Tim Miller]

This one. No, Trump said it was Tim Walls. I learned when I came back, Trump

[Susan Glasser]

said Tim Walls attacked his own state's water system. But of course, it was multiple different states around the country. And this is the scenario, exactly, that America's national security experts have been worrying about for the last number of years. And maybe this one was the Iranians. What happens? We know that the Russians and the Chinese are already inside many of our critical infrastructure systems, a sort of deterrence as I understand it, has sort of held sway, which is to say that they know that we have capacities to disrupt their own systems, which is part of why you haven't seen the great powers directly doing this to each other yet. But they are inside our critical infrastructure already. The capacities are there. Drones have been proliferating, and of course it's only a matter of time before it hits outside these active conflict zones. Remember the amazing Ukrainian operation in Russia, it was just a year ago, where they hid the drones inside the truck and then, you know, brought them, you know, hundreds of miles into Siberia and then unleashed them.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Susan Glasser]

Just talking to somebody the other day who really follows this closely. That was just a year ago. The Ukrainians no longer need to do that. They've already figured out how to make their drones so much more long range. Tim. They don't need the whole hollowed out truck, the whole incredible deception operation anymore. They're able now to strike that deeply inside the heart of the of Russia now from more than a thousand miles away.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, this just potential risk just emphasizes even more how stupid the Iran war is and how stupid it was that we got ourselves into the situation, that we're losing these defensive capabilities. So losing the munitions and the material that we would need in this sort of situation. And that picture that you paint, right, where Russia really does do this, in Germany, et cetera, other places, and it's not really just a one off, but, but it's, it's an actual, even just a kind of a test campaign for a little while. It would look so stupid that we would be unable to defend against that because we had wasted all of this material on a pointless war in Iran that has not only just gotten us nothing, but actually, you know, caused negative consequences.

[Susan Glasser]

Indeed. Indeed it would. I mean, look, it's not, it's not catastrophizing. These are things that are happening right now already.

[Tim Miller]

All right, well, my silver linings effort has totally failed.

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[Tim Miller]

Today, I want to ask you about your colleague Evan Osnos's China story. Like a typical Louisianan, Bill Cassidy is late for his speech. So we'll see if we get news on that. Come on, come on. He's your colleague on the political scene podcast and writing for the New Yorker. Evan kind of wrote about the ways in which we're losing the competition for the future of China. One thing I would use to sum it up is that you talked about how China is concentrating on AI, biotech, robotics, batteries, energy, advanced manufacturing, while we're increasingly focused on tariffs, deportations, building arcs. If you're being nicer, I guess AI, but fossil fuels, crypto.

[Susan Glasser]

Uh, oh, okay, here it is.

[Tim Miller]

We got it.

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It.

[Susan Glasser]

He's voting yes.

[Tim Miller]

Why did I have hope?

[Susan Glasser]

Tim. Tim. Dude, I just.

[Tim Miller]

Here's. Can I just tell you what's going on in my head? We're going to connect to China. Can I tell you what's happening in my head? Can I tell you what's happening?

[Susan Glasser]

And by the way, Evan's story is fantastic. Everyone should be.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, we're going to do at least one sentence on it at the end. I'm Sarah Longlong. I'm losing with football. I do have some people that know Bill Cassidy and his wife seems like a nice person, but in my brain, I'm going, okay, he's going to give the speech on the floor.

[Audio Clip / Interviewee]

Floor.

[Tim Miller]

You're only giving the speech on the floor for two reasons, right? There are two possible reasons. One, because you're a good old boy from Louisiana that wants to signal to your friends in the Senate and your friends back home that when you retire, you're still on the team. Don't be mean to me at the tailgate. Don't be mean to me at the country club, all right? You don't gotta yell at my face. I'm still on the team. If I want to lobby a little bit, maybe for some pharmaceutical company or something next year, you gotta answer my phone call. That's one reason to it to, like, really loudly signal you're on the team. The other reason, like, the good angel reason, would be that you feel like this is really important and you want people to know that it's really important that you don't think that the government should be targeting political foes just based on revenge and the vengeance of the President. There was just, I don't know, there was like a little Jiminy Cricket in me that thought maybe he wanted to do that to signal that he had good intentions in the end.

[Susan Glasser]

But no, there are no good angels in our politics right now. And I think

[Tim Miller]

they're not any good angels in Republican politics, that's for sure.

[Susan Glasser]

I mean, it's really remarkable to me. And a great epitaph for the so called Republican establishment, which is to say that they would provide again and again the critical votes for the most extreme aspects of Trump's program, I think is the proof in and of itself that there is no such thing as Republican moderate or Republican establishment, because the Republican establishment are the handmaidens of this assault on America's norms and traditions.

[Tim Miller]

Look at this fucking quote. I will vote for Mr. Blanche. I'll be criticized for this vote. What's new? Fuck you, Bill Cassidy. Honestly, my whole. Ugh.

[Susan Glasser]

It's just this man was broken for me when he gave his smug, self satisfied speech about how much he cared about science and integrity and medicine and protecting America's children and then voted for RFK anyways. How could you possibly have any shred of hope for that man after that moment? Okay, because this isn't just some theoretical threat. Okay? Talk to the families in South Carolina whose kids are suffering in a measles epidemic in America in the year 2026. Bill Cassidy owns that. It seems to me, as much as RFK Jr as much as Donald Trump. And so, amen.

[Tim Miller]

That was my case against that was because that was so obviously bad, that maybe that, you know, there was a feeling of need for attention, of guilt inside that there's some humanity, none. I hate this.

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I'll be.

[Tim Miller]

I know, I know, Susan.

[Audio Clip / Interviewee]

I know.

[Tim Miller]

You can't say anything to make me feel any worse than I feel about my own self.

[Susan Glasser]

Donald Trump for reelection in 2024, knowing all that had gone before it. Irredeemable, which is to say all of these people, irredeemal. What more do you need to know?

[Tim Miller]

Nothing. I do just want to sit on this sentence for one second, though. I'll be criticized for this vote. What's new? This is such a common excuse for the weak and cowardly Republican establishment. This idea that, oh, these liberal critics, the media, the nattering nabobs, the progressive, you know, bed wetters and pearl clutchers, they're going to criticize me anyway. Like they're going to criticize me anyway. So why should I have to do the right thing, right? Like, and even when I did do something good, remember that one time I did something good, they criticized me anyway. They criticized me anyway. So why should I do anything good? If they're not just going to heat praise on me and throw flowers at my feet and talk about how of what a great man I am, then what's the point of doing the right thing? What's the point of doing the right thing? Why don't I just let our government turn into a corrupt gangster oligarchy where the President gets to target his political foes and spy on them because they posted seashell pictures on the Internet and do gulags and raid people at the airports who tried to get here legally? It's like the doj, like, what Blanche has done, the DOJ is like, not even in the ballpark of acceptable. You know what I mean? Like, it, like, takes the Nixon stuff and puts it on steroids times a thousand. Like, they're not even pretending to try to do fair, fair, impartial justice, except for, I guess, Judge Jeanine this week. And like, they literally are targeting political foes. They're not at all investigating or looking into any of Trump's allies or corrupt pardons. It is blanketly corrupt. And Bill Cassidy's like, well, if I say no to that, though John Mitchell,

[Susan Glasser]

Nixon's Attorney General ended up in jail, God will. You know, I would point out that Todd Blanche is not above the law and that sooner or later, you know, that option is available to those who seek to restore a sense of the rule of law. It's not going to come from the Republican Party. The Republican Party is the Trump Republican Party. That's the thing that Donald Trump keeps saying, and I don't know why his critics don't observe it even more like, the point is not that there's going to be some hope remaining within this Republican Party. One of the results that we already know about from this election will be to consolidate even further Trump's ownership and control over that party. People like Bill Cassidy will be gone from the Senate, and it will be even more overtly pro Trump Trumpists. Take what?

[Tim Miller]

Actually, I'll take. I'll take overtly Trumpist over this crap.

[Susan Glasser]

You think so?

[Tim Miller]

I don't know. I don't know. What's Bill Cassidy? How's Bill Cassidy any better?

[Susan Glasser]

That's exactly the point. The system is broken, Tim, and it's blinking red and we've got the message. But so many people just didn't want to accept it. And I understand that it's easier to keep some little flickering bit of hope alive.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I mean, my hope is pretty dim. So if my little flicker is too much, it's too great. Then we're in a really dark place. We're deep in the caverns. When my daughter call it some show she was watching. We're going to the down deep the deep dark the deep dark we are in the deep we are in the deep dark if my flicker is too bright. The other thing is, I guess is like, besides being Louisiana, that hits me in the gut is like he voted to convict him. He voted to convict him and ban him for ever running for office again. So it's like you knew, you knew, you knew, you knew that you could not allow this person to run for office again. What was the reason for the conviction? Well, because he instigated an attack on the democracy and the rule of law. And so now he got elected again. He endorsed him in that election. And what is he doing? He's attacking the democracy and the rule of law. And your answer is basically, well, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? If I try to stop them, they're going to criticize me. Who likes being criticized? Not Bill Cassidy. Great doctor man. Only compliments allowed for Bill Cassidy. All right, well, in the green room at the beginning, Susan said that I looked rested, that I was looking lighter. I forget what word you used. Something that's less beaten down. It's okay.

[Audio Clip / Interviewee]

Over.

[Tim Miller]

It's over. I'm back. I had a one week of kind of bouncy Tim, tanned Tim. And now I'm beaten down by the world again. And next week's gonna be ugly on the pod. So I just warn everybody for that. So thanks for the transition on that, Susan.

[Susan Glasser]

You know, Tim, you have now upset me so completely. I'm sitting here thinking, okay, it's 11:00am Can I.

[Tim Miller]

Is it too early?

[Susan Glasser]

I went to bed.

[Tim Miller]

No, it's too early.

[Susan Glasser]

And drink.

[Ad Read / Sponsor]

Okay.

[Tim Miller]

We're different places.

[Susan Glasser]

I'm feeling very upset now. Now, let's remember our 10:20am selves. They were cheerier than our 11:00am selves.

[Tim Miller]

We were so innocent. Then one sentence on your friend Evan Osnis article, just so people know to read it, because it was really good and I don't want to give it short shrift.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah. The future made in China. And I really think in a way, it is. We've spent the last hour sort of proving the point, which is that America's Dysfunction is such a five alarm fire that we're really almost unable to process the extent to which in the real world, as opposed to the kind of hysterical Trump world that we live in, real facts on the ground are being created by the Chinese that are going to reshape basically the structure of the global economy that are giving China levels of dominance that even, forget about 10 years ago, even five years ago, would have been unthinkable. That percentage of the world's drones that are manufactured in China now, the percentage of the world's electric vehicles, the extent to which even AI which started out in America's research and development laboratories is now being pushed forward in China. The way in which the sort of framework of a whole alternate society organized completely differently, the modern surveillance state, it's all taking shape in China in ways that not only will we be living with the consequences, but I don't even think we're aware of the consequences. And like anything, it's probably the thing that people will look back on 50 years from now, 100 years from now, and say that's what was really happening at this moment. But. But here we are in Trump's theater of the absurd. All I can say, my advice to your listeners. If you're going across Memorial Bridge in Washington, don't look up. You'll be blinded by the gold. And I think that's what's happening. America's blinded by the gold.

[Tim Miller]

Susan's going back to bed. I'm going to have a cigarette. Don't listen to that, Mom. Everybody else will be back on Monday with Bill Kristol. Thank you so much, Susan. Love to the family. Everybody else, have a great weekend. We'll see you all on Monday. Bye.

[Susan Glasser]

Doctor, won't you let me be,

[Audio Clip / Interviewee]

Please

[Tim Miller]

don't you play those evil tricks on me,

[Susan Glasser]

Simon, now. And I'm sure I know it's you

[Tim Miller]

that's been sneaking around inside my head.

[Susan Glasser]

There's nothing else.

[Tim Miller]

The Bulwark Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.