Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: A Truly Unhinged Trump Interview | Morning Shots LIVE

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

Andrew Egger and Bill Kristol are going live at 10am ET on April 21 to cover the week's biggest news items.Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to https://Zocdoc.com/bulwarktakes to find and instantly book a doctor you love today.

All right, I think we are live. Hi, everybody. I am Andrew Eger with the bulwark. This is Bill Crystal with the bulwark. We write the Morning Shots newsletter every weekday morning coming to you free in your inbox. And on Tuesdays, we go live for... Now, this is interesting. People were calling it Morning Chaser.

I've noticed people have stopped saying that. Now people are starting to say Morning Shots Live. I mean, people like my coworkers, my colleagues. So I'm actually not sure whether this is Morning Chaser anymore, whether this is just Morning Shots Live. Maybe if you have a consumer preferences, you can tell us which we should use from now on. Anyway, it's Tuesday morning. We're here to talk.

And we are here to talk with some fresh, real, real hot off the press's content for you. Because Donald Trump, our president, whom you have probably heard of, just wrapped up a long, a rambling, a very strange and rich interview on CNBC's squack box this morning. They talked for a very long time. Donald Trump these days, he's become very kind of fragmented in his communication. Obviously, he's always there on truth social. always, you know, picking up the phone and calling random reporters for 90-second chit-chats. But he has not done a lot of these real big sit-down interviews recently. You talked to Maria Bartaromo and Fox the other day.

And then this is kind of the other, the other, you know, major one he's done recently. Like I said, rich text. So we're going to talk a lot about it. Bill, just maybe right off the dome. Was there anything in particular that stood out to you from the president this morning? maybe as far as Iran is concerned or anything else? Was there a major highlight moment for you, or should we just go through it? I guess I'd just like to register at the beginning of my complaint that he does these 8.30 AM interviews live.

We put morning shots to bed around 9 and then it gets proofread and layout stuff happens and you guys get it in your inbox around 930. So we did, I think, put the topper in based on something he said on morning, on his interview this morning at 8.30, but obviously can't write the whole thing based on an 8.30 interview or what he's saying stuff at 8.45 and 9 o'clock. So a little annoying that he's doing 8.30 a.m. interviews. And you're our White House correspondent, Andrew. That's one of your titles. So you should weigh in there with Caroline and tell her, you know, look, 6 a.m.'s fine.

We can write off at 630, 7.30 or 10 p.m. the night before. That would be our preference, frankly. Yes. Can you make that happen? I will start throwing my weight around at the White House. Look, I don't know. I mean, I think almost any given day, I totally agree with you. On Tuesdays, it's kind of nice because it gives us something fresh to chew over here. That's good. Tuesday's okay.

That's right. So let's chew over. You lead off. You looked at more closely what he said. He went along, right? He was supposed to be his guy, his team, whatever he put it. My guys only gave me 20 minutes, but then he wanted to go longer and he did go longer, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, this happens when Trump built up ahead of steam sometimes with an interviewer that he likes. And obviously, Joe Kernan over there at CNBC, very Trumpy guy, very sort of solicitous interviewer. Not a bad interviewer. You got asked him some interesting questions and got some interesting answers. So let's start going through them because obviously top of mind for everybody right now is the war in Iran, the ongoing war in Iran. We have this ceasefire that at first didn't really resemble a ceasefire in any way. Now it has, you know, there was a very brief window in there where both sides were actually honoring the ceasefire. The Strait of Hormuz was open for like 15 minutes on Friday into Saturday.

Now we are back to, you know, the ceasefire having basically broken down in every respect, except for the United States resuming its sort of aerial bombardment campaign. But, but, you know, there are talks that are slated to happen that Iran has finally agreed to participate in, that are going to be going forward in Islamabad just in the next day or so in Pakistan. And then the ceasefire will, in theory, expire if they can't, if they can't come to an agreement. And so let's just hear Trump talking about that a little bit about what we should expect to see next in Iran. So to be clear, you're saying that you need a, at least a prospects for a signed deal today and tomorrow, or else you would resume bombing Iran?

Well, I expect to be bombing because I think that's a better attitude to go in with, but we're ready to go. I mean, the military is rarer in to go. They are absolutely incredible. Yeah, so there you go. I mean, does that sound like a strong hope that a peace deal is about to be struck in Islamabad in the next 48 hours, Bill? I actually think it's more likely than not, because I just think this is Trump's idea of the art of the deal, and you've got to sound super tough to get yourself a, quote, good deal.

He desperately wants to get out. He wouldn't mind, perhaps, one last spasm of bombing to look tough, sort of like Nixon and, you know, the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam in 72 or something. But I don't know that he has the stomach for really starting this up. again and dealing with Iran's countermeasures, which would be real. And I think also I really hated what it uses the military. The military is not people I know in the military in general. I don't haven't talked to anyone about this particular like today, whether they were, of course they obey orders, and of course they join because they believe they want to be good at fighting, and

there's a certain amount of relishing with there's a real conflict. But they're not rearing to go to bomb a bunch of civilian targets. If anything, I would imagine there's a lot of reluctance. And there has been resistance. We know this in the Pentagon to the original list of targets, Hegsteth, Wadded, and so forth. But it just makes our military sound horrible that I think that they're kind of, you know, just trigger-happy and bloodthirsty guys who Trump's holding them back. It's quite the contrary in this case, I think.

Yeah, yeah. I don't think we have a clip of this, but there was another moment in this interview, which was very sort of strange to watch where you have, Kern, in the interviewer, basically trying to kind of lead Trump toward talking about, you know, the importance of the Iranian people and how much we love the Iranian people and how we got into this conflict to help them out. And wouldn't he agree that if we were to, you know, really start bombing some of this, you know, mixed use infrastructure, this civilian infrastructure that the military also benefits from, that that would be extremely damaging

to the sort of prosperity and just everyday lives of these Iranian people. And Trump didn't give him an inch on that stuff. You know, he basically said, well, look, you know, we're going to have to, that we're going to have to hit these energy production centers. We're going to have to hit these bridges, and the military uses them, too. So that was, I mean, we've talked so much about Iran. There's going to be developments one way or another and all this stuff in the next 48 hours. So probably it's better to just kind of keep powder dry here. It's just strange that, like, we're still doing this.

We're still talking about this. The one other thing that we will say about Iran is this next clip of the president, which is just him kind of complaining that people are complaining that it's not over yet. this conflict that he never solicited the, you know, the will of Congress to get into in the first place, that he just, you know, the first day he started the bombing, he himself was saying, but you don't need to worry, we're going to be in, we're going to be out, it's going to be this little disruption, you know, little military excursion. And now, now he has kind of moved on to these comparisons of basically saying, you think an eight-week war is bad? What about World War I?

That lasted quite a bit longer. So let's listen to, let's listen to Trump on this topic. over and it will end when it's over you know they wanted to be over immediately and i just looked at a little chart world war one four years and three months world war two six years korean war three years vietnam 19 years Iraq eight years i'm five months okay five months i would have won vietnam very quickly i would have if i were president i would have won iraq in the same amount of time that we won because essentially we've won here. Okay, I mean, people can play games. The Democrats can say, well.

Let's cut it there because already such a rich text. I mean, do you have a favorite moment in that bill? Because there's like six different things that we've got to pull out. I mean, they're given some charge. That's the length of the war. It's not to be pedantic. It's not the length of our involvement in the wars. If you look at the numbers he has in World War I, right,

he has four years and three months or something in World War II, six years. I guess he's dating from September. or 39 or something. Anyway, so that's just one pedantic point. Well, those were all wars were all authorized by Congress. There were wars, yeah.

With a slight exception of Vietnam, which was de facto, you might say, authorized by repeated appropriations for it. Here we had neither an authorization or an appropriation. It is kind of astonishing. You made this point just in passing a second ago, but here we're six, seven, in the seventh week,

and Republicans in Congress still have the position that nothing to authorize here, into debate. We shouldn't have an actual discussion about whether this is wise to be doing it on. As he's talking about, I don't think he's going to if I had to bet, but still, he's talking about reopening yet another pretty massive, I suppose, bombing campaign and a rather morally problematic one against the nation of Iran. Maybe that's something that Congress could discuss, but nope, the Republicans have no interest in it. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, there's just so many little things when you hear him talk, like, like the thing that's sort of flash by and you're like,

wait, what was that? Like, for instance, the five months bit. He's like, you know, Korean War, three years, Vietnam, 19 years, Iraq, eight years. I'm five months, okay? Five months. What's five months? We've been attacking Iran for eight weeks. So that is just sort of in passing somewhat strange. Maybe there's some oblique way in which that makes sense, or maybe he's just saying a number. Who knows? And then immediately from that into, I would have won Vietnam very quickly. I would have if I were president. I would have won Iraq in the same amount of time that we won, because essentially we've won here. So basically he's saying, you know, if he had only been in charge for Iraq, for Vietnam, these would have been. you know, we would have won in two or three days, eight weeks at the most. I mean, it's just, it's a struggle because, like, we do this show, we pull out clips,

you know, we have to zero in on specific moments. But you listen to these interviews, and it's like a 40-minute barrage of that kind of thing, right? So we're going to get to a few more moments, but just like the genuine, like, insanity that's on display. I mean, is that too harsh, Bill? I mean, it really is astonishing listening to this guy try to string thoughts together. Yeah, it's kind of amazing to also say he would have won it easily or whatever. that he, of course, avoided serving in.

But whatever one thinks of Vietnam and the debates that happened during Vietnam and gradual escalation versus a bigger attack, I mean, I don't believe that anyone seriously thinks that was just a piece of cake. And I guess he probably has the kind of Curtis LeMay position. We would have just bombed the back to the Stone Age right away. And then one, I don't know, that's his general attitude. Big talk. But, you know, when it comes to actually, well, that's not even worth getting into.

It's just ridiculous. Yeah. A lot of people have kind of made a lot of hay over the years about about. about Donald Trump's draft dodging in Vietnam and sort of the cowardice on display and all of that and his gross comments about, you know, avoiding binaural disease being his own personal Vietnam and all that stuff.

But I don't think we've given enough time to the fact that he really, you know, he deprived the world of Donald Trump's presence in Vietnam that would have ended up winning that conflict very quickly. You know, we could have had a whole different turn to history. And I think that's a shame that we didn't get that. You know, the Trump in Vietnam that would have won it, won it for us real fast. Okay, that's enough about all that. Let's move on because this was not

just a war interview. And like I said, there's going to be, God knows, plenty of war stuff to talk about over the next few days. But there are a number of other controversies that the president dipped into in this interview. And one of them, which we've written about in recent days, is the weird boondoggle about the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jay Powell, Jerome Powell, whose term is up next month, but who may not end up leaving right at the end of his term like he's supposed to, because his would-be successor, Trump's nominee to succeed him as chair of the Fed,

Kevin Warsh, has yet to be confirmed. And the reason that Warsh has yet to be confirmed is because Trump has been trying to hustle Powell out faster with all of these ludicrous authoritarian strong-arm tactics, like opening a criminal investigation into him and into the Fed, which was all designed to get Powell to either resign

or to, you know, be more pliant in how he sets rates at the Fed, the way Donald Trump wants him to. And instead, you know, we are now in a situation where by trying to hasten Powell's exit, Trump may actually be prolonging his stay, prolonging his tenure, because until worse is confirmed, Powell will remain there. And so we've gotten this weird dynamic in a lot of these interviews with pro-Trump reporters, people who are very much on his side, who are asking him questions who are not even bothering to pretend that this criminal investigation into Powell is some, you know, independent, just sort of follow the facts where they lead sort of thing. Even Trump's sort of friendly interviewers are acknowledging that this is a pretextual thing that Trump ordered in order to put pressure on Powell.

And yet they're sort of just asking, now, Mr. President, wouldn't you agree that maybe the thing to do now is to drop this probe in order to, to actually accomplish the aim that you started it for in the first place, which is to get Powell out of there. And his response, I'll warn you, it's long and we're only going to play like a little chunk of it. But we wanted to give you like a decent chunk just to give you a sense. So this is Trump on that particular question. The possible for the banking committee to completely investigate all of your concerns about the cost overruns and the testimony of J. Powell in front of Congress, if you could take that off ramp to get this moving, And J-Pow leaves, Kevin Warsh goes in.

Is that something you'd consider dropping the DOJ probe to let the banking committee handle it? Well, I think it is from the same point, Joe, from the same point that we have to find out why a small building costs close to $4 billion. It's not finished, by the way. They have a long way to go. They rip down the most beautiful ceilings. They'll never build them again. The most beautiful, thick foot and a half thick walls of solid machinery that are never going to be built again. And they put up six-inch sheet rock walls.

And they say, sir, we have no insulation. It's not in the budget. I mean, they had the best. That building was so beautiful. I would have fixed that building. I would have had it brand new, beautiful for $25 million. And they're going to spend close to $4 billion, maybe more than that. I don't know.

It's not finished. In fact, I looked at it the other day. I'm afraid Kevin will have to have an office next to me in the White House because that building's not going to be done. He's not going to be able to use that building for a long time. That's about a fifth of that answer, by the way. He goes on and on and on and on. Our producer, Matt clocked it at six minutes in answering this question of why he does not actually want to want to sort of wash the DOJ's hands of this investigation and handed over to the banking committee.

What do you make of it, Bill? I think we're saying just it's a criminal investigation. No one's accusing Jay Powell of taking any money, right? I mean, this is not like, unlike, if I might just say, Trump, the Trump family, the Lutnik family, the Whitgaw family and all these other people. who are, justly in my view, accused, or at least what we know, that they're getting a lot of money off a lot of things, many of which are government-related. Maybe the Fed did a good job. Maybe they didn't do a good job of managing the fixing up with their old building. I have no idea. And if Congress wants to look at that, fine. But it's really insane that this is a criminal investigation here.

And Joe Kernan is like speaking for common sense when he says, could you, can't we just let this drop? But, oh, no, he wants to keep it up. Trump doesn't like people who cross him. I mean, I think he's probably, even if Warsh gets confirmed, I really wonder, the whole thing, don't you think, has been so, he's got, it's been come so, he's made such a big deal of how he wants a compliant or pliant, I guess is the better word, Fed chairman. It's actually weirdly going to be a little harder for Warsh, I think, to do what Trump wants, which is always going to be to lower rates, especially if inflation is up. And incidentally, it's not like the Fed chairman can just snap his fingers and do it. There is an actual board that votes on these rate moves. And Powell could stay on the board, though, not as chair, his seat doesn't expire. And there are others on the board who are not necessarily dovish on race. So Trump is making, I guess he wants to have a whipping boy there maybe in the Fed, but he's making the actual job of the person who I suppose will eventually become Fed chairman. Maybe he won't be. I don't know, he's got his own conflicts of interest, Warsh and his own business stuff. But anyway, whoever becomes the next chairman, if someone does, if it's not just Powell, Trump's making his life

more difficult, not easier. Yeah, yeah. I have a theory about this. And I mean, I'm curious to get your take on it because I did a live with Catherine Rampel about a lot of this stuff a few days ago. And we had a little bit of a disagreement about what's actually going on in Trump's mind here. Because you can make an argument. And I think Catherine was kind of making this argument that all of this is just, you know, Trump not really believing, you know, what he's saying. It's all just sort of like K-fabe in order to try to get Powell. And it has been all along. I am kind of of the view after listening to a bunch of these interviews.

because he always does the same thing, right? It's always like somebody asks him, what's going to happen with Powell? Is it possible you'll drop that probe? And he could answer that question either way very quickly and move on. But he really does seem genuinely personally aggrieved about a lot of the nitty-gritty details

of this Fed building probe. And, you know, he's in that sort of like weird developer way that Trump has, where it activates the same part of his brain that gets him so excited about his ballroom or about the Kennedy Center, about any of these things. And it genuinely, I genuinely think there's a way in which he's gotten high on his own supply here where he's like, yeah, I really, I don't like Powell because he wouldn't cut interest rates. And, you know, I hope Kevin Warsh gets in there and can cut interest rates for me pretty soon. But all that has to be set aside for the time being until we get to the bottom of this scandal at the Fed. And I think like that's a genuine thing on the part of the president. He seems actually mad and aggrieved about it. I don't know what you make of all that. No, I think you could well be right. I haven't really thought about it that way.

He certainly is obsessed with the construction stuff. I've always taken that to be more on the vanity and egotomaniacal side of things, the Kennedy Center, especially the ballroom. There's a good piece in the Washington Post, was it over the weekend? He's mentioned the ballroom more often this year and brought it up. You almost always bringing it up himself in speeches and appearances and interruptions in his own speeches to point out there and discuss it when he's at the White House. He mentioned the ballroom more often that he's mentioned health insurance or a million other issues. You know, he's obsessed with the ballroom and that's his, but I've always taken that to be part of his, as I say, ego megal maniacal, you know, wanting to leave these things with his name on it behind and so forth. Anyway, so I don't know if the Fed thing is his developer, just, you know, he doesn't

like the way they're doing it. I think he doesn't like Powell. He appointed Powell. Powell did not accommodate him in 2020, and he probably blames Powell partly for, you know, the economy not being even stronger and therefore him not getting reelected. And so I think there's a pretty big personal grudge against Powell, too. Yeah, yeah. Do you remember that speech that he gave, I think last year at the United Nations where he went in

and did like five minutes of schick right off the top about, you know, relitigating old grievances that back when he was a developer, the UN had given the contract to somebody else to renovate their building in New York rather than him? And, you know, they went with tarotzo floors instead of the beautiful marble he would have done. I mean, like, really just, like, chapter and verse through this stuff. There's something about the guy. I don't know. I don't know exactly what to make of it. But apparently, you know, Jerome Powell is public architect enemy number one, as well as the interest rates bogeyman for the president right now. That's enough about all that. Let's do one more clip here.

One last clip from this Squackbox interview before we go on to a few other things because it's about, it's both newsy and, again, just a real, real insight into the mind of this singular president. and the way he approaches these things. This is about the tariffs, the Tariffs, the Liberation Day tariffs, which the Supreme Court struck down a little while ago. And specifically on the question of whether the tariff revenues that were collected all last year, you know, now that the Supreme Court has said those taxes were illegal, you weren't ever allowed to take in those billions and billions of dollars.

The question being, do they have to give them back? And Trump weighing in on this specific question. Let's play that real quick here. President, on that topic, there's a whole number of very large companies, including Apple and Amazon and others, that have not sought reimbursements yet for the tariffs. They haven't tried to collect refunds. And from what I understand, part of the reason that they have waited is because there is a worry

about, frankly, offending you. Would you find it offensive for them to try to collect a refund? I think it's brilliant if they don't do that. I actually, if they don't do that, they got to. to know me very well. I'm very honored by what you just said. If they don't do that, I'll remember them. I will tell you that, because I'm looking to make this country strong. Supreme Court could have helped us. Now they have birthright citizenship. They'll probably rule against us. No country in the world has it. It's horrible for our country. And I just see it,

you know, I see some of these Republicans that are nominated by me asking real bad questions and looks like maybe we're going to lose that one too. Look what happened with NIL. They destroyed college sports, the court system, destroyed. So there's kind of two halves to that one, right? I mean, which one do you want to tackle first, Bill? We can do the tariff stuff or the grab bag of Supreme Court grievance there at the end. I think the tariff thing is revealing in this way. Trump is proud of the destruction of the rule of law

and turning our nation as much as he's been able to into crony capitalism and depending on government favors and depending on favors from him and that you will, you know, he will turn government in a certain direction because you have curried favor with him. Obviously, we've seen that in the payoffs, basically, in terms of the contributions and both to the family, direct payoffs to the family and the contributions to the ballroom and all this other stuff. So, you know, it's nothing to you.

But I'd say other presidents might have concealed a little bit of that or been, you know, has done that under the guise of a kind of rule of law thing. Trump's proud of it. That's great. Amazon and Apple are being smart if they're carrying favor with me. and I'm going to remember, right, they said. So I am struck by the degree to which he does not try to pretend that he has any belief in any kind of sort of impartial rule of law or kind of free market capitalism.

Yeah, and not only that they're currying favor with him and he will remember that and, you know, bestow blessings on them later. But the specific mechanism by which he's glad they're curring favor with him, just to be clear, the Supreme Court has said it was illegal for the government to collect this money. The government had no right under the law to rake in these billions and billions of dollars from all of these companies. And the idea that the president would then turn around and make that a litmus test and say, well, are you with me? Are you going to let me keep that money? Or are you against me?

And you're going to try to, as you have every right to do under the law, go back and get the money that you should never have had to pay me in the first place, according to the highest court in the land. And give that. And give that money back to the taxpayers. It's not to him. This isn't like a civil suit between dollars. Donald Trump and Amazon, and he's grateful that Amazon's dropping the suit or something. That would be kind of why, this is money they're supposed to get back because the taxpayers are supposed to get that money back, so to speak, not, you know, the government, our government

is supposed to have that money. And, uh, anyway. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's really grotesque. Well, I mean, he's, the companies are supposed to get it back so they can, you know, so they are the taxpayer in this instance. I mean, they are the ones that are literally paying the tariffs. And they presume we would pass it on to their consumers and so forth. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's, uh, it's, it's all a mess. but we can leave that there. We don't have to get into the end, you know, the college sports stuff, the birth. He is obviously incorrect that we are the only country that does birthright citizenship, just not true.

There are a bunch of others, and we've done it for a long time. It's worked out pretty well for us. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know. You kind of got a sense from that, the end of that clip there, most of the interviews like this, right? He gets asked a question,

and he goes pinballing off onto whatever other topics. They try to bring him back. He pinballs off a different direction. I mean, this is just the way that his mind functions these days. But we can leave it at that. That's enough of, that's enough direct from the president for one day. Unless, Bill, is there anything else you want to, you want to hit before we split? Just, you know, I thought that last thing is revealing. There's always a little bit of a candiness in his insanity. And in this case, he wants to attack the court. He wants to discredit the

court as much as possible as these decisions that are negative to him in the case of tariffs have come down or will come down in the case of birthright citizenship. So the NIL thing is like literally insane in the sense that what does that do with anything? And I don't need, did the U.S. have a position on that? I don't know. Did Trump administration? But it just sort of, if you have some, if you don't think college football is what it used to be, or college sports is what it used to be, because the entire Michigan team, the one this year is, you know, are all transfers or whatever, because of NIL, you know, to blame the court. I mean, he is kind of clever in a very weird way, accumulate any grievance you can against any institution you want to de-legitimize or lessen the

stature of. He's pretty, I guess he's pretty good at that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, everybody should be good at something. I guess we'll leave it there. That's enough with the president. We got a couple more stories to hit, but before we hit those, we got to do a quick ad read. In fact, you've got a tiny sneak preview of it of me dressed different right at the top when we played one of those other clips. Let's hit that real quick. We got an ad for you. Fullwork Takes is sponsored by Zock Doc. I've got young kids at home. I know health issues don't follow a neat nine to five schedule. In fact, sometimes it's 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. With Zock Doc having no time to book a doctor's appointment is actually no problem. So when you don't have any time for yourself until 11 p.m., cut your

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Now, that 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. thing is true, by the way. Just this last night, I was up half the night with a semi-ill child. So that's, if you're wondering, if you've been sitting there wondering why I am lacking, my ordinary sort of verve and effervescence, now you know, but I digress on that front. I should say, because we said at the top

and haven't said since. I'm Andrew Eager with the Bullwork. This is Bill Crystal at the Bullwark. We write the Morning Shots newsletter. We're coming to you live on Tuesday to talk about Donald Trump's interview this morning on Squawk Box and a bunch of other stuff. This is strange, Bill, because we're 28 minutes into this. And we have yet to talk about what under ordinary circumstances would have been, you know, the big news of the day right now, which is that Donald Trump had a cabinet secretary resign yesterday. But like the fact that this is like a B story even while it's happening has sort of epitomized the tenure. of outgoing Labor Secretary Laurie Chavez-Duramer, who has been totally racked by scandal the

entire time she has been in this job and yet has never really seemed to be able to break into the headlines about it. It's been sort of strange. But you wrote about this morning and morning shots bill. Can you just talk a little bit about what happened? You know, what's what's underway here at the Department of Labor? She had all kinds of personal scandals and they finally forced her out, it sounds like her departure was announced by the White House spokesman in a unceremoniously, in a truth social post, they didn't let her, at least even announce her own resignation. So they've now pushed out three cabinet secretaries in, I guess, about seven weeks, Christine Ome and Pambandie and now.

The Labor Secretary, they have been all three to be women. I go on about that a little bit, kind of abusing that, you know, Hagseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And Lutnik, all of whom have comparable, I'd say, either mismanagement of their agencies, and or personal scandals, they're still there. Maybe they'll go. Maybe not. Cash Patel still there. FVI is not on the cabinet, but pretty important job.

So maybe a little bit of gender issues there with Trump and his judgment of these different people. But anyway, so it's, yeah, but you're right. Well, look, honestly, when you've lived with Christyneum and the level of scandal we had there, and when you've lived with Lutnik and Witkoff and the Trump family, you know, the stuff, that the Labor Secretary was doing actually reminded me a little bit more of old-time scandals

where, you know, she's using the staff to get her a drink from the hotel bar. And there was some pretty bad stuff, some sexual stuff with some security guard and kind of miss, you know, fairly bad misuse of her staff. But it was a little, it was, it was, it was penny ante stuff compared to what we're used to in the era of Trump, right? The stuff that we, that we once upon a time would have said, oh man, she's gone, she can't survive this. And yet she has just kind of lived along all this time because there have always been bigger headlines on any given day. I remember, I mean, the only piece of original reporting that I think I did about the Labor Secretary for her entire tenure was very early on, you know,

when we were still in the sort of, you know, Trump's people are coming into all these agencies and everybody's kind of mad and Doge is going on, and everybody's really unsettled and nobody knows if their job is safe. And I just remember that she came in and pretty promptly through herself a sort of large birthday party at the labor department, which we had, you know, sort of a grieved sort of labor department civil servants, you know, leaking to us pictures of pictures of this party with, you know, with her face, you know, posted jauntily around the, around the building and things like this. So, so yeah, I mean, again, just she was one of these people where, where she, she could have come in and sort of soothed things. And instead she kind of came in and got the, got her, her employees

against her pretty quick and ended up, you know, being in a lot of these scandals. And it was sort of probably just a matter of time. Her husband also was sort of banned from Labor Department headquarters for also supposedly, you know, allegations of sexual harassment and all these sorts of things. So just a weird figure overall, but also sort of an interesting figure because she was supposedly, I mean, it's been reported, kind of one of Trump's strongest connections to actual organized labor, which has been, you know, a significant part of his coalition over the last few years. So who knows? Who knows what will happen as a result of this? But so long to Lori Chavez-Duramer, who could not even manage to be front-page news on the day of her firing, whether that is

good or bad for her, I will leave to the reader to determine. But that's enough. I mean, do you have anything else on her, or should we move on? No, no, no. All right, so long, Lori, secretary, Madam Secretary, thanks for your service. Let's go on to one other thing here, which is, and this is a little bit small ball, unless you're us, because we both live in Virginia, but I guess not. I mean, it has big national repercussions for the House of Representatives. The Virginia redistricting vote. It's arrived.

It's today. You probably voted early, Bill. I didn't because I was, you know, I procrastinated. I got it off. I have to go vote today. But this is basically the first big swing by the new Democratic trifecta in Virginia. You know, until pretty recently we had a Republican governor, Glenn Yunkin. And then last year, Democrats swept the state in the November off-year elections for the first time in a long time.

I actually don't know when the last time Democrats had a trifecta. Last time Republicans had a trifecta in Virginia was, I think 2012 was when they won it. But this is the first time Democrats have had a trifecta in the state in a long, long time. And, you know, it was a commanding win. Abigail Spanberger, who, you know, was elected governor. She won by 12 or 15 points. I can't remember now. top of my head was a large, large win, especially, you know, coming off of a Republican incumbent,

and majorities for Democrats in both houses of the Virginia legislature. And their first big swing has been to jump into this redistricting fight, right, that Republicans kicked off last year with the off cycle redistricting in Texas. Republicans, or sorry, Democrats responded in California with a ballot measure to permit a a redistricting, you know, to give Democrats more seats there. Basically, we've just had sort of competing outrageous gerrymanders across the country, right? In a lot of these states, there have been some smaller states where Republicans have tried to just eke out one or two more seats here and there. They did it in Missouri. They tried and failed to do it in Indiana.

And now this is sort of the second big Democratic counterpunch in Virginia. But it is also the most ostentatious, really, of any. of them, right? I mean, like, Republicans picked up five seats in Texas, Democrats picked up five seats in California, but these are big states with, you know, 50-ish delegates. The map that has been proposed by Democrats in Virginia is going from a 6-5 Democratic-leaning split to a 10-1 Democratic-leaning split. So, I mean, it truly is an outrageous gerrymander, like on the merits. And the argument is, well, what are you going to do? You know, Republicans started this fight, and we need to try to bring it back to parity nationally. You know, we, we don't want Republicans to win. We don't

Republican states to win more seats through gerrymandering than Democrats win seats through gerrymandering going into these midterms. And that's the only thing that matters. And this question of how how badly we're gerrymandering our own state just sort of pales in comparison. It's an it's an irrelevant concern compared to the national issue. Obviously, this is a change, right, for Democrats to be talking in these terms. You talked a little bit about this. on the podcast with Tim yesterday, Bill. But can you just kind of like walk me through how you are crunching all this in your own

and your own kind of personal assessment as a voter? Yeah, you know, it's a change in Virginia. Virginia voters voted two to one in 2020. I was one of them to vote, to have a nonpartisan redistricting mechanism put in place. It's kind of complicated, involved the courts, a commission with people appointed from both parties. It ended up, the commission couldn't agree

so they went to the courts. They appointed special masters. I think I happen to know one of them slightly. Political science types did a very fair redistricting for 2021. There was fair because it ended up 6'5, which is kind of what the split in the state would be in a normal situation, right? It's a slightly democratic state now. But also fair in the sense that they tried to keep communities together. It's the contiguous districts.

You know, this was sort of like a good government dream of what a redistricting would look like. And that's what Virginia has operated on in the last. first half of this decade. And then, as you say, then Republicans went first in Texas and California responded, but other states were going to go, Missouri and others went. Florida may still go in that direction. And so the Virginia Democrats decided we have to have a temporary, and to be fair, it's, it's, it, for the rest of this decade, it puts into this place if the voters vote for today, this constitutional amendment, which, or constitutional provision, I guess, which, which embodies this new gerrymander,

or a new gerrymander, replacing the old non-gerrymander, but it only lasts through 2030. So it's sort of explicitly a temporary fix for this temporary crisis that the Texas Republicans and Trump basically have caused. That's the argument for it. I think it's convincing. And so I voted for it last week. I said you say I voted for early.

It's pretty close, though, a fair number of Democrats. Clearly a fair number of Spanberger voters. I'll put it this way have our nerve. are uncomfortable with this because I think there are a lot of good government Democrats and some Republicans to be fair in Virginia. And it was a two to one vote in 2020. So a lot of people both party voted for that. And they don't like this concession to partisanship, which I think is justified by the kind of emergency situation we're in with what the Republicans are trying to do. But in a way, it's a tribute maybe to Virginians that they're nervous about it, even though they may

well past it. They may not. It's pretty close it looks like. We'll see what maybe I'll write about it tomorrow, what the results are. But it's interesting how many I know personally people who, you vote a very good thing this morning, but you're a reluctant, you're a likely yes vote, but you're a reluctant yes vote. I actually know a couple of people up here in McLean who are no votes, though certainly Spanberger voters and anti-Trump because they just think it's a mistake to go down that road. So I respect people who have those hesitations, though I think in this case they're there, they're I know, and I totally see where they're coming from.

I mean, again, just to talk about myself personally, like I voted for Abigail Spamberger last November with a song in my heart. It was the easiest thing, easiest decision ever, right? I mean, it was just, you hardly had to think about it. And this is a very different, this is a very different situation as far as I'm concerned. And I guess in some ways, it really does reflect, you know, the journey that the Democratic Party has had to go on in the last number of years where they really have grown more sharp elbowed And they really have, you know, woken up, I guess, to the threat on the other side of things.

I'm woken up to the realization that, no, actually Donald Trump truly does want to destroy a lot of the things that makes this country strong. And a lot of the institutions and the, you know, just the, I hate to say norms because that's such a threadbare word. But, you know, the rule of law and all these things like it. And he has to be stopped. And we should pursue whatever sort of legal, democratic measures. we can in order to, in order to rein him in to whatever degree we can. And gerrymandering is one of them. You know, it's, it's legal. It's on the books. You're elected. You're allowed to wield this power. Maybe voters will punish you for wielding this power. But, you know, it's not like Donald Trump trying to run the entire country by Fiat and saying, you know, let the courts try to restrain me if they will.

You know, I am the avatar of the popular will. Jerrymandering isn't like that. You know, this is, this would be likely legal. I guess I should say there are, there are legal challenges to. it so it's not impossible that it would get thrown out. And if that happens, then the old maps will stay in place. You know, this is all sort of like normal procedural stuff. And yet, I do worry about it. I do, I do worry that it is, it is sort of a coursing and a lowering of, you know, democratic hopes and goals for, for, for, you know, what, what we should, what we should expect and demand our government to do for us. It is actually factually the case that we as Virginians will just be more poorly represented by a heavily gerrymandered map. We have less ability to sort of choose our own leaders and to sort of influence the course of action by voting, all these sorts of things.

And these are problems. And the only other thing I would say about it is I really do detect kind of like an echo. And I wrote about this a little bit in morning shots today. I mean, like when you look back in 2016, Donald Trump had his core base of, you know, lunatics and, you know, terrible people. Deplurables, one might even go so far as to call them. were real people. But that was not a winning electoral coalition, right? And there were a lot of arguments that sort of normy Republicans and reluctant, you know, anti-Hillary voters and all these people, there were a bunch of different arguments that ended up pulling these people together into a coalition that was large enough to elect Donald Trump, president of the United States, to all of our sorrow.

And one big piece of that, and I remember living through this, one big piece of that was this whole flight 93 election conceit that like Republicans just thought Hillary was so bad and Democrats were so awful that we truly as a country could not survive her election, could not survive one more Democratic president. And therefore, the only thing to do was to sort of jettison all sort of thought of scruple and all thought of principle and any sort of moral or intellectual objection you might have to Trump or even to anything that Trump might try to do. And you just had to throw in with the guy. And I am not at all saying, to be clear, I am not at all saying that decision was like equivalent to, you know, whether or not Virginia should re-jerrymandery's maps, right?

It's a very different, very different sort of thing. Republicans were obviously not correct in that moment that a Hillary Clinton presidency would have destroyed the country. I think everybody has had cause to sort of look back at that and laugh by now. But the only reason I bring it up is to get at the sort of the way you can trick yourself into sort of deciding that this or that, that you actually consider yourself to adhere to very strongly is okay to set down just this one time for just this one reason because the benefit will be so good. And it's always easy to do that, you know, when it comes to like accruing more power. You can easily say, well, you know, all of this, all that this sort of principled opposition to gerrymandering is really doing for us

is keeping us from getting the power that if we had, we would do so much good with it. And if they have it, they're going to do so much bad with it. So how could it not be like the appropriate thing to set aside this scruple or set aside that principle and just go get that power. But I also think that that is an impulse that we have recently witnessed due shocking harm to the country as it has sort of greased the skids for Trump to take and then retake power later. And so I don't know, I'm just kind of bummed out and tormented about the whole thing. I probably will still vote yes, though, because, you know, we need a Congress that will stop this guy insofar as possible.

So I don't know. Those are just my thoughts on it. No, I think it's well said and well written this morning and people should read it and make up their own minds. I would just weigh one thing. They could have gone to the ballot with gerrymandering of state-level districts, and they didn't. And there, too, Virginia has this, you know, has this relatively non-jury, well, not relatively, has a non-jerrymandered state house and state Senate. And they've swung, as you said, the Republicans, Democrats, the one house that was up last year,

the Democrats picked up a whole bunch of seats, but they could lose them again, and Republicans have controlled those bodies were very tightly balanced before that, very closely balanced. So it's not like in some states there's just gerrymandering top to bottom, right? You just derramanding from the congressional level all the way down to the state assembly level. And that Virginia has been not been that way. And as I say, I think this is personally a reasonable temporary expedient. But as you say, these temporary expedients can become more than temporary. and the expedient can start to swallow the rule or the principle, which is good.

So we'll see what happens tonight. Maybe I'll write about it tomorrow, as I've been trying to follow the election a little closely. It'll be a little bit of a tip off, I suppose, on, you know, Democratic. As you say, it's not really a part. I mean, it's a little different for a typical vote for candidates, but it probably will tell us something one way or the other. And it will have a real world effect.

That is, I think you're probably are looking at a 10-to-1 delegation if this passes. You're probably looking at maybe 7-4, if Democrats have a good year and pick up a seat, just in the normal course of things. But so that's three congressional seats difference, which is not nothing, given that the current margins are less than that, right? Yeah, yeah.

A couple other interesting things just to say about this before we go. First of all, it is not at all clear it's going to pass. The polling seems to suggest it is favored, but not by near as much as maybe its proponents expected going in. There really are a significant number of these sort of defections from the Spanberger Coalition, who are voting no or just staying home. Republicans seem very energized about it for obvious reasons.

One interesting thing on that, though, is that nobody has really sought to get the president involved in any way. There's been no effort on the part of the Virginia Republican Party to bring him in to kind of rally the troops. And I think that's wise. I think that they, you know, Republicans are really trying to run this playbook that is 100% focused on the sort of good governance issues. They're trying to pull at, you know, the heartstrings of gullible rubs like myself.

and your friends that you were talking about earlier, to say, are you really going to stoop to this level? Are you really going to do that? And meanwhile, if they got the president involved, I think all of us would be like, oh, yeah, no, that's what this is all about. And we would go into it a little easier. So that's probably smart on their end.

Democrats have, or Democrat-aligned groups, have heavily outspent Republican-aligned groups in this fight over this initiative. it is very funny the way these things get kind of cloaked. I think the group on one side is Virginians for fair elections and the other one is Virginians for fair maps. So, yeah, the whole thing is sort of, there's a comedy to it. It's sort of ridiculous in a lot of ways too.

But anyway, we can leave it at that. If you're a Virginian or if you just want a backseat drive, feel free to chime in in the comments about how your person and all this stuff, we'll read all that. Maybe you'll even convince you. me one way or the other one. I could have to vote later today. But I don't know, Bill, anything else before we let the good people go? Nope, let's let people go and get back to work. And this was a good discussion, though.

And yeah, you'll talk to the White House about the Trump's scheduling of those. Maybe, yeah, Tuesday morning's okay to do the 830 or 9 a.m. interviews, but most mornings early or late the night before, it'd be better. Yes. You heard it, Caroline, if you're watching, Donald, if you're watching, you know, that would help us out a lot. We'd really appreciate. it, you know, really, really good for our programming schedule. So, so thanks, thanks Caroline and Donald for in advance for figuring that out for us. Thanks, Bill, for coming on and talking. And thanks to all of you out there who are watching.

We hope you enjoyed the show. We'll be back here next Tuesday. I'm sure we'll see here and there on YouTube in or on Subtack if you're watching over there in the intervening time as well. We hope you'll subscribe to the channel. We hope you'll subscribe to our newsletter over at the bulwark.com morning shots in your inbox every Monday through Friday morning at or around 9.30 a.m., you know, depending on how well the wheels are turning on any given morning. Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you all next time.