Bulwark Takes - Elon Musk Accused of Sabotaging Ukraine

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Marc Polymeropoulos and Michael Weiss give their takes on the growing questions surrounding Elon Musk’s Starlink and his company purposely disrupted Ukraine’s war effort. They examine reports of ...missed Russian missile warnings, the status of U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine, and why any deliberate disruption could put American personnel at risk. They also discuss the need for congressional oversight and what the controversy reveals about the Trump administration’s increasingly cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin.Plus, they dig into the growing scandal surrounding U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, her ousting, and the allegations of corruption and influence-peddling raising questions about the administration’s vetting process.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome once again to the bulwark takes. I'm Mark Polymeroplas, a 26-year veteran of the CIA. I'm joined by my co-host, Michael Weiss, an intrepid investigative journalist, father of many scoops, also owner of a great dog named Humphrey. Father of many pets, domesticated and otherwise. Both of us are kind of sleepy because, holy crap, you know, the overnight events in Ukraine are really dramatic. And there is so much in terms of social media has exploded on this. There's confusion on what exactly happened. There was some technical or perhaps man-made difficulties with Starlink, which may have resulted in some Russian drone and cruise missile attacks getting in. But Michael, you can kind of get into details of that.
Starting point is 00:00:46 But essentially, the Ukrainians now are publicly blaming Elon Musk for perhaps tweaking Starlink to, in essence, allow Russia. to strike Ukraine, which would be a massive issue. You and I have talked about force protection issues before. I think we can put to bed the notion that U.S. intelligence sharing has been pulled back. It is not. Primarily, we talked about for these force protection reasons that are evident when you have thousands of Americans inside Ukraine, including a big U.S. diplomatic presence. But was there some kind of fuckery on the part of Elon Musk?
Starting point is 00:01:21 He hasn't commented on this. Can you just give us kind of a dump on this? because it's a really big deal. And as a former intelligence officer, this is the kind of, and as investigative journalists, you've got to get this right. All right. So before I get into the reporting,
Starting point is 00:01:32 I just want to caveat this, that we're recording this at around 10 a.m. on Wednesday morning. So it's not going to be released until many hours later. So a lot could change. And this is obviously developing stories, such as FYI, what I'm about to say could be completely irrelevant by the time you log on and listen to this. But here's what we know.
Starting point is 00:01:52 So when the meeting, between the Americans and the Ukrainians and actually the Europeans were present happened last week in Miami and this bilateral U.S. Russian diesel deal was dropped on the Ukrainians by Kushner and Whitkoff. At that meeting, Jared Kushner insinuated, although he did not expressly threatened, that if the Ukrainians just didn't play ball and accede to what was about to happen, intelligence sharing could be cut. And ever since, there have been threats leveled at the Ukrainians that this indeed could be happening. Now, I've reported from the Ukrainian side and from the American side almost immediately that there has been no disruption in intelligence sharing.
Starting point is 00:02:35 It's been status quo. I said on the last program that one of my American sources, a senior U.S. intelligence officials said, actually, we can't really afford to sever intelligence sharing with the Ukrainians because we need their help for counter-drone response in the Middle East, right? I mean, remember, the Ukrainians are past masters at modern warfare, and, you know, we can't do without their know-how and their technical savvy. So that's one thing. The other thing, threat intelligence. This is your notion of force protection. We have a self-interest in maintaining this relationship because we have personnel on the ground. We have diplomats in Kiev. We have Americans elsewhere, journalists, thousands of people. So if we were not, if we didn't share with the Ukrainians, ballistic missiles are incoming, and they didn't do their air. alerts and they have, you know, apps on phones that notify civilians that, you know, take to the shelter and all that, we would put our own people at risk. And duty to Warren statute says we can't do that. Now, Trump administration, of course, always thinks they can do anything, but this goes way beyond the pale. Right. Now, here's what's happened. Over the course of 48 hours, last night and
Starting point is 00:03:43 the night before, ballistic missiles launched by Russia got through. And some of those launches were not alerted or there was no prior warning given. So Zelensky has tweeted, I think twice now, we were not given notification. So this sparked a fury of hysteria and anger and recrimination and frankly conspiracy theories on social media that the intel relationship has been severed. To the best of my knowledge as of now, it has not. And again, this is coming from the American and the Ukrainian side. How do we know this? The comms person for the Ukrainian Air Force put out on Telegram a comment or his comments were reported on Telegram, I should say, that actually what happened last night was the first wave of ballistic missiles were undetected.
Starting point is 00:04:32 But the second, third, and fourth waves were detected and the intelligence was shared. Now, this can happen in war. Sometimes the Russians launch missiles. Sometimes they launch their air defense system missiles, S-300 and S-300. They use them as land-attack missiles, right? these things can get through. Sometimes there's bad weather. This is the excuse the Americans have given the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are highly skeptical that there was, you know, poor cloud cover accounted for a lack of good satellite technology to understand or to detect the ballistic missile launch,
Starting point is 00:05:02 whatever. It doesn't make much sense to me why the U.S. would do this for reasons already given, force protection. And also, look, up to this point, I think last night the Ukrainians began to strike at refineries and energy infrastructure. But prior to that, when Zelensky was first saying, oh, maybe, you know, we weren't given notification, the Ukrainians had abided by this energy truce, which seems to exist only in Donald Trump's febrile imagination. They refrain from striking energy infrastructure. Instead, what were they doing? They were hitting data centers, taking out Yandex complexes and basically hobbling, you know, everything from mobile payment apps to banking on the Russian side. So because, you know, Trump has said for many weeks now, you can hit anything,
Starting point is 00:05:48 but don't hit the diesel, right? He's been his red line. Donald Trump was asked by reporters, did we cut the intelligence? He denied it. Now, you know, he would say that, or you can say, take it with a pinch of salt, it's Donald Trump. But this is not, this is a guy who's not shy about boasting that he's trying to fuck over the Ukrainians, right? I mean, he said Zelensky should be replaced. They need a new president. He's called Zelensky a dictator. He is very out front when he wants to bash the Ukrainians over the head. So you're saying that if they were to cut the intelligence, he would just cut the intelligence. He would cut the intelligence and say, we've done this, and we've done it to teach him a lesson. Because I said, you know, don't hit the energy
Starting point is 00:06:24 infrastructure and they did. Regardless of how, you know, amoral, immoral against all U.S. statute would be. Your argument is that he would do it openly, which is, which is kind of what, that's his style, to be honest. Right. It is. And, you know, keep in mind, there are different levels of intelligence. There's the threat intelligence, which I've discussed, force protection. There's the intelligence the Ukrainians provide to us about the Russians. I mean, remember, the Ukrainians run a pretty vast, humant apparatus. They recruit Russian spies. They acquire all sorts of military technical information from the Russian side. They've been doing this for years. I was there when we were building that. Yes. Yes. And then there is, you know,
Starting point is 00:07:05 some really more covert liaison partnership stuff where we run ops with the Ukrainians. We don't know about them, nor should we, because they're ops, right? I mean, and that has actually not only continued, but expanded, according to people that you and I both know from your former organization. So, so far, I have heard nothing to suggest that any of those elements have been disrupted. But what about the Starling piece, the Starling piece? So I woke up this morning, first to messages from you, which is... Wake up! Which is your tendency.
Starting point is 00:07:36 We've got a podcast. Wake up. Right. And so what has happened is Starlink, you know, the satellite internet technology that's owned by Elon Musk and contracted to various countries and also Star Shield, which is the hard variant of Starlink, which is operated by the U.S. Pentagon. The Ukrainians need Starlink for a variety of reasons. But most importantly, their middle strike campaign launching drones to disrupt Russian logistics. and lines of communication, particularly in the South, where they're trying to essentially bifurcate the direct, you know, the so-called land bridge from Russia to Crimea. And they've had massive success in the last few months doing that, blowing up trucks that are carrying things like diesel, but also just military hardware, resupplies ammunition, hitting personnel and all the rest of it.
Starting point is 00:08:28 Their middle strike campaign is very reliant on Starlink. What else is Starlink used for? Well, Starlink is used to fly the drone interceptors that have been developed homegrown interceptor drones by the Ukrainian industry to take down what's known as the Jaron 5. That's a Russian drone that's jet powered. So it sort of functions more like a cruise missile than a drone, and these things are pretty devastating. So throttling, by throttling, I mean they've lowered the speed at which the devices connect to the satellites. It's not that Starlink has been cut off, but it's been slowed down to a point where it's affecting missions on the Ukrainian side. That's dangerous. Now, here's what Starlink is not used for, at least not yet, although the Ukrainians have been trying to get the Americans to, and Elon Musk to agree to allow them to use the way. It's not being used to power homegrown Ukrainian munitions flying into energy infrastructure deep inside Russia, right. For Musk, the red line has always been we can't use Starlink. It's turned off. Right, right. Now, everyone I'm talking about, to from the Ukrainian side, military, other reporters on the ground in Kiev, believe that the Starlink decision is deliberate. And if it were deliberate, it wouldn't just be Elon making this
Starting point is 00:09:44 call, but it would be the U.S. government. Hold on that. So let's unpack that because that, that to me, is just as immoral, just as wrong as if we cut off Intel sharing in terms of the force protection measures. And, you know, so Elon Musk doing this, I guess they're quite, well, they haven't responded yet. But is he doing this on his own or is he doing it in conjunction with the Pentagon or with the White House? And which once again, that's putting U.S. civilians and U.S. government officials at risk. I mean, to me, that is a massive scandal if Musk did this on purpose, just as bad as if we had cut off force protection intel. So to me, it's important to make that difference, but we've got to get to the bottom of that. I mean, this is a huge, if true.
Starting point is 00:10:27 It's a huge, it's a huge, I mean, so far I've seen nothing, and keep in mind, by the way, on the back of Donald Trump going to war again with Zelensky verbally, Elon Musk tweeted just days ago, Zalinski has gone too far. Now, why is this important? So some of you will recall at the beginning of the full-scale invasion when the Ukrainians were pushing back and going on the counteroffensive, they had an option, they had a mission to basically destroy the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea. And they were going to use Starlink connected munitions to do it. And Elon Musk, and this was reported in the Walter Isaacson biography, basically kanked that whole plan because he got nervous. He doesn't want Starlink to be used for military operations, even though everyone's using Starlink for military operations, including, by the way, U.S. servicemen in the Persian Gulf, who confirmed to me that rather than rely on the hard Star Shield Pentagon variant, you know what these guys are doing, our men and women in the Middle East, they're going to malls in Dubai, buying Starling terminals and affixing them to drones that we have modeled in many respects
Starting point is 00:11:34 on what the Ukrainians pioneered in their war. So everybody's using Starling for military purposes. But Elon, of course, Parrot's Kremlin propaganda was playing patty cake with Dmitri Medvediev, the former Russian president and a notorious alcoholic, a guy without much power, but he's sort of like the id of the ultra-nationalist hawkish element within Russia about, you know, how the war should end and Ukraine should forfeit territory and all the rest of it. So Elon, I mean, he's lost in the sauce here. And Ukrainians, he went from being a hero to zero because Starlink was critical for the early days of the war. It is still critical for reasons I've just given. And what had happened after he kind of got wobbly and started to move in a pro-Russian direction, the now
Starting point is 00:12:22 former Ukrainian defense minister, Federov, who is very young and very IT savvy, went and personally liaise with Musk. They had phone calls and persuaded him to switch Starlink off on the Russian side. So the Russians were taking pirate, not pirated, they were basically stealing or buying Starlink terminals on the black market, using it for their military purposes and their warfighting capability. And that was causing enormous amounts of damage on the Ukrainian side. When Musk cut that off on the Russian side, the Ukrainians started to perform better on the battlefield. And right now, I mean, we're sitting here talking, you know, Marco Rubio said that the war is in a state of stalemate. You hear people like J.D. Vance and other, you know, so-called restrainers or soft on Russia
Starting point is 00:13:06 types in this administration say that, you know, the Ukrainians cannot go on the front foot again. It's just going to stay like this. And death and destruction is happening on both sides. It's terrible. Blah, blah, blah. Actually, the Ukrainians, for the first time, I think, in a long time have retaken hundreds of square kilometers of territory north of Lyman in the Donbos. So they've gone on a counteroffensive known as Operation Vivaldi. I think it's about three different phases. And they've really punished the Russians, push them back to a point where I think the Russians were absolutely surprised by this development.
Starting point is 00:13:42 This isn't getting a lot of press attention in the West because we're too busy talking about this bullshit, right? But the Ukrainians are actually doing fairly well on the battlefield. And I think in September, this is according to a Finnish military monitor group called Blackbird, in September, the Russians lost more territory than they were able to gain. And I think it was the biggest, most significant tactical loss for them since, I think, early or late 2020. And there's always that difference between the horrible nature of the strikes inside, in civilian areas in Ukraine, which are terrible and awful. And it's a war crime or terrorist activity by the Russians.
Starting point is 00:14:18 And what's happening on the battlefield. And of course, morale does matter for the Ukrainian population. But I think that's a really important, you know, to distinguish that's important that you just did. But let's so put this in, you know, big picture once again. I mean, this goes back to kind of the good guys versus the bad guys. Like, what are we doing here? We're relying on this single billionaire or multi-billionaire, trillionaire now for a system that he can either turn on or off or tweak on his own or he can do it in conjunction with our government. And so my question to you then, as a journalist, obviously we have to find out what happened.
Starting point is 00:14:52 There is, the Ukrainians have already said publicly, they've inquired with Musk, with Starlink. Shouldn't there be invest? I mean, the media, I think, should be all over this. Congress, if they had any role, should be investigating this because of not only the humanitarian issue of Ukrainian civilians, but the force protection issue of American citizens. I mean, that's the thing that, to me, I think would generate at least some more outrage here in the United States. I mean, so where do we go now? We have to get the answers to this, right? This is going to be
Starting point is 00:15:21 uncovered. This will be on the front page of the New York Times within hours, if not days. Semaphore had an item about, oh, the administration is considering, it is debating whether or not to cut intelligence. And you and I have talked about this ad nauseum on this show. The one outlier, the one person pushing back forcefully against this is John Rackleff, CIA director. He better resign, by the way. If they do this shit, that's something to resign for it. He's got nothing left to hang his hat on here. Yeah, I mean, that's just bullshit if he sticks around because that's it. I agree.
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Starting point is 00:16:44 As a listener of this podcast, you will get $80 off your first month with Talkspace when you go to Talkspace.com and enter the promo code, Space 80. That's S-P-A-C-E-8-0. To match with the licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com and enter the promo code, space 80. There's a lot of murkiness, but let's leave aside, you know, what is actually happening versus what is just being speculated on or, you know, hypothesized. I think that the broad strokes to take the 60,000 foot altitude view is, you know, Donald Trump is desperate. He's a busted flush president. His poll numbers are in the toilet. He's probably going to lose one house of Congress, if not both. He knows that people are already preparing for the post-Trump era, including Republicans who are getting very touchy about, I don't want to bury the
Starting point is 00:17:42 lead here about Gilfoyle because we're going to come to that, but, you know, other things, too. Don Jr.'s wedding being financed by a Putinist oligarch. They see the optics of American president who's not just trying to do a reset with Russia or calm tensions and, you know, restore the European post-war order to something approaching equilibrium, but acts as if he is completely in the tank for Vladimir Putin. He has a hard time not deferring to this man. He just posted on Truth Social. You know, oh, you know, the far-left radical media are suggesting that China and Russia are helping Iran.
Starting point is 00:18:23 If so, it's just minimal. Literally, Mark, today, the Walsh Journal had an item that the Houthis in Yemen are building their version of an Iranian advanced missile with Chinese parts. You're saying Ratcliffe is a far-left radical lunatic. Yes, the information that Russia is providing targeting packages against our troops to the Iran. is coming from our CIA. So this is the thing. I mean, I said, I've said before, you know, the people who keep banging on about the deep state, where's your fucking deep state? This is your deep state. This is your intelligence community telling you these things and you're denying them. Why? Because Putin picks up the phone. He whispers sweet nothings in your ear.
Starting point is 00:19:00 God knows what else he's whispering. And you come away wholly persuaded. Now, the generous interpretation is Trump is saying these things because he wants to project an image to the Russians that he's open for dialogue, and he wants a negotiation, he wants a deal. But even by his own standard of being a, you know, savvy boardroom operator, he just looks like a pathetic fucking cuck. You know, I mean, I said the gimp and pulp fiction had more self-respect than the American president right now. Our hostile adversaries are eating our lunch for us.
Starting point is 00:19:32 They are embarrassing us. And innocent people in a European theater of war, the largest land war since World War II, are dying. I always believed, and I still do. Actually, I have to give a talk on this coming up on the notion of American exceptionalism. I mean, I had to because that was the part of my job as a CIA officer. I mean, it's the idea that, you know, America is the bright, shining city on the hill. It doesn't feel very good these days. It's a little bit depressing because we're just not seen as the good guys. And so, well, look, I think that, as you said, the next several hours and days, we're going to find out the kind of the secret of the Starlink.
Starting point is 00:20:09 issue. There's just reporting. I just checked again. I think the Financial Times is saying very clearly that, and you just alluded to it, that in order for this, if Starlink was shut off, it needs Pentagon concurrence or tweaked to do so. So there does look like there would be some DOD involvement, which is, again, just I can't grasp this notion of DOD turning off a force protection system in which Americans at Embassy Kiev could be killed. They did it before. Bridge Colby, who really runs the Pentagon because Heg Seth is in his bomb-based sapphire and doing his chin-ups all day. He cut Intel at one point, remember. And he is slow-rolled and he is slow-rolled and tried to kank security assistance. Lawyer up, everybody. You know, again, have hearings. Hearings galore,
Starting point is 00:20:57 if the Democrats take the House. Hearings galore. Corruption. Whitkoff Kushner, the kids. Oh, what are you going to say now? Malfeasance. My favorite subject we're going to next. Oh yeah, the Greeks. Okay, let's go. I know you've been tweeting me about this, but more you've been tweeting me like Daily Mail articles. You're like, The Daily Mail is killing it. Okay, so here's what I did. So first of all, I love the Wall Street Journal. And I know the journalist involved in the story. And by the way, just as an intro, Ambassador Kim Gulf Oil, otherwise, as we call her, KG, is gone. She's been asked to resign. She has resigned.
Starting point is 00:21:30 So this is kind of a, you know, kind of the bookend to this. Well, sort of. She's not out yet. The Wall Street Journal is great. And then the Daily Mail, has this incredible salacious gossip all the time. And by the way, it's all accurate because I know what's going on there. I actually subscribe to the Daily Mail because of this. They got me for $15. It's a deal for $15. I can't believe I'm saying this on this show now.
Starting point is 00:21:51 We should be talking about people subscribing to the bulwark. But the Daily Mail has this kind of pension because don't forget, they also broke that Christy Knoem story about all the crazy shit her husband was doing. And so, but where we are right now is that the White House asked KG to resign. She resisted doing so. It's pretty funny. She's kind of hold up at the embassy. She's screaming at her security detail because she thinks they're the ones who leaked.
Starting point is 00:22:13 But it's really not true because everybody on the planet knows kind of all of her malfeasance. And I think the key things on this now, and we've talked a lot about this issue. And more reporting is coming about the corruption. I think I do know that. And that's going to be for congressional investigators and perhaps criminal prosecution, if it really was pay for play and things like that. will be borne out by the investigation. But there's two things on this. One is the Greek government and Greeks have deserted her. Like, it's hilarious. So I just got a note from a friend of mine in Greece,
Starting point is 00:22:49 who's totally tied in the whole Greek foreign policy stuff. People are wiping their, like, Instagram photos of her, everything on X. Like, she does not exist anymore. Everybody is fleeing, including the Greek government. So all these people who were kind of mesmerized by her for so long, She literally goes, she does not exist anymore. And, you know, that's an incredible fall from Grace. There's a number two at the embassy, the DCM Deputy Chief of Mission. He will be the acting Charger de Affairs. His name is Josh Huck.
Starting point is 00:23:18 He's very competent. The Greek prime minister likes him. The embassy staff likes him. He's going to be fine. I don't think there's a huge rush to nominate someone else. But if there is, and here's kind of two other points. One is Senate better take confirmation seriously and they better do background checks because you had a compromised ambassador who had a terrible
Starting point is 00:23:38 reported alcohol problem. I mean, for God's sakes, half the, you know, there's 500 sources on this. And she was in debt. And all the reported, again, alleged corruption. So just as a background investigator, that would take about six seconds to find out. And then the Senate, you know, Republican colleagues. I mean, my God, you know, they didn't know this. I mean, the journal report, you know, Rubio went to Athens to give his Western
Starting point is 00:24:01 Siv lecture at the Acropolis, full knowledge of what was going. on, but he didn't want her shenanigans to eclipse his big quasi-campaign moment, I guess. But yet, to piss off Donald Trump because you're so corrupt. Imagine what that would have to take, right? It's not the crime. It's not the crime. It's the sloppiness with which she perpetrated the clock. And he was asked, do you know where he goes, I kind of knew her? Like, then there's all sorts of things now coming out, you know, all of Trump's fawning over her and he had weird nicknames and all kind of stuff like that. Now, the part about this that I love, so I was trying to think of, I did a TV hit this morning on MS Now and it was good because I, you know, I love the story, and they finally agreed after my pleading. Let me fucking talk about this. And so I was coming up with the idea, is she the most corrupt,
Starting point is 00:24:44 awful diplomatic envoy in U.S. history? And the answer is no. And in some of the archives, there's some great State Department archives. We had a U.S. ambassador in the mid-70s, and she was removed. But she actually refused from U.S. Embassy, Kathmandu, from Nepal. But she was removed because she was having sex orgies in her residence with the Marine House and with the with Nepali airline pilots. And the great story is one day, and I can't remember, I think it was literally the king of Nepal, or maybe it was the president or whatever it is,
Starting point is 00:25:14 but he knocks on the door of a political officer in the middle of the night. And he says, can I come in? And the political officer says, what are you doing here? He said, I was invited to your ambassador's residence, but I'm too scared to go because I think she's going to force me to join in. So KG does not get number one worst envoy of all time.
Starting point is 00:25:31 And by the way, this envoy, the ambassador in Nepal, refused to leave when the Carter administration Pulder and she lived in Nepal doing crazy shit for the next couple years. So, you know, God bless political appointees. Apart from the alleged criminality and the moral squalor, you know, I mean, just prostituting American foreign policy, American national security to not even the highest bidder, but just any bitter. There's an aesthetic component to MAGA that pisses me off, right? You know, John Waters, you know, the great, like, trash can Oscar Wilde filmmaker. I think he put it best when he says, they make tastelessness look bad, right?
Starting point is 00:26:14 It's so cheap. It's so unselfconsciously camp. I mean, everything from the reflecting pool to those little gold Home Depot applices, he's just, you know, completely polluted the Oval Office with to this. I mean, she's driving, she's driving her Mercedes wagon, and she has a $250,000 car loan on this, on this fucking, and she's trying to get Greek industrialists to pay her car loan. Oh, yeah. And then I think there's, yeah, it's just so gross. But again, is that behavior of hers, is that new?
Starting point is 00:26:49 The answer is no. A background check would have, I mean, it's crazy. And, you know, there's no vetting. I'm sorry. Look at the new White House press secretary, aside from her catastrophic start yesterday. and I did watch it 10 times. And for those of us who do a lot of public speaking like we do or media appearances, I mean, every once in a while you get, you know, you kind of throw up a brick.
Starting point is 00:27:09 You have a dud of a hit or something goes wrong in a public speech. Not like that. And on top of that, she's not even a lawyer. She went to law school. And then she was practicing in China for six or seven years. I'm sorry, you can't get a job in the U.S. government if you were practicing in China and living there for six or seven years. There's no vetting whatsoever. that goes on with this administration.
Starting point is 00:27:30 It's mind-numbing to me. And because, by the way, Trump looked back when she said that and he seems surprised. I don't think he hired her for her robust CV, if I'm being honest. It's just an incompetent administration, you know, one thing after another, but just do some freaking vetting. But even Susie Wiles, you know, it's one of the, in term one, the term of art for this was the adults in the room, right? And everyone's like, oh, Susie, she'll kind of rain in all this craziness. Our friend David wrote at MS Now reported just a few days ago, and he talked about it on Morning Joe on Monday when I was on. Susie Wiles' daughter was posing 100 miles from Srebrenica, one of the biggest mass graves in Europe after World War II, with like an assault rifle and with some flunky from the Dotic regime, saying, you know, having serious fun here.
Starting point is 00:28:22 And I mean, it's incredible. like I say, just leaving aside, just the lack of morality, the lack of wisdom, just the aesthetic is enough to indict these people, right? I mean, somebody was reporting, I think was Oliver Carroll from the economist, a great reporter in Ukraine and also Russia. He said, you know, the mood in Kiev is quite grim. And some of the Ukrainians, he queried said, you know, if this were 1939, the Americans would be on the side of Adolf Hitler. That's the sentiment in Ukraine right now. That's how much we have alienated the victim of this war and a, as I've called them, a model ally, somebody who's lining up to help the Americans fight campaigns that we shouldn't have even started, but that's the price
Starting point is 00:29:11 of an alliance. And this is how we're portraying them. It is disgusting. It is depressing. And again, I don't know how you serve in the U.S. government right now. I hate to say this, because when I do a lot of public speaking, I go to colleges, I want people to join the U.S. I love the idea of public service. You know, I want to pass the torch to the next generation. So I talk the talk, but I'm not sure how much I would be comfortable in serving right now because this is the public face of America. These are the people.
Starting point is 00:29:36 It's horrible. And as a U.S. diplomat, I just don't know how people do it. But I will say there's probably going to be quite a party at the U.S. Embassy, Athens, when KG eventually leaves, if she leaves, and she's got to get out of there. And the last piece on that is we're all, you know, what are they going to give her to keep her mouth shut? because she has so much dirt on this family. There's got to be a payday or payout somewhere because in the Daily Mail, I think it was, or maybe it was another outlet did say she's pissed.
Starting point is 00:30:01 And an angry KG, I don't know if you want that. Now, we want it. I don't think the Trump family necessarily wants it. But what a bookend to a crazy story. I mean, of Athens of all places. How do you screw up being the ambassador in Athens? It's such a great posting. I mean, if you look up who and what she was just, what, 20 years ago, not even, when
Starting point is 00:30:21 She's married to Gavin Newsom. She's in some magazine spread. She's sprawled out on the rug in California with a young Gavin Newsom who looks the same, just fewer gray hairs, right? And it was called the New Kennedys. You go from Camelot 2.0 to being like Anna Nicole Smith on the Aegean. How does that happen? MAGA is how it happens, right?
Starting point is 00:30:45 Several years ago, I gave a talk. I made it through a live. It was a private event to a financial institution. I was the keynote speaker down at the breakers. which is about a mile from Moralago, and I thought I was going to get killed down there. But that's the look. There's a lot of, there's a lot of,
Starting point is 00:30:57 there's the Mara Lago look. South Florida is a, is a crazy place. All right. So another episode of Bullwark takes with the Polymeroplas and Weiss combo in the books. If you like this, please subscribe to the Bullwark. I'll note again, our podcast comes out efficiently, the reporter and the spy next month in November. We are super excited for that.
Starting point is 00:31:18 Until then, we're going to do these at least weekly takes. sometimes even more. And again, this was episode was filmed this morning. Perhaps when it comes out, there'll be some developments on the, on the Star Lake piece. And we will also follow up on that because we're going to do another podcast shortly. I think we're going to record this on Friday. And we're actually going to have one of the authors of the new book on Havana Syndrome. We talked about it last episode. 60 Minutes producer, Mike Ray, is going to come on the show and talk about the book. And as he did so this morning on CBS Morning, he teased that there is a, a new 60 Minutes episode that will come out in several weeks,
Starting point is 00:31:55 which will have some blockbuster information. Michael, I think you talked about this too. You've been involved working with them and been integral to this, but a lot more on that subject. So we're going to do a special bulwark takes on that too. But until then, please subscribe to the bulwark. Michael, thank you. You got up in the morning for this.
Starting point is 00:32:10 I'm going to leave you alone tomorrow morning and not have 400. No, you won't. Just be honest. I'm going to be at the gym tomorrow morning. Although I screwed up my wrist. I tweaked my wrist weightlifting. I had to get a ganglion cyst drained yesterday with an ultrasound. It was gross.
Starting point is 00:32:23 Never want to hear ganglion cyst on the show ever again. Thank you. Until next time, thank you all. And we'll see you soon on Bullwark Takes.

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