Bulwark Takes - Is This the End!? What Kash Patel’s Confirmation Means for America

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Kash Patel has been confirmed as FBI Director. With Patel at the helm, the purge begins. What does this mean for law enforcement, democracy, and Trump’s power? Tim Miller and Sam Stein break it down.

Memorial Day deals are here at Lowe's. Get up to 40% off select major appliances, including Samsung. Plus, save an extra $50 on every $500 you spend on select major appliances, $396 or more. Like the Samsung Bespoke French Door Refrigerator, featuring Beverage Center and Dual Ice Maker. Shop at Lowe's today. We help, you save. Valid 515 through 618. Selection varies by location. Total savings varies based on purchase amount. See Lowe's today. We help. You save. Valid 515 through 618. Selection varies by location.

Total savings varies based on purchase amount. See Lowe's.com for details. When it comes to Father's Day, dads want steak. And the experts at Omaha Steaks are making it easy for you to deliver uncompromising quality with gifts that are sure to make his day. Plus, get an extra $35 off with code THANKSDAD when you shop at omahasteaks.com today. But don't wait. Father's Day is June 15th. Shop now at omahasteaks.com and get an extra $35 off with code THANKSDAD. Minimum purchase may apply. See site for details. Hey everybody, it's Tim Mowat, the Bullwark here with managing editor Sam Stein. The vote is in 51 in favor and 49 against confirming Kash Patel as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Repeat that? Sorry. Kash Patel. No, no. The position? You're kidding. Yeah, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yeah, that's going to be Kash Patel's job. The guy that wrote the children's book about QAnon and Donald Trump being a king. That's him running the FBI. I have two thoughts.

I'm in sorrow and in anger. So do you want to go first? No, I would not want to get in the way of your sorrow. You want me? Do you want sorrow or anger first let's start with sorrow okay um i received a text from a former fbi official as i was coming uh coming up here right um this is so depressing the guy who blamed january 6th on the fbi is going to lead the agency yeah goes on and on uh that's a pretty good way to sum it up and it is across the board

i didn't rfk jr blame you know the cdc or the administration for like starting covet he thought it was a government thing and now he's going to lead it and it's like you know these people want to tear down the institutions they're not going to lead i think that's that's what they these people want right like that's the idea That's the point of it. You know, the FBI folks I've heard from, the whole thing is so ludicrous. Like, because most of the FBI is conservative. Like, there are a lot of Trump voters who are inside the FBI.

And like, what we're about to see is, at minimum, I think, a gutting of anyone that is in charge was looking into domestic terror threats, non-Brown version. And there's going to be at minimum sidelining, if not firings, of really credible law enforcement officials whose job is to keep us safe and all they did wrong was get included in the investigation of donald trump for his coup attempt and his other various crimes and the whole thing

is under the name under the name of depoliticizing the fbi they will purge the fbi of anyone that they don't believe is loyal to donald trump and what you'll have is a bureau that basically, in the most benign sense, a bureau that basically follows or pursues his specific objectives, right? Less interested in domestic terrorism and stuff like that and more interested in fentanyl, drug cartels, immigration, that type of stuff in the most alarming version of this you have a completely guardrail free FBI that is launching actual political investigations under phony pretexts and on Democrats and doing stuff that you know was reminiscent of the worst days of J. Edgar Hoover yeah and if you were like if you were of the view that it was going to be the first, like just the sham depoliticization where all you do is just not investigate friends and friends include all the way up to white domestic terrorists and whatever,

maybe some foes get targeted but they do it through the law. I don't know. Eric Adams' situation I think would seem to disabuse anybody of the notion that it's going to be on the lighter end of that scale. I mean, they just they've already specifically, like the basically the first action of the Pam Bondi DOJ was to say, we're going to cut an explicitly political quid pro quo deal with somebody. So I mean, I guess that's not targeting someone, but it's in

No, it's in no it's selective prosecutions and selective non-prosecutions right and so in in this universe let's say theoretically um someone at the department of justice is tipped off that a friend of donald trump has you know committed some sort of public corruption or private corruption and it falls into her lap and they have to make a choice about whether to have the fbi investigate it all right that ain't gonna happen right yeah i don't know way that's gonna be and then the flip side of that is do they you know launch investigations based on flimsy pretenses and into people who you know they just don't like and you're starting to see i mean this is not fbi obviously but you

know the attorney general of dc office under ed martin is like he's like putting out statements be like we're going to look into chuck schumer because he said something about doge and its workers there it's like what yeah he's looking into uh who's the tweeter from minnesota he's looking into will stancil the most important threat the most pressing matter in all of human history Will Stancil no it's dark man and it's like um it's you know what was it like early Trump years Cash was kind of like this weird mythical weird figure who's kind of in and around the White House and people were like what is he doing in nunez world at first world and like unmasking stuff he'd show up in europe doing like rogue investigations into the dossier and like serious people were like this guy is kind of insane and

dangerous to have around but trump 2.0 is that these are the people who are running the stuff. And we're just in uncharted territory here. And I guess I'm a little bit surprised. I shouldn't have been. I thought this one might've been a step too far for, for Republicans, but yeah. Okay. Well,

that takes us nicely to anger. Do you want to guess who I'm angry at? Because it might not be the obvious, but it might be the obvious person that I'm like, consider. I you want to guess who I'm angry at? Because it might not be the obvious person. I just did yoga, so I'm looking so fresh. But I have not namaste'd. I'm consumed with rage at one person in particular. Can you narrow it?

Is it a senator? It's a sitting senator. Sitting senator. And his key supporters. Oh, man. Jeez. I don't know. It could be anybody.

It's fucking Davos Dave McCormick. It's fucking davos dave mccormick it's fucking because here's what it's a double reason number one dave mccormick he's got a six year up for election again six years right okay who the hell knows what things will look like in 20 30 30 or 32 when will you be up 30 and 30 and 20. Math is pretty solid, but 2030. Yes. Who knows what the world will look like then? So the idea that you're doing this out of political fear or whatever is crazy. Sure.

The thing that gets me even more than him himself, though, is like he was like the safe person for all the people in my world to go support. Right. So even the people that are anti-Trump you know uh big donors to the bush family w himself had an event for him uh rove like that world like folks that i know um but across the world into business world davos dave was like you know very popular among kind of non-political jamie diamond type right centrist rich guys okay so so he gets millions in support for all these guys and their rationale always in doing that when i press them on this and i actually i forgot Right, right, right. Centrist rich guys, okay? So he gets millions in support for all these guys. And their rationale always in doing that, when I press them on this,

and I actually got to press one of them on this on a panel, a private thing recently, but it was like, well, it's better to have Davos Dave there than Doug Mastriano or whatever. Yes, obviously. And it's like, why though like why though really why why if if dave mccormick is going to be the fucking tie-breaking vote to or the 51st vote to yeah to make cash patel the director of the fbi then what is the difference between him and doug nastriano none none so there's no difference this would be the moment for him to just be like, okay, I've got leverage. Maybe Tom Tillis, fuck you too, but we'll give you a break because you're up in two years. I'm not up in six years.

I'll take this arrow. There are guys that are worried about this. There are senior FBI guys that are worried about this. We know about them. There are people that have deep relationships with Republicans. I'm going to take the arrow on this one. This guy is too dangerous, too clownish. I'm going to be against it but no he's like he might as well fucking just be a random commenter on like newsmax like dave

mccormick what's the fucking difference so i was talking it's only you said this because sarah longwell and i've been talking about this and that it's a calm she's got it right if she's listening to this sarah um about just like what there is no the moderate republican senator kind of you don't have to hand it to them ever at this point they're not really doing anything uh it's dave put mccormick i mean john what is this guy the senator from utah john curtis yeah yeah he was supposed to be mitt romney 2.0. The guy voted for all of these people. As far as I can tell, I'm missing something. I think he voted for every one of the controversial nominees. That is not up for six years either. I mean, so in like, you know, the insider reporting stuff is that, well, they structured their vote.

They didn't so that they could object in some places and others and not tank these nominees and well they want to make sure that john thune comes out looking strong because he's sort of more responsible and they got to give him some credibility and it's just like no at some point if you believe something is wrong you just yeah do what you can to oppose it and and that's just not happening here and and ultimately the only thing you can really conclude is that they like it or they want it that they don't want it and so this is why we're gonna get into like there'll be a georgia senate race this year and the the same people that pushed mccormick and brian kemp and it's just like just make marjorie taylor green the fucking senator okay just like there honestly isn't a difference there isn't a difference until dave mccormick or john curtis does one thing that

demonstrates they're different from marjorie Taylor Greene. They're not. They might as well just put on the fucking hat and start saying retard again and doing whatever is possible that makes MAGA people happy. And start doing conspiracies. Call Zelensky names. You might as well just do all that because you're not doing anything better than that. I would say the only difference, to your point, the real difference is just the superficial one, which is are they willing to be public-facing and crazy online? And that stuff matters.

I'm not saying that doesn't matter. Like the sort of ruining the discourse, the conspiracy adult crap that they subject us to. That matters. And I'm grateful that they don't do that but like one the real substantive stuff the the actual distinctions are not that profound and certainly not in the way that the insider republican crowd was pitching it yeah during the election so yeah okay anyway eat a dick dave mccormick. Buckle up, everybody. This is a dark, not in a good way, because this is a dark period. We're turning into Cash Patel.

You and I did a thing early on before the confirmations where we sort of ranked the fears we had about all four of the big ones. I forget what you did, but now that it's happened, how do you assess your rankings? That's a good question because I think I ranked Tulsi first and then Cash. I don't remember. We'd have to go back to the tape on this. I think you did do Tulsi first. But it's Cash. Sometimes you have to really experience something to know what your body feels like.

And before we've gone through this, and Cash's blatant, I think, obvious lies. You don't know for sure if it's reporting, but it seems very likely that he just bald-faced lied during his confirmation hearing. I think Cash is the most alarming, and Tulsi and Hegseth and your man RFK last. RFK last? Yeah, but I mean, yeah.

I mean, just because I'm so alarmed by the others. Like, the measles is not great, but my child's vaccinated. So here's what we're going to do. Okay, so it don't matter. Look, I'll just say as we are doing this, news has broken. RFK Jr. is preparing to remove members of the CDC's Vaccine Advisory Committee and other outside health panels who he determines have conflicts of interest. So, no, i stick with mine i'm i still think rfk is gonna i i still more fearful of him than uh all the others but cash is up there for

sure um okay i gotta run everybody subscribe to the feed thanks to sam's time i have so much more i want to talk about we'll hang out again later we'll just do another video with the videos all the time now subscribe to the feed you'll see the next one and uh we'll get to hear what sam wanted to talk about next that's a tease see you soon bye