The Bulwark Podcast - Ben Rhodes: The World We Made

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

Iran is in a vulnerable spot for a variety of reasons, and Israel sees this as a stars-aligning moment to decapitate the Iranian state. But if the U.S. helps out, we'll face the same questions we did with Iraq and Afghanistan: Who will run the place? As Tucker had to embarrassingly school Ted Cruz, Iran is a giant country. And it could descend into civil war or chaos—and America could be drawn into the 'catastrophic success' of regime change. Plus, MAGA fissures over foreign policy, Tulsi can't be trusted on Iran, and Dems really need to seize this black helicopter moment of masked agents snatching and arresting people, including elected officials Ben Rhodes joins Tim Miller. show notes Tim and Ben at an event two years ago on Ben's book Ben's book, "After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made" Tulsi's creepy nuclear war video

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome, I think, a first time guest. He's a speechwriter and deputy national security advisor under President Obama. He was deeply involved with the Iran nuclear deal. He's now a contributor to MSNBC, host of Pond Saved the World, and author of After the Fall, Being American in the World We've Made, it's Ben Rhodes. What's up, man? Hey, Tim. Yeah, first time. First time in a long time, as we used to say in sports time

radio. Yeah. Yeah, I am pumped. And hopefully, you've listened to the Tommy Vitor episode, so you know what's going to come for you at the very end of the pod. I have a special segment for worldos. There were four reasons I wanted to get you on the pod and the last one is hilarious. So I'm just going to go through them really quick. Number one, your book is Bill Crystal Adjacent, and we're going to get to that. I know that you don't like to accept that, but it's true. Number two, I am a worldo.

Oh, yeah. And Pods Save the World and Shield of the Republic are my napping podcasts. And so I appreciate that. So I have you in my ear as I'm kind of waking up from naps. And a genuine compliment. Unlike most of the people in the blob during the Trump era, you've spoken like an actual human about how awful this stuff is rather than Diplo speak. I like that. And lastly, I pitched this about a month ago when it looked like Trump was going to do JPCOA too. Yeah. And I thought that was funny. And it's seeming a little maybe funny in a different way now, less funny.

So maybe we start there. I know. We agreed to do this when we thought there was going to be like a deal. Yeah, exactly. Very much not a deal. And so let's just start there with your assessment on the state of play. Look, we're in this incredibly dangerous and volatile moment, Tim. I mean, we don't know whether the United States

is going to enter the war today or tomorrow. It seems like we're poised on that precipice. I mean, in terms of the state of play, look, I don't think Israel had to bomb Iran right now. There was no, despite, they haven't really tried to put out some kind of credible intelligence case that Iran was just about to acquire a nuclear weapon beyond what they always say. The reality is that they've been living with an Iran with a nuclear program for a very long

time. It would take Iran, you know, estimates range from months into years to both acquire enough nuclear fuel for a weapon, but also to weaponize that fuel, put it on a warhead that was not about to happen. And Trump literally had an ongoing negotiation and had a meeting set up in Oman where it seemed like they were probably going to get some kind of deal. And so to me, what Israel did was not some you know 5d 5d chess move by Trump where he was running a sigh up on all of us with Steve Witkoff I mean Trump clearly wanted that deal

So they basically bombed Iran before it was necessary in a manner that put an end to diplomacy And I've been in these some of these simulations Tim this happens in all of them, right? They get to a point where they say, okay, we've bloodied their nose and now we need the US to come in and drop its big bomb on Fordo and that's where we are. So you're not buying the story, isn't the Trump administration? I've been intrigued that all my former friends, all the hawks who stayed in the Republican Party in good standing are very excited to share that story. Like Donald Trump was doing a ploy on the media and the Iranians where he,

he brought them into his little mouse trap. He put some cheese in there for the Ayatollah and, uh, and was just being bad cop or a good cop rather. You don't think that's the accurate story. Tim, what is more plausible to you that Donald Trump and the people around him had the extraordinary discipline to go through a total decoy, months long diplomatic effort to arrive at a deal with Iran, that their Saudi and Emirati friends supported while actually laying this trap and being disciplined enough not to leak it or tell anybody about it, or that Bibi Netanyahu, over Trump's objections,

bombed those facilities. Trump was watching, as has been reported, Fox News. The war looked pretty good on Fox News. He saw some people saying that this was a great thing. And then he started calling reporters on the phone and saying, hey, actually, I've been running this Psy up the whole time. I'm for this. And then all of his hawkish circle, which is only half the circle, we can get into that, starts banging on him to drop the big bomb on Fordo. And he's in a bind now because he didn't want to be here, but that's where he is.

I'm going to bet on the latter scenario being the one, not the Psy Up one. I'm going to bet on the latter scenario being the one, not the SIAP one. I'm going to bet on the latter scenario too. When you put it like that, it seems more likely that Trump was watching Fox and thought he could get it on a winner. This is where, I mean, maybe I'm as susceptible as Trump. I want to hash out with you, my old neocon muscles flex from time to time. There's an element of this that I am sympathetic to from the Israel side. Not really, not the BB part, you know, I wish it was somebody

else that was doing it. But from an execution standpoint, they've been in a moment where they've been attacked by Iranian proxies for a long time now on all sides and Hezbollah has weakened and they began this effort within Iran pretty effectively, you have to admit, pretty impressively. Took out a lot of the Iranian leaders. And I don't know, like, maybe this is an opportunity finally for them to disable something that's been a threat in the region. Is that crazy? What's crazy about that idea?

I want to meet you where you are and give what I believe to be the most generous reason for why Israel is doing this. Because it is not that they had some information that Iran was about to weaponize a nuclear weapon. I mean, Bibi's kind of had different versions of that that he said on television, but it's not clear even what their arguments are. Even in my generous acceptance of their plan, I'm not sold on that as the rationale. The generous argument I think would be that Iran is particularly vulnerable right now.

That they have essentially decimated for the time being at least Hezbollah. The US frankly under Biden took a lot of shots at those proxy groups and the militias in places like Iraq. Assad is gone in Syria. Russia's busy. Russia's busy, absolutely. And the shots that Israel took at Iran a few months ago were kind of designed to get rid of some of their defenses and kind of soften them up for this.

And so I think the generous view is less about there's anything materially different in the Iranian nuclear program than it is like, hey, this is the best chance that we've had, so let's take it. I still think it's a bad idea for several reasons. The first is purely from a nuclear program standpoint, you cannot bomb a nuclear program out of existence.

And when we looked at these scenarios in the Obama years, you know, even blowing up these facilities, you kind of set it back a year. And then they, you know, could just dig deep underground and decide, hey, now that we know that we're gonna get bombed without a nuclear weapon, we're just gonna take this whole thing covert, we're not gonna make a deal, and we're going to go underground.

That's one scenario you worry about. They may not do that. They could come out and put their hands up. But even then, I don't know that I trust that because the lesson they've learned is like, let's go underground and get this bomb. That's the first one. The second one is wars of this scale. I mean, Iran is a country of 90 million people.

And they're going after the- We famously learned that on the Tucker Carlson show last night. We're going to get to that. Tucker, I think said 92, but yeah, I mean, he's got a point. This is a big ass country, right? And a really important country. And they're kind of going after the Iranian leadership like they're Hezbollah. Like, you know, we're just picking these guys off.

This is a state. I hate the Iranian government, right? But decapitating a state is different than decapitating a terrorist organization. Who is going to run Iraq? This is the same question that people failed to ask about Iraq and Afghanistan and that I, in the Obama- The George Washington of Iran is going to run Iran, Ben. Come on. Well, that's the thing. I failed to ask it about Libya. So I want to join myself as people that didn't get this right. Well, that's the thing. Tim, I saw someone, I think it was Newt Gingrich, tweeting, what Iran needs now is a's the thing, Tim, I saw like someone, I think it was Newt Gingrich tweeting,

what Iran needs now is a secular, moderate, inclusive democratic government. I'm like, hey, yeah, sure, that's what we all need. We need that in the United States, by the way. But so I worry that they're gonna do the regime change. That Bibi's not gonna stop. He hates these guys. Trump was threatening to kill the Supreme Leader.

And that's when I'm like, this is not gonna end well, because we've seen where regime change imposed kill the Supreme Leader. And that's when I'm like, this is not going to end well, because we've seen where regime change imposed from the outside goes. It goes into failed states or civil wars or chaos. You get drawn in. So, it's less that Iran is going to defeat Israel with ballistic missiles and more the catastrophic success that could happen if there's regime change could basically be in a country that is bigger than Iraq, that really is important.

It has a lot of oil and gas. So Russia, other countries are going to have interest there. China, the Gulf States, that is unselling. And then the last thing I just say, Tim, is that, and this is where I may be like a lefty, I just think war to solve problems when there are alternatives that still need to be tested is wrong. There are civilians being killed in both Iran and Israel.

There's no international law that says you can just go bomb a country and decapitate its leadership. I still believe in a world in which, you know, and I guess I'm an old fashioned guy that way, it's better to not normalize that, right? Because we're normalizing a lot of military force in the last couple of years.

And Russia and China and others, we wouldn't like it if they did it. So I think that we're going to miss those norms when they're gone. I love how you just casually slipped into that answer, like Trump threatening to assassinate the Ayatollah. Like that's something that's happening right now. That happened. Trump just bleeding out like random assassination threats. The peace candidate.

Okay. I want to push back on you one more time and then only into the Trump side of this because I'm like negatively polarized on basically all Middle East policy opinions, right? So if you talk to me about Newt Greengrish, I'm like, that's obviously stupid. But then I hear the other side and I'm like, that seems stupid too. And I think that while the regime change notion, which Bill Kristol did float on Monday to the consternation of some of our listeners.

I hear you. Like, obviously, it was an utter disaster and that's like basically accepted across the board minus a couple of random, you know, descendants of Paul Wolfowitz at this point. Like the regime change effort in the Middle East was a failure. I hear that. But like, from just the perspective of the Israeli people, right, that appeasement with Iran strategy also didn't work. I mean, the deal, the JCPOA led to them, the Iranians being a little bit more flexible financially and otherwise to support these proxies. The ballistic missile deal expired

two years ago and they've been getting ballistic missiles coming at them and so I think you could understand their view to like I don't know dealing with the mullahs what wasn't really any better like that that was a negative outcome for the Israeli people at least over the last little bit and perspective I would make two points here rather than kind of debate everything about the JCPOA sure the two points I make is first of all I don't think we really we tested that proposition for two or three years. I mean, one of the problems we have in this country is an inability to sustain anything, right? And so I think it was working, at least on the nuclear side, while it was implemented. Trump was out of there by 2018. That's three years in. I think that was

working to protect the Israeli people from the threat of the nuclear program. It wasn't addressing the ballistic missiles and the proxies. It wasn't intended to. That was going to require other strategies and other work. But the first point is, I love these things that we started in Obama. I get this about Cuba too. Like, well, it didn't work. We was there for two years.

You got to try these things out for longer. And actually the fact that we used to say back in the JCPOA arguments, that it's either a diplomatic settlement or a war. And we were called like mean, you know, how dare you say that the alternative is war? We're seeing that that's the alternative. But the second point I'd make about Israel, Tim is that they've lived with a huge amount. I understand what you're saying about the the enormous amount of risk that they live with from from Hezbollah, from Iranian proxies.

But they were also, I think, relative to like their history, going through a pretty successful period. I mean, the economy was booming in Israel, security was, I mean, Netanyahu was prime minister and he was bragging about the security he'd brought to Israel. Yes, you had not eliminated all risk to the Israeli citizenry by any measure,

but this proxy war between Iran and Israel has been going on for decades, you know? October 7th is obviously a whole other conversation, but that was after, by the way, the JCPOA. So if we're just talking about the period of the JCPOA, I'm not sure that was a period of like huge insecurity for the Israeli people relative to other periods. I think the hawks would say, well, I mean, and I'd like to hear you give your take on

the Gaza situation too, but because it's related to all this, but like Hamas is dismantled, Hezbollah is dismantled, Iran weakened. You don't like to hand it to Bibi on anything and this is maybe less about Bibi, but like that's not nothing. The two problems ever that are one, we judge everything in these short-term, you know, new cycles. I think five, 10 years from now, the way the Bibi is doing this, people will see that it has been incredibly damaging to Israel, to its international standing, to its ability to have any kind of lasting peace based on trust with its neighbors. But secondly, I just think it think this scale of violence is wrong.

And I actually think it does something to a society. It's connected to what's happening here in some ways in the sense of it is not good for a country to do what Israel's currently doing in Gaza. Like I actually believe that, you know, maybe it's because I've been living in California too long, but you absorb what you're doing, you know? So you're absorbing the psilocybin, for example,

and starting to... Well, let's say we're dancing around that. But the point is that they're rationalizing, like mass scaling on a scale in Gaza, that I've never, like, I can't remember happening in the 21st century, right? And that's not good for a country. Even if you can say you racked up a win against Hamas,

doing it in that manner, I don't think is good for Israel, the health of that society. And it's moving them further and further to the right. It's moving their politics to the far right. And so one of, I think the problem with hawkish foreign policy people is that, in the same way, by the way, that I think the war on terror did something a little weird to our politics and led to Trump in some ways. Like when you kind of normalize permanent war and extraordinary authorities in the executives

hands, I think the erosion of Israeli democracy is not unrelated to their foreign policy. And I think some of the hawkish foreign policy people try to separate it. Well, I don't like what BB does at home, but man, I love that pager operation. Maybe those things are connected, you know? Yeah, I mentioned that yesterday. I mean, I'm kind of like giving a steel man argument to you because I'm like, I'm genuinely torn on all this.

And I just, I do think it's hard to like the middle distance. It's like hard to see like what the fit, you know, and I said yesterday, I was like, have we created the next AI bin Laden, you know, through all this? Like it's, it's hard to know. I do need to though, just to, just to make sure everybody's clear

about the perspectives they're getting. There was a report that goes around periodically about how your nickname was Hamas Rhodes in the White House. Is that true? Is that accurate? Are you representing Hamas right now in making these arguments? Here's the funny thing is that usually when people are dunking on me about that, they

act like that was something that was discovered when it's a story that I wrote in my memoir, which is Rahm Emanuel, nicknamed me Hamas. I don't want to overstate it. It was for a few week period when I was, there was something going on and I was seen as pro-Palestinian and it was funny and horrible at the same time, but it was Rahman Manuel, right? This is how he is. And he would say things like, you know, Hamas over here is going to make it impossible for my kid to get a fucking bar mitzvah in Israel. You know, I mean, it was that kind of tone. It wasn't like literally like I supported Hamas or even if he like thought I actually

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enter code bulwark at checkout. That's joindeleteeme.com slash bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout. That's joined delete me.com slash bulwark code bulwark. All right. I wanted to the Trump side of this and the internal war that you referenced earlier. So there's the Atlantic article where Michael Shear called Trump and they talked for a couple minutes and then Trump took a call from Putin, which is telling Sunak Dubee about where we are in our society right now. But I often toggle between Michael Shear and Putin. which is telling Schenectady about where we are in our society right now. But... I often toggle between Michael Sheer and Putin.

Yeah. He said, Sheer was asking about the criticism from Tucker and from Bannon at all. And Trump was basically like, America first is whatever I say it is. And to me, I think I hate to hand it to him. I think that's kind of right. I don't know. I think that there's like an interesting intellectual Twitter battle going on between the Tuckerists and whatever, the Mitch McConnell crowd, or however you want to put it.

In the end, doesn't Trump's control of the party more personality-based, or do you think that there's something very, a deep potential fissure here? What do you think? I think there's a deep fissure because essentially what is being revealed is that there are still people that have actual differing views within the MAGA coalition. And you know, Tim, better than anybody, bulwark, like these have long been fissures

in the Republican party, dating back to pre-World War II, right? There's always been a kind of isolationist strain of the Republican Party with some ugly elements and then some just kind of sincere isolationist elements. And there's always been a more, you know, whatever label we want to fix to it, but essentially expansionist or interventionist or you call it neoconservative wing of the party. Reagan actually pretty expertly was able to bind them together in his own personality.

And Reagan was probably actually less pro-Israel than Biden, though you never would have known it listening to Tom Cotton talk during the Biden years. Totally. Yeah. Totally. I mean, Reagan, we can, you know, I mean, Reagan, Menachem, Begin, let's just say they didn't get along. And so Trump basically bound them together by force of personality, but he never really

resolved the differences. He kind of always wanted it both ways. So he would talk a lot about ending permanent wars and being an anti-war guy, but then he would also brag about dropping the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan or getting rid of Obama's civilian casualty standards for going after certain ISIS targets. He kind of wanted to be a tough guy and being Bibi's best buddy until he wasn't, but he wanted to be the kind of tough guy that could appeal to a certain kind of hawkish vibe, even if he didn't sign on to the whole foreign policy, while essentially still being this

isolationist America first or Pat Buchanan Republican. And I think what we're seeing is, whether it's Lindsey Graham or Tucker Carlson, like, or Steve Bannon, these people actually believe their views, you know. Now, the Trump voter is going to think that whatever Trump says is as maga as America first, but not the members of Congress and the kind of leading, I hesitate to call them thinkers, but talkers in the party. Yeah, I guess we have to be thinkers. While we're doing Tucker, just to show a little bit from this debate, by the time this podcast is out, I think the whole Tucker interview with Ted Cruz will be out,

but we did get to see two little delicious clips. I picked my favorite, which I want to share with you for a second. And I'm noting that, boy, there are a lot of resistance people I'm following who are having strange new respect for Tucker. Who do I root for here? Yeah, yeah. Including Tommy, but let's listen to it. How many people living around by the way?

I don't know the population. At all? No, I don't know the population. You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple? How many people living around? 92 million. Okay. Yeah. How many people live in Iran? 92 million. Okay. Yeah, I...

How could you not know that? I don't sit around memorizing population tables. Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government. Why is it relevant whether it's 90 million or 80 million or 100 million? Well, because if you don't know anything about the country... I didn't say I don't know anything about the country. Okay, what's the ethnic mix of Iran? They are Persians predominantly Shia, okay

You don't know anything about Iran. So I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran Your center is calling for the overthrow of the government you don't know anything about the country. I mean Not bad. I mean he's got a point. I mean that's calling for the overthrow of the government. You don't know anything about the country. I mean, not bad. I mean, he's got a point. I mean, that's almost uncomfortable to listen to. Like, even though I don't have any empathy that I can find in my body for Ted Cruz, but it's such a roasting. Yeah. It's kind of ironic.

It's like the metaphor I always use in these sort of situations. It's like the Iran-Iraq war. You don't know who to root for. And here it's like the Iran-Iraq war, but they're arguing about Iran. Exactly. Yeah. I will say, you know, people said this after the Iraq war. Like people didn't even know the difference between Sunnis and Shias, you know, to swerve

for a second. My favorite novel is The Names by Dondelillo. And there's a guy who makes a speech in there about how Americans learn about countries when we're in some like crisis with them and start clipping out recipes and memorizing the religion of the country. There's something to that, right? And Ted Cruz is that guy.

I think I'd say about Tucker, he's ideologically consistent and he's actually so dovish or whatever word you want to affix to it, isolationist, that it encompasses things that I agree with like that and things I disagree with, like not wanting to support Ukraine, right? And this is where you're gonna get to my, Bill Kristol adjacency,

but essentially I gave him credit for being ideologically consistent. He applies it totally across the board. The same logic that would lead him to not want to go to war in Iran leads him to not wanna even provide weapons to a country that's fighting for its survival against Russia, right? But that's a real wing of the Republican Party and it wasn't invented by Tucker or Donald

Trump, right? I mean, it goes way, way back. I mean, it's actually what the Republican Party used to be. And I think it's where it's going. I mean, it's the most potent part of the Republican Party of the base for sure. And I just, I think that Trump, there was some within the Republican base too, right? And so like Trump actually navigates it quite well, I think. I think that the base of the party like instinctually doesn't want to do foreign wars, doesn't care about these

people in other places. There's a little bit of a racism element and financial, like we shouldn't spend money. I don't care about the sand people, right? Like you hear all that when you talk to Republican voters, but, and also too, they want the US to be great and strong and tough and Hulk Hogan, right? And so like Trump navigates that balance a little bit better than Tucker, I think. But like that's kind of where it's going. It's a really important debate for the future of the Republican Party in a lot of ways because this debate has, you know, you could argue, like shaped major aspects of the last century,

right? You know, I mean, FDR had to kind of quash the isolationist to get Len Lee's pass, you know, and then we kind of veered from, like, who lost China Republicans, which would, you know, like find a home in the weekly standard later, right, to the kind of McCarthyite, paranoid, we're anti-communist, but we're focused within, we're focused on inside this country. To bury Goldwater hawkishness,

to business types who want to just like keep the lid on things abroad, but don't necessarily stir it up. I mean, we could keep this going, but the point is that where the Republican party lands on this, and Reagan, what he did is he could take the evangelicals and pull them into a coalition with like the hawks and obviously bring in the kind of business community or interests. And there's your modern Republican Party, right? And only George H.W. Bush found the Goldilocks temperature of the soup.

Yeah. Well, that's the thing. I mean, it was those three planks, right? Like that was so potent electorally, you know? But Trump managed to evict the hawks while expanding out enough from the other parts to have a winning coalition. Whether that's durable or not is hugely consequential. And by the way, it's remade my party. Like I'm probably less in the mainstream of my own party because I think my party's gotten

more hawkish under Trump because we've kind of welcomed in these exiles. It's interesting. I get my backup. People talk about this. I get my backup when it is said, like, oh, we went too far trying to appeal to Liz Cheney. And my response to that is always like, well, I don't know. Liz Cheney actually wanted, cared about winning and so volunteered her time. And so maybe if like the isolationist leftists like had spent more time

wanting to attack Trump and less time wanting to attack Kamala, maybe they would have been more visible in the campaign. I don't know. You know, it's like, I get a little annoyed by that, but like strategically, do you think that it has hurt the Democrats to kind of tack a little bit away from you towards this, whatever you want to call it, towards the more interventionist elements of the coalition? I think so. And I expect we disagree about that. But essentially... I actually don't know. I mean, I know what I wish that they would do policy-wise, but politically,

I think... Actually, my instinct is that it didn't do policy-wise, but politically, I think, I don't know that... Actually, my answer is that it didn't really matter at all, but I'm open to being wrong about that. I don't claim to know, but here's what I think is likely, which is that I want us to have a big tent, right? So I want Liz Cheney in the tent. That's the only way you can defeat authoritarianism anyway. The question is, how much do you kind of lean into it, right?

So you're like leading surrogate at the end. And I actually think that Democrats are often solving the wrong problem on national security. The argument I would make is that Democrats kind of got beaten really bad in 2002 and 2004 on this issue, and have been in a kind of permanent defensive crouch ever since. And we still think that it's like a big coup that we can like trot out like a Cheney Tim, like do you remember at the democratic convention when everybody thought the special guests on the last night was going to be like Beyonce? Yeah, it was Leon Panetta. And it turned out it was like Leon Panetta. It was a hawkish democratic secretary of defense.

And I think that misreads the electorate. I think the electorate actually doesn't want to see national security validation associated with like the war on terror era. I mean, I'll say this, like every candidate except Joe Biden since 2004 has run as an anti-war candidate. Like Barack Obama's entire campaign in 2008 was against Hillary Clinton having voted for the Iraq war. That's how he got elected president, right?

I was just talking to somebody yesterday. I was like, had Hillary voted against the Iraq war, probably Hillary wins the 08 primary. 100%. Like the whole universe is different from there. Maybe Trump is a Democratic president. Yeah, yeah. So, I kind of like that. Yeah, yeah. Anything could happen.

I certainly don't have a podcast. Yeah, no, I'm kidding. But as someone who's on the inside, there's no way Obama wins that without that Iraq war vote, right? Yeah. So, you have Obama twice and he's running against wars and he's willing to take heat for not getting into certain wars. Then you have Trump, Biden in this kind of bizarre election where I don't think he would have won without COVID. And he wasn't running as like a kind of war guy either, nor was he anti-war. The point is that the Democrats are worried about the wrong politics on these issues. They seem to be stuck in this permanent 2002 midterm election, you know? And

I wish they wouldn't do that. I wish that, like now, I don't understand why the Democrats aren't saying, hey, Donald Trump said he would end all three of these wars, you know, Ukraine, Gaza, Iran. They're all getting worse. And we should not go to war in Iran. Bibi was wrong to bomb Iran. It's right there. It's a 60-18 issue based on the Bugha pull I saw. And Democrats are still afraid to go there. And they think they don't want to cross Bibi, or they don't want to look weak, or maybe this will work out okay. And then they'll say we were wrong. You don't see any of that. One know, like one thing I see by Republicans is that they're not afraid to take positions, you know, in the same way the Democrats are on this stuff.

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that summer has to offer. Go to zbiotics.com slash the bulwark to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use the bulwark at checkout. Zbiotics is backed with 100% money back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash the bulwark and use the code the bulwark at checkout for 15% off. Tulsi, I just have to talk to you about Tulsi and then I'll get into some other Trump stuff, not foreign policy related.

There's a political article last night that's so delicious. There's this creepy video and I don't know if I put it on the podcast. I know me and Sam talked about it on YouTube. People can check out Tulsi did this creepy, like three minute long video about the specter of nuclear war. Yes. And I thought it was Russian propaganda, but it turns out maybe she was trying to do internal propaganda against the hawks within the administration.

I just don't know. Trump got pissed about it, apparently, according to the political report, started yelling at her. And then he got pissed again because a reporter asked him about her assessment, his Director of National Intelligence assessment that Iran's not close to a nuclear weapon, actually, during a gaggle. I wonder what you make of all that. intelligence assessment that Iran's not close to a nuclear weapon actually. Yeah. During a gaggle. I wonder what you make of all that.

Well first of all, that video, when I'm in like, you know, whatever gulag they're going to send us to, Tim, if I'm in a white padded room, I think they'll just be piping that video in and I'll be like huddled in the corner, like trying to hide from the sound of it because it's that weird and creepy. I just watched the Mauritanian, so I'm up to speed. Yeah, exactly. And so I shouldn't even laugh about it. I think she's simultaneously of the isolationist or dovish wing, but she's also just a very weird person. That video, I think,

was more eccentric because of its just strangeness. And also, it seemed like she just learned that Hiroshima happened or something, because she's describing Hiroshima as if. To like a kindergartener. It felt like it was like a PSA for a kindergartener. Exactly. And what we don't know behind the scenes, it can't see is just how weird is it

to have Tulsi in your tent versus how much is this. Now, what I will say that is relevant to the broader discussion is Tulsi is also like Tucker, a true believer in this stuff. So if Trump thought that Tulsi at DNI would just give him the information he wanted, well, that might be what's not happening. And I actually, as someone who's warned about Tulsi a lot, I was more concerned about her, the weirdness of her views and her giving Trump what he wanted on Russia. Yeah, right. You know, like, like the bad side that she, that she would spin up stuff on behalf of Russia rather than not give him what he wanted on Iran.

Exactly. So it didn't kind of occur to me to be like, well, actually, Tulsi, you know, really does believe this stuff. I've talked to Tulsi the way back when and, and she's just not going to give him what he wants on Iran. And by the way, this is not a new thing. I mean, the George W. Bush administration famously, and the Neocon listeners are already arguing with the podcast, but- They've turned it off by now. Yeah.

In 2007, remember that Bush administration came out with this national intelligence testament that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003, the effort to weaponize their nuclear program. And the Neocons went nuts then, saying that was the wrong assessment. weapons program in 2003, the effort to weaponize their nuclear program. And the neocons went nuts then saying that was the wrong assessment. But as far as I know, the US intelligence community has not changed its assessment since that NIE in 2007.

Yes, people should get the difference here. It's one thing to have a nuclear program to get fuel. It's another thing to kind of do the work to weaponize that fuel and put it on a warhead. And so Tulsi is not, she's just representing what has been the view of the US intelligence community since 2007. But I think what we're learning is unlike, you know, I have no doubt that Dan Bongino and Cash Patel are going to give Trump exactly the answers he wants to every question. I don't think Tulsi is and that might be part of what's bothering him.

I want to talk about some domestic stuff and our creeping authoritarianism here at home. The arrest in New York, where you grew up, you don't live there anymore, you're a west coast man. Where I am though, I'm in New York right now. This video of ICE arresting Brad Lander is running from, is a comptroller, it's running from mayor of New York. And it's like, there's a man in like an evil Spider-Man mask. Like you can't see any part of his face, like grabbing him and he's being pulled and manhandled and handcuffed and he's just, all he's asking for is a warrant to demonstrate that they can arrest this constituent, I guess, who had shown up to

ice court was not tucking the immigration police, our new federal immigration police. Obviously, this comes on the heels of what we saw at Padilla, et cetera. What's your threat level right now? What'd you make of that? It's really high. And I got to say, if I had to vote here, I'm kind of a Brad Lander. I love a lost cause progressive.

He might be your number one. I think he'd be my number one. That's fine. And I'm going to do the lost cause NeoLib. People ask me, I didn't say on the Zoran pod who I would put number one, it's Zellner Myrie. So we're both going to do our Lost Cause candidates. We can do a trade right now.

I'll put Brad too. Let's cross indoors. I forgot a rest and I like him. We can cross indoors. My threat level is very high. Look, I always think it's a useful exercise to step back and be like, if someone told you a few years ago that the Marines would be in the streets of Los Angeles and that plainclothes goons would be tackling democratic politicians and handcuffing them, we'd be like, what the fuck

is going on? That's crazy. The degree of normalization worries me because honestly, as someone who's looked at authoritarians in other countries, we often hold up Hungary as this scary place where we have an illiberal leader because he's run the playbook of consolidating corrupt power over huge chunks of society. They don't have plainclothes dudes wrestling opposition politicians on the ground, handcuffing them while deploying the Hungarian military in the streets of cities. Like, we're past them on the spectrum here, you know?

We're like past Hungary headed to Turkey, you know? And I think we kind of can't get our minds around that as Americans. And we still see these as like eccentric things that are happening. When they're clearly not eccentric, like this is a systematic effort to remake the use of violence in this country. So this is the point I made about Padilla. I was like I was like, in a different world, you could have made the case that this was just a couple of agents who got a little hot, didn't recognize them, acted inappropriately, and they'll be reprimanded or whatever.

Even Corey Lewandowski at the moment was like, guys, let's dial it back a little bit. That's the more positive spin of that situation. It's impossible to believe that spin in a little bit. Like that's the more positive spin of that situation. It's impossible to believe that spin in the context of everything else that's happening with the military, DHS, ICE, and these other arrests. Yes. And again, I also think that there's a sense that in some places, I mean, in the non-alarmist community, that this is temporary.

That well, Trump said he's going to deport a bunch of people and so it kind of looks bad, but it's someday the national guard will go home and these ICE guys will have hit their quotas for Stephen Miller. I don't see anything temporary about this. You know, once you kind of cross the Rubicon into like normalizing troops being deployed in the street for the political purposes of the president. Once you have the authority to just arrest whoever you want, and maybe deport them, maybe dishearass them, intimidate them, at least with

this administration, I don't see them like relinquishing that authority, you know, if anything, I see it creeping in further and further spaces. And, and again, that's we have to stop seeing these things as temporary and start being like, huh, like what if the National Guard doesn't go home? Like what if the ICE raids never stop? Like what if this is just a tool of Donald Trump's power that he's never, when has Donald Trump ever given up something that makes him more powerful?

I want to ask you what the political implications of all this and like how Democrats can fight it. But, but you saying that, I think there's a bigger conversation that should happen first. We were on cable news the other day together. You made a point that was kind of at the end of a comment that was sort of an aside and I was like, I have a follow-up on what Ben just said. You know, it was a fun to me or someone from my fucking bullshit or whatever. And you ended up by saying that you think there should be a real conversation about concerns

that they use the Insurrection Act or whatever to impact or cancel maybe, I don't remember the exact word you used, elections coming up in the midterms. What's your level of worry about that? Cause it was a rare moment where somebody said something and I was like, huh, I'm on the less alarmist side of that one and I'm curious why then went there.

I don't think it's likely at all. I think elections are the most complicated piece in some ways to mess with because they're administered by states and it's this kind of labyrinth of bureaucracy in a good way in this case. But the two things I'd say are one, if they were to do something to mess with either the midterms or the next election, it would be through the doorway of national security type authorities, whether under the Insurrection Act or under some other declaration of a national emergency, which they've gotten very comfortable declaring.

They've declared a national emergency at the border, and that's justified all this other stuff that they're currently doing. Because the scenario I'd give you, Tim, is that what if they allow the midterm elections to go forward? But then afterwards, after they lose, they say, well, there's mass fraud. And so we don't think that this new Congress should be seated. Dan Bongino and Cash Patel go out and say, yes, there's fraud and we're going to launch all these investigations of it. Mike Johnson doesn't have to necessarily seat the new Congress. And then the military is kind of in the streets quashing the protests. And then the protests of the election are the basis for declaring some national emergency.

Right? Some bulwark darkness here. That feels possible, if not plausible to me, you know, like, and again. Yeah, not 0%. I'm not saying maybe it doesn't feel 51% so that's going to happen, but it doesn't, it's not zero. It's an uncomfortably high percent. And the reason these protests have been so important is the more the use of the military against protest is normalized, the more possible the scenario I just said becomes. Because they deployed the military in LA where I lived because of protests that were not violent. And if that becomes normal, then all of a sudden by the

time they do that, you know, in a couple of years, if they do it, the frog will be dead in the water, you know, to use an off abused metaphor. Okay. That's gonna keep some people up at night with some night sweats. Let's assume that the zero, that the outcome doesn't come to pass, right?

We have relatively normal elections. Let's then within that construct talk about the democratic response to this. Yeah, yeah. That picture, I'm just, I'm stuck with that picture of Lander getting manhandled with the dude that you cannot even see his eyeballs. Like, you know, he's so masked, right? It's not like he's wearing a COVID mask and he's got the full, like, I'm robbing a bank mask on, you know?

Yeah. And I think that this could be something that the Democrats could get traction on and should and there's another class of folks out there In the strategy class were like, yeah Focus on the Medicaid cuts or whatever. This is a loser for Democrats I mean not not don't talk about it, but de-emphasize it. Where do you fall on that question? I fall on the like take this on and emphasize it I hate this idea when you see Democrats online being like, you know, Trump is distracting you. He's going to war to distract you from his tax bill

or something. No, no, Trump is just doing a bunch of different things that he cares about. We can do the same. Like, I don't believe that if everybody's only talking about, you know, tax giveaways to billionaires, that somehow we can't deliver that message. In fact, actually, I would argue that if all we do is robotically talk about the big, beautiful bill, we'll look political. We'll look like we're a bunch of political consultants who don't believe anything. I think there's genuine reasons to do what Brad Lander did. I think I said this on the same segment you were referring to earlier. I know in my familiarity with the Republican coalition, there is a genuine anti-government

black helicopter kind of crowd. Yeah, go after the don't tread on me crowd. Yes, go after those guys. You want to find a new way to have conversations with people that don't grab a party, haven't had a conversation with them well. This is big government on steroids. This is the black helicopters actually landing in your community, right? And so I think you can make a stand on principle. You want to reach the Joe Rogan, the Yvonne listener? Like there's a percentage of them,

I think, that are, there's a percentage of them that probably like the fucking masked man going after the libs they hate. But I think that I am pretty confident that there's also a percentage of them that are like, whoa, this is fucking, this is weird. I don't like this. I don't want agents coming to my door. I do drugs. I think that's right. I think that's right.

And I think that there's also people, and this is anecdotal so far, so I don't want to make too much of one anecdote or two anecdotes, but there are definitely people that did not think that deportations were going to be like the waitress in the local diner who's been there for 20 years or the kid on my kid's soccer team. They genuinely believed Trump that the deportations were going to be these violent criminals. I talked to Van Leithen about this last night. There's that boxer who's from SoCal, your adopted area, Ryan Garcia, who's a big Trumper, who's Mexican heritage, who has been speaking out.

And I think that, look, the border stuff, you can still be for a totally secured border. This is so evidently going beyond that. This has nothing to do with the border, you know? I want to also get your two cents on the assassinations in Minnesota, the assassination attempt, kind of the response from the right about that. I mean, there are just so many ways to go about it. Like, I'm curious your thoughts on the domestic terror side, but also this disinformation and these folks living in this alternate reality where they convince themselves that it's leftist and that might

justify more violence. I'd like to hear you cook on that for a couple of minutes. Yeah, man, this is the scariest stuff that's happening, right? I mean, this is when, you know, when you have political violence becoming normal, again, whether it's like the troops in the streets or whether it's a vigilante guy in Minnesota, you just don't know how you put that Pandora, you know, back in the box. And I'll be honest, like, I don't know how you put that Pandora back in the box. And I'll be honest, I don't know what to do about this because, okay, the national security guy in me is like, well, we'd be treating this like a radicalization problem if a Muslim did this.

We'd essentially have a task force to study online radicalization and set up some goons at the DHS to hunt over laptops and figure out what's happening. That's obviously not going to happen with the Trump administration. These people are so stuck in the cycle of their information that the United States Center probably believes the crazy shit that Mike Lee put out there. I guess what I'd say is the answer to me is not to kind of make fun of it online, which is what people sometimes do,

it's to take it deadly seriously and to just relentlessly try to communicate the truth of things. And the other thing I've learned about this, Tim, from dealing with Russian disinformation is the Russians were very well aware that first movers win the information war. And so my favorite anecdote of this was when that plane was shot down MH17 over Ukraine and during the Obama administration, and the Russians immediately put out all these conspiracy

theories. The Ukrainians shot it down, the Americans shot it down, like it was a crash when clearly their guys had shot this plane down. By the time the Dutch investigation was done, like two years later, they determined that, like anybody who searched online found just a flood of Russian information. We are too slow to go out and be like, hey, this guy was a Trump supporter, you know? This is an unpopular but important point. In the democracy space, there's a lot of people that's like, it's important for us to be extremely accurate and to get things right and to push back.

You know? And I'm not pushing for inaccuracy, but I kind of made a similar provocative point at one of these dumb panels that you do recently where I was like, I don't know, maybe our side needs people that are pushing out shit that is a little bit reckless immediately to combat it. And maybe that's wrong. I don't know. That's why I say I don't know, but I want to at least, let's surface this point

because while they're putting out this guy was a socialist, why can't Tim Walz or somebody like that be like, Hey, this guy, you know, whatever the best, you know, he posted all this Trump stuff or he, he voted for Trump or he was he gave this anti-gay speech in Africa. Yeah. Yeah. He gave this anti-gay anti-trans speech. I he gave this anti-gay, anti-trans speech. I mean, first of all, this guy is weirdly made in a laboratory for 2025 America, right?

Private security contractor slash evangelist hates trans people. He's posted West Bank, Gossic. Everything was in this guy's online footprint. But why not just beat Mike Lee to the punch here and be like, hey, we're still going to gather the facts. We're still going to put out the full information. And I know Pete Waller compromises his prosecution. Okay, there's complexity here. I acknowledge that. I do know that one of the reasons why we constantly lose, based on my experience with Russia, information wars, is it's speed wins, not truth or even volume or efficacy.

Yeah, the context I was doing this and now I remember was that plane crash. It was the Reagan plane crash when they immediately were out there saying like DEI was a black woman and that was the reason why. And I was like, why, you know, couldn't people on our side immediately go like Sean Duffy's fault. Look at it. He's only in there for three days and there's already a plane crash. We're running out of time.

So I don't want to belabor the point of the book too long. And we did a full hour on it at one of these conferences, which is on YouTube. I'll put it in the show notes. So people are intrigued by this little taster. They can go watch the whole thing. I really loved it, the book after the fall, because it was a lot about you grappling with broadly our American mistakes, which is encompassing the mistakes of the Obama era, right? And at the same time, looking at the threats around the world that are increasing

from China, Russia, all these little mini-Trumps everywhere and saying, God, for all of our flaws that we should address, what comes after us seems bad in every potential alternative. And that was kind of the Bill Kristolish part of it on this. And so, and then you also kind of talk to these people fighting resistance. So anyway, give people just a quick summary of that and what the lessons are. I looked at how we got here with authoritarianism in, you know, Hungary, Russia, China, the US, through the eyes of people who are opponents to authoritarianism. Hungarian opposition, actually actually Alexei Navalny

was kind of my character in Russia, the Hong Kong protest movement. And again, this is, I think, where the bulwark audience, even the Bill Kristol bulwark audience, I believe in liberal democracy. You might say liberal, I mean, the small L liberal democracy. I believe in open societies.

I believe that a world order in Russia's image or China's image would be worse than the deeply flawed world order of the United States the last 80 years, right? It's an important point actually, because there are people that don't agree with that on the left. I actually feel like it's been unraveling, obviously, and it's getting worse out there as it unravels, right? And actually some of my criticism of what's happened in Gaza, I don't think Gaza could happen like 10 years ago, you know? Part of that is actually the unraveling of the rules-based order, you know?

And I can even make a left-wing argument for some of these things. I think the lessons that I take from that book are ultimately, and this is actually where I made, I have some overlap and some difference, I think, with the crystal wing of the podcast listenership. The overlap is, I truly believe that what we do at home is the most important thing to reverberate around the world, you know. And actually, this is why in the civil rights movement, some of the biggest allies of the civil rights movement were people who were like,

hey, if we wanna win the Cold War, we gotta stop being fucking hypocrites here in the United States, you know? That was actually like a powerful argument that people brought to bear for legislative change and legal changes in this country. If you talk to Alexei Navalny, if you talk to Hungarian opposition,

you've talked to these Hong Kong protesters. Sure, they may have wanted certain things from US foreign policy, but I remember Navalny just telling me like, I don't want your sanctions. I want your example. Because I've been making an argument my whole life that a democratic society produces leaders who aren't corrupt and put the interests of the people first. And fucking Trump gives a taxi driver in Moscow the immediate rebuttal, which is basically what Putin's been saying.

Putin doesn't say his system is perfect. He just says, well, everybody's system is the same. So you might as well have a strong man who hates kind of the same people that you do. And so the first lesson is that who we are is in how we organize our own society and democracy is the most important influence we can have in winning competitions abroad, winning the Cold War or winning the next Cold War or whatever we want to call it. And the other thing I take away that's hopeful, because there's a lot of dark stuff I can

take away about technology and how it's transformed the landscape. Yeah, there's plenty of darkness. Obviously, I wouldn't have liked the book if there was no darkness. Yeah, it's super dark, so I'm just trying to give positive lessons. There's a lot of solidarity out there. I believe there are more of us, us being like people who want that kind of world than them being the kind of strong men in the creeps.

But we're not wired in with each other enough. Like, you know, Steve Bannon, these guys have built like an actual community of solidarity across far right movements. And some other people have built a an actual community of solidarity across far right movements. And some other people have built solidarity across autocratic leaders, you know, and we tend to argue with each other, you know, instead of just like charging up the hill, you know, and I appeal to the people that

piss maybe on this podcast, like if you spend time being mad about that, we have no shot. And, you know, and I apply that to myself, too, like I have to accept allies, you know, because without them, you're gonna get being mad about that, we have no shot. And I apply that to myself too. I have to accept allies, because without them, you're going to get crushed, because that's what they're counting on, is dividing their opposition. The other thing I took from it that was positive, so we can leave it there, and that informs my thinking on what we need to do now, is all of the heroes that you were talking to who are fighting Orban and Putin and Xi,

at least maybe in your book, there was very little conversation about like, is our advocacy going to pull well with the median person in Hong Kong? Yes, yes. You know, like that was not it. No, it's like in the face of authoritarian threat, like resistance and opposition for the sake of it is good because that is needed to stop it. And what you just said, like bringing in allies from across the spectrum is good. And it's not worth nitpicking over. And then we can figure out the rest when we have a stable democracy about what the best

TV ad is to run in the Columbus market. And I like that mindset. I think that's an important mindset that people lose here. Yeah, it is both righteous and right to say that what happened to Brad Lander is wrong and not worry about whether it's distracting us from the big, beautiful bill messaging. All right, final thing, you gotta go.

As I said, the final segment, I do this with Tommy. Famously, George W. Bush was quizzed by a local TV reporter about world leaders, and he did not answer the questions correctly, and you and your was quizzed by a local TV reporter about world leaders, and he did not answer the questions correctly, and you and your elk mocked him about it for years. And so you will receive a world leader quiz now to end the podcast. Are you ready, Ben Rose?

Ben Rose Oh, shit, I didn't know this was coming. Yes, I'm ready. Pete Slauson There we go. The leader of Pakistan. Ben Rose Well, Imran Khan is in jail. The actual leadership of Pakistan is the chief of staff of the Army, and I don't know his name, actually, right now. I don't. But that's the actual power of Pakistan. Okay. Zardari.

Well, yeah, Zardari is the Prime Minister, you know, he's the duly elected leader. I guess the point I'm making is that I don't think that, and Zardari is a deeply strange guy who's been around forever, but the actual leadership of the country to me is the military and the chief of staff of the army, because it's essentially a military dictatorship of the civilian front. And I don't know the name of the chief of staff of the army. Pete Slauson A nuanced answer. We're gonna let you off the hook. This one is gonna be tougher. It gets easier from here. The leader of the Chechen Republic. That was another one W did not know. Raskin Kadyrov, right?

Oh, boom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Kadyrov is like Putin's like biggest flunky, has a creepy beard, was fighting with mercenaries in Ukraine, is lavishly corrupt, and may have carried out the assassination of Boris Nemtsov because it was five Chechens. And so sometimes Putin does his dirty work through Kadyrov. One and a half for two. You're beating Tommy right now. I'm going to have a European trip this summer. Two of the countries I'm going to, the leaders are easy. The third is maybe easy for you. We'll see. The Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Great name. Shit. Because Mark Rutte is no longer the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

That's tough. Let's see. He was elected July 2024. He has a name that is also a name similar to a male body part. I guess where I'll go for my half is that he was like dependent on Gert Wilders, the far right lunatic, to sustain his coalition and Gert Wilder's, the far right lunatic to sustain his coalition and Gert Wilder's just pulled out, but I don't remember this person's name. And he pulled out in favor of Dick Shoof. Is that his name? That works, Dick Shoof. I should know that because that's such a good name.

Okay, now you know, that's great. Final question, the demographic makeup of Iran. Ted Cruz was unable to answer. I don't know it on a percentile basis. It is certainly majority Persian. There's a significant Kurdish minority. There's a Bolukhi minority as well. Okay, Bolukhi 2%, Kurdish 9%. There's actually the second minority is Azerbaijan. How about that? Okay. The second most like Azerbaijan. The reason that? Is that what you most like about Azerbaijan?

The reason that I'd keep an eye on the Kurdish and Bolukhi points is that they have separatist movements for good reason because they've been treated like shit. And so in a regime change scenario, I would watch that space, Bolukhi separatist and Kurdish separatists. The Azeris don't, I think, have the same beef with the government, but yeah. Running circles around Vitor on the quiz effort. I didn't even, yeah I didn't know this segment was coming. Okay well good, I wasn't gonna warn you.

I'm embarrassed about it. It's important to get you, George W. Bush didn't know it was coming either. Bend roads, I wanted to do China stuff, there's so much stuff to talk about so you're gonna have to come back. I love it, I love to come back. Alright brother, we'll see you soon. Everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullwerd Podcast. See you all then. Peace. Like it rains autumn, yeah I hope it will rain on you, well I hope Monday too As life gets longer and awful,

Feel softer when it feels pretty soft to me And if it takes shit to make this Then I feel pretty blissfully Don't, don't, don't wet our boy You shut up your mouth and look where it got you My mouth runs on two Shots from both sides We've got the lamp, but they've rips us open, yeah, hope it's plenty on you I hold mine with two We are fixed right where we are The Board Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.