The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: A Madman's Way of War
Episode Date: March 2, 2026Trump cannot enunciate a clear reason for why he's chosen to go to war against Iran, and the administration is not even bothering to coordinate a message that clarifies its objective. While the milit...ary campaign appears aimed at regime change, Hegseth denies it is. And instead of speaking directly to Americans, POTUS himself has taken on a Jekyll and Hyde approach to his rationales in a series of private interviews: he's waffled between "freedom," to installing a caretaker regime à la Venezuela, to maybe even revenge. In any event, the United States seems like it's being dog-walked by the Israelis and the Saudis, and the corrupt deals between the Trump family and Gulf Arab states may be a factor. Plus, anti-interventionist JD is in the cuck chair, and a preview of Tuesday's Senate primary in Texas.Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.show notes Tim and Sarah on the administration's war messaging 'Bulwark on Sunday' with Bill, Tim, and Mark Hertling Tickets for our LIVE show in Austin on March 19: TheBulwark.com/Events.
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Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast.
I'm your host Tim Miller.
It is Monday, so we're back with Editor at Large Bill Crystal, author of the Morning
Shots newsletter.
A lot's happened since Friday's podcast with Amanda Carpenter, which shows.
be a reminder to you all to, you know, do you checking out the bulwark takes feed on the weekends
as news happens because we're at war with Iran now. And Bill, I just want to kind of start with a
state of play for people, if that's okay with you. You can edit or amend any of my assessment.
I will be happy to. And also, you and JVL and Sarah and Mark Kirtling did an excellent early Saturday,
with Saturday morning at nine, kind of first snapshot of where things were. And then you and I and
Mark Hurtling did something at noon yesterday, Sunday.
And I've got to say both of them were, I thought, informative.
And luckily, General Hurtling's there so the rest of us can talk and he can actually
explain and analyze.
But no, I think both our analysis of what was happening on the ground and to you're at
home for that matter domestically, which you particularly focused on yesterday,
was good.
Look, it's a very impressive military operation.
We took out a huge number of Farran assets and working with Israel.
Very close collaboration with Israel.
I may be a little surprised by that.
Usually there's some attempt to maintain distance.
It seems like it was a genuinely, you know, coordinated effort,
wiped out a large percentage of the Iranian leadership.
And really a nationwide campaign against military assets,
way beyond degrading, you know, key nodes of the nuclear program
or taking out some missile sites.
You know, that was what happened last summer in June.
This was a real attempt to go after the regime
in many aspects, I'd say.
And if you look at this, just a map of the places we've hit, some of them were not nuclear,
many, most of them were not nuclear, some of them were ballistic missile sites.
There were other forms of regime places the regime had assets and weapons and coordinating
structures.
So the military campaign is consistent with regime change as a goal.
That's clearly has been Israel's goal.
It's the goal of Trump articulated late Friday night, early Saturday morning in his little
late-minute address. He's wavered back and forth on that goal since, obviously. In terms of the
military effort, finally, it's gone well, but, you know, wars are wars, right? So we've lost
four soldiers, sadly, and some planes and others, you know, Iran is not disabled. Let me just
give a quick rundown on that. So before we get to what exactly the goal is here, you know, as you
mentioned, like a total annihilation, decapitation of Iranian leadership. I told Khomeini, dead,
Ahmadinejad was not involved in this government, but was, I think, kind of plotting a more radical coup type government.
He's also dead among familiar names to listeners.
Total domination of Iranian airspace.
Obviously, Israel has a ton of assets inside Iranian military leadership.
So impressive in that sense.
But, you know, as wars go, you know, it's not just us bombing them.
They're four American soldiers dead at the time of this taping.
We don't know the details on that yet.
Those are initially, they announced three had died, and another one added this morning.
Three U.S. F-15 strike eagles went down in Kuwait in a friendly fire incident.
The pilot survived there.
The headquarters to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain's been hit.
U.S. embassy has been attacked in Pakistan, Iraq, Kuwait.
There was a mass shooting in Austin that may be in response to this.
The shooter was, you know, wearing sweatshirts at Ala.
and I think a shirt underneath that had the Iranian flag on it.
Among the actions that we took, in addition to all the things you laid out, Bill,
there was a tragic bombing of a girls' school in southern Iran.
Many dead there.
Just really quick, a couple of the things geopolitically, Hezbollah has entered the war,
bombing Israel from inside Lebanon.
Israel responded.
Lebanese leadership's now trying to expel Hezbollah.
So there's kind of a second engagement there.
Trump to Tapper this morning, Jake Tapper, he said,
we haven't even started hitting them hard.
The big one is coming soon.
And then Pete Higgsuff and Dan Kane at a press conference this morning.
We are going to about get into.
So that seems to be the state of affairs.
And as you kind of led us there, I think the most important question remaining here is what exactly is the goal of what we're doing?
Like what is the objective?
Was it safety?
Safety for us?
Safety for Israel.
Long-term safety, short-term safety.
Is it regime change?
Human rights in Iran?
Trump's legacy.
Payback for them trying to assassinate Trump.
Nuclear weapons only.
it's not really clear. And interestingly this morning, the Daily Caller was originally Tucker Carlson's
outlet, a very pro-Trump outlet. They got the second question to Pete Higgseth and Dan Kane,
because the Pentagon Press Corps has been totally eviscerated. We don't have any real journalists.
But I guess kudos to Reagan Reese, the Daily Caller reporter, who asked the question, what are our objectives?
I want to play you Pete Higgs' answer for that.
The president said yesterday in his video message that we will leave Iran when we complete
all of our objectives. What are our objectives? And can you share more information on how the soldiers
who were killed were killed? Well, I laid out the objectives, as did the chairman. They're completely
nested. I mean, Iran has an ability to project power against us and our allies in a ways that we can't
we can't tolerate. So whether that's ballistic missiles and drones, so offensive capabilities,
effectively their Navy, which would attempt to set other terms and impose different costs,
drone capabilities, which we laid out there.
And ultimately, though, this tying it back to Midnight Hammer,
the president has been willing to make a deal.
You can't have a nuclear bomb.
Radical Islamists can't have a nuclear bomb that they wield against the world.
He gave them every single opportunity.
Then we precisely took it away.
And even then, after that, they didn't have that.
They didn't come to the table with a willingness to give it away.
So ultimately, those nuclear ambitions, which never ceased,
are something that had to be addressed as well.
So that's a discrete sense of what's being addressed here
to ensure that they can't use that conventional umbrella
to continue a pursuit of nuclear ambitions.
Didn't seem to clear a lot up for me.
Iran has an ability to project power in a way we can't tolerate.
That's pretty amorphous.
He mentioned their Navy and drone capabilities.
A lot of countries have that.
Their nuclear ambitions.
And he ends saying this is a discrete sense
of what's being addressed here.
Did you feel like you got a sense of what's being addressed here?
Before I address that, one photo on your excellent update on the state of the war,
I would say the one thing that's been a little striking to some friends of mine who follow this stuff
with more expertise than I do is we have not decimated Iran's counter-strike capability
in the sense that they're lobbying lots of missiles and drones at various allies,
at our own bases, and at the UAE and many of the Arab nations nearby.
So I hope they're all decimated in another day or two, but it may not be.
And that does raise the specter of a wider war, obviously.
I thought the heckset press conference this morning,
it was really telling refusal to be clear about
to even entertain the questions, really, about the goals.
But to the degree he entertained them,
he was hard over on no regime change,
no long-term strategy, frankly.
Just we're there to beat them up so badly.
They don't think about messing with us again, I guess.
I don't think they were messing with us a heck of a lot,
honestly, in the last few years, you know.
And they were pretty badly beat up in June.
And so there was no imminent threat from Iran.
There wasn't even much of a medium threat from Iran at this point.
Unless you're Israel again.
Yeah, no, if you're Israel's a difference in.
Even there, incidentally, they had done an awful lot of damage.
So there was a plausibly coherent regime change strategy.
Still shouldn't have been done without congressional authorization,
million problems with it, but it was plausible.
I actually, the hexat thing really hit me
because I think he's sort of totally undercut that.
And I don't really see what the coherent strategy is or the coherent rationale for the war
or the defensible rationale for the war, and I hate to say this,
as someone who supports an internationalist and even sometimes interventionist of foreign policy
and the use of force were necessary.
What are our servicemen and women doing over there?
I mean, really, I don't mean that in a silly way.
I mean, I honestly feel this personally.
What would you tell someone whose son or daughter or a spouse was serving over there?
What national interest or American values are they serving?
Yeah.
Well, the families of the four that have died so far.
What are you talking about?
for what? Like in the literal sense, again, not in kind of a like rhetorical, you know, political
code pink sense. Like what is the literal reason why they are there? The administration can't
enunciate it and it changes minute by minute. So I just want to go through a couple of the things
you mentioned on the point of this being freedom in Iran, freedom for the Iranian people or regime
change in Iran brings stability to the regime. Initially Saturday morning, Trump told the Washington Post
that was the goal. I mean, he sounded like
1999 Bill Crystal.
Freedom in the Middle East was important.
That's what Trump said in Saturday morning.
Offers a totally different story to the Atlantic.
He talked to Michael Shearer.
Trump said he's planning to start talks with the new Iranian regime,
whoever that is.
And he waffles on whether he'd provide support for a populist uprising.
Says you'd have to see how it turns out.
Then on the regime change front,
he told the New York Times over the weekend,
we had three very good choices for who will take over Iran.
I have some bad news on that.
Late last night, he told John Carl that the candidates that they had to take over Iran were killed in the initial attack.
Trump, the attack was so successful, it knocked out most of the candidates.
It's not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they're all dead.
Second or third place is dead.
Then Hanks up this morning, to your point, says we're not doing nation-building quagmire's,
no democracy-building exercise.
So, I don't know.
I mean, Trump and other people have said that they want, you know, regime change or that they want, you know, freedom for the people of Iran.
But simultaneously, they don't seem to have any idea under what auspices that would come.
And minute by minute, they're kind of going back and forth on whether they're even interested in that or being involved in that.
Yeah, one point on the media strategy, you and Sarah discussed this very well.
Yesterday also on a videotape.
I mean, Trump's good at, like, giving random interviews to a zillion different reporters.
and advancing his culture war, you know, agenda,
whatever it is at a particular day,
this is a real war.
And the President of the United States
should not be randomly calling up reporters,
having three or five or six-minute conversations with them,
giving differing and confusing rationales for the war
and then sort of signing off without,
with no clarification, no apparent coordination
within the administration about what they really want to be saying today,
what they want to tell the American public,
who do deserve some clarity about this,
the whole public, and particularly, of course,
those whose loved ones are serving over there, but everyone deserves clarity and our allies
and people around the world. It's so irresponsible. I mean, this is like a little thing in the
big scheme of things, but it is worth noting, I think, as you and Sarah did. I mean, just,
it's not just silly, but it's, it's damaging, right? I mean, yeah. I mean, to my point,
like, there's been no presidential address, and it's totally insane. Like, on Tuesday, three days
before they started the war, it was the biggest address that a president gives every year at the
State of the Union. I gave one paragraph on this, then has not given an Oval Office address
since then, has like randomly called up John Carl and Jake Tapper. That is crazy. It's the biggest
military operation that we've been involved in in a generation. The president should be telling
people what the point is. And he's boasting to Tapper, the big one's really coming. I don't know what
that means. But if you accept hex-saccom to the goals of the war, it could end now, basically. I don't
think there's any danger of Iran doing anything to us. They'll take them so long to recover from
the decapitation of their leadership and the decimation of so many of their military assets.
Why are we continuing to fight? Now, I think there are reasons if you really want to try to help
get a better regime in place there. There may be reasons I don't know about in terms of some
assets they still have that we haven't hit yet, but we could do that pretty quickly at this point.
And so the whole thing is, is, yeah, incoherent. This might turn out, okay, it might. Wars are
unpredictable. You can get lucky. The whole regime could collapse, even though we don't want, we're
not even trying to make it collapse. It could collapse.
Right. Anything could turn like, okay. Like, look at what happened in Syria. We don't know if long-term
Syria turns out okay. But, you know, the Turkish rebels weren't trying to even really take
out Assad. Like all of a sudden, like the House of Card is just collapsed. Assad's gone. It's
replaced with this old Al-Qaeda guy. You know, is he going to be better than Assad?
Maybe, you know, so like... Yeah, probably. Yeah. So, yeah, I agree. I don't want to preclude that.
But I'd say to the degree that we are talking about a serious, as you said, a serious war.
by far the largest of Trump's presidency.
No congressional authorization, which by itself makes it much more of a gamble and it's Trump's own risk-taking.
And then no precise goal, very hard to defend.
I really do now believe that.
Here's Pete Hex out this morning in case this clears it up for you.
This is not a regime-change war, but the regime did change.
I don't know how we would splice that.
Why is the Secretary of Defense saying that?
I mean, he's supposed to be talking about the military side of it.
presumably there is a Secretary of State who might have a few views on what the broader, you know,
conception of the war is.
I see nothing to the president.
The vice president has gone into hiding, I guess.
So I don't know.
The whole thing is.
And he had Dan Kane next to him who was doing the military update, which was useful.
But again, then they took 13 minutes of questions.
Given the scale and scope of this operation, I'm not nearly up to, you know, what would be called for as far as responsiveness to a free people who want to know what's happening.
There's literally a January 6th insurrectionist that was in the room today.
Brandon Strach, I don't know if you got a question.
Some other these buffoonish kind of state media organizations that were asking them like,
how did it make you feel to kill Comanius?
And Kane was really being just like brass tacks about like what has happened.
It was basically all he did.
And then you have Heng Seth up there like doing a Saturday night live performance of a
Department of Defense Secretary attacking media outlets, calling people stupid, you know,
lethality. It's like, it's crazy. Just one more thing on the regime changes. I'll kind of get
through a couple of these other plausible explanations for what they're trying to do. Maybe Trump
was revealing something to the New York Times and Michael Scher. Maybe Trump really did want
this to be a Venezuela type thing where you bring in the Iranian Delsi Rodriguez. And then
we're kind of the junior partner, at least, in some of the military operations. And Israel is out
there with a little different objective and they're taken out people left and right. And I think
that Israel might be okay with a period of uncertainty and like regime collapse. And that could be a sign
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Other potential theories I want to put forth for what the real mission is here.
Revenge.
Trump to Jonathan Carl last night.
I got him before he got me on the Ayatollah.
They tried twice.
Well, I got him first.
So maybe that's all this is.
Maybe it's just Trump wanted revenge against Iran.
On the threat scale.
Scott Jennings.
of CNN had said that there was an immediate imminent threat coming, that he had friends inside
the administration, that we had to act because there could have been a, quote, mass casualty
event. That turns out to be wrong. DoD briefers did go to Congress over the weekend,
and they said that Iran was not planning to strike the U.S. forces or bases in the Middle East
unless Israel attacked Iran first. Long-term threat, Hegseth today saying that
Iran was building powerful missiles and drones that could help with their nuclear umbrella.
In that initial clip I put at the top, I guess that's what he's trying to say.
I guess that's the safety and security case that he's making.
Yeah, I mean, the missiles are a danger to the region.
Certainly, Israel, I don't think many people think they're much of a danger to us here.
I guess they're a danger to our troops in the region.
But Iran was being pretty well deterred from attacking U.S. troops, right?
I mean, there's a reason they presumably haven't done it much in the last few years,
especially in the last six, eight months, I mean, we could clobber them if they do that.
And so there was no need to go in.
Again, it's such a horrible regime.
I know so many people have been involved, honestly, in Iranian dissident circles, Iranians
who've left there, friends and family have suffered.
I was moved by all the celebrations in the streets of Tehran Saturday and Sunday.
I so much want to believe that this may have been the right thing to do and could work out.
but I've got to say I'm I found
with Trump's you know
ridiculous series of interviews but they were
ridiculous but they all tended wouldn't you say
in the direction in scaling back
the hope of freedom I mean the first one as you said
was a Saturday morning perhaps I think with
the post Washington Post Saturday midday
and that was a little more yeah freedom
and then by Sunday it's all just you know
is personal revenge and and
I want to work it out with the IRGC
maybe they can cut a deal with some of the other people
we have a list of three people we want to put in
charges you said but
a couple of now, they're all dead. I mean, it's so demoralizing, really, the idea that we've,
we moved unbelievable number of assets there. American servicemen and women are at risk,
four have died. I mean, others are wounded and others are now going into combat, returning to
combat for more missions. It's so demoralizing that we don't have a serious objective.
Or, and essentially, it doesn't have to, you could have a much more limited objective,
and that could be serious, but that would then imply a more limited war plan. And there's no evidence
Mark currently is by at this point that the actual planning, which is very impressive, is linked up to any sense of a broader strategic objective.
Yeah. And the supporters are trying to have it all the ways. You know, I mean, to your point about, like, how I want freedom for the Iranian people. I was also moved by some of the images. Like, last night, our friend of Congress, Nancy Mace posts, like, if you're angry that Iranian women may finally be free, you need to seriously examine your values and yourself. That's like, is that what we're doing? Like, is the effort here?
to free Iranian women, you know, because I don't know, like, you know, I would not have been
totally hostile to that mission if there was a plan and there were allies and we had a competent
people in charge and the case was made to Congress and the American people, right?
That's not an illegitimate thing to hope for. But like, the supporters of this are just trying
to backfill any possible rationale they can. And, you know, some of them are talking as if
you know, this is a part of the freedom agenda, and like others are talking completely differently.
And the president is saying different things at different seconds.
So, anyway, one other thing that they have foot forth, according to the Atlantic,
Trump told confidants that he believes his legacy could be defined by his overthrow of the regimes in Venezuela, Iran, and potentially Cuba.
I think that there's a madman Trump element to this, too.
And I think a, don't you think, obviously a huge being high in your own supply sort of situation in terms of his personal ability to run these things of the U.S. military's ability, which is very great. Don't get me wrong. But it's not infinite and not, you know, can't do everything everywhere. There will be casualties and setbacks too. There's a kind of megalomania now, I think. It's very dangerous, actually.
We're saying like the hot guy on the craps table. Yeah. It's like this Venezuela thing worked.
Yeah.
Let's keep pressing.
Not really a way to run a country.
We hear a lot from folks in the left and people opposed to Trump
is that everything we just talked about is all just kind of window dressing on the more true rationale,
which is advancing the domestic authoritarianism agenda.
Tim Snyder, you know, for one example, basically saying that the case that Trump wants us to rally to a war
because it turns everyone who's opposed the war into a traitor
and that also, you know, maybe provides rationale for putting certain conditions
or limits on the midterm elections.
This I'll quote of Trump, he's kind of joking with Zelensky, but, you know,
a lot of times Trump's jokes have a tinge of truth to them where, you know, back in the Oval Office
where he's like, oh, you cancel the elections during a war.
Maybe that's something I should look into.
You know, and then you have kind of the Epstein distraction sub-bullet to that.
I don't really think that's what's happening.
but I think we should at least chew it over.
Yeah, and he did say something about the elections,
Iran messing with the 2020 and 2020-2020-24 elections Friday, maybe that was.
Yeah, that's good.
Yes, yes, yes.
He posted on truth social about how Iran was, you know,
trying to oppose him in the 2020 election,
and that was part of the steel.
And the excuse of foreign interference or dealing with foreign interference
is, I think, one of the obvious excuses they could try to use for federal intervention
or partial takeover parts of the 2026 and 2028 elections.
So I don't think we're going to war for those reasons.
Is Tim's not a right, though, that authoritarian governments,
once you succeed in bullying at home and some bullying abroad,
you try to do more bullying abroad, maybe you think it rallies people to you.
It's sort of mixed up in your own.
I'm not sure the distinction, almost the domestic and foreign policy at some point
almost exists in his mind.
It's all about him being on top of everything,
you know, in charge of bullying everyone, right?
And showing he's on top.
But if he's on top abroad, he thinks he'll remain on top at home
and get away with doing things on the election.
or maybe just people will be so impressed, they'll vote for it.
But yeah, I tend to discount the kind of more, you know,
it's distraction from the Epstein-Files thing.
I hadn't really focused on the remark till you read it about the personal,
you know, how many wanted to get me.
And so I've got him.
It wasn't wanted to kill the American president or what it's,
or I there, you know, or the U.S. had to make clear this is unacceptable.
It's all personal, right?
Yeah.
He wanted to get me.
I got him.
He got got.
That is much more.
more in my mental model of Trump's megalomania and how he decides things than, you know,
some of the more four-dimensional chess theories of like what nefarious activities he has in mind.
I don't mean to say that, of course, we'd like to talk about other things besides Epstein.
And of course, if there are ways for them to metal and the midterbs, they'd like to do it.
I just think that the other explanations for what got him to this point make more sense to me.
And to that point, let's talk about the geopolitics because I think this is huge.
It seems to me that he was pushed into this in a big way by BB and MBS.
I mean, Bibi said yesterday, times the flat circle, said sometimes this weekend that, you know, bluntly, like that was happy that the Americans are here to do this with us, that this has been something we need to do for 40 years.
Like, Bibi is not really hiding the ball on that, like on what his objective is here.
And there was reporting that, you know, a lot of this started back on one of his visits to the lighthouse in December where they're talking about this and talking about how degraded Iran is and, you know, how, you know, how competent Israel is that like this is a moment to go after a weakened regime.
Other reporting that NBS, I guess, was calling Trump last week saying he's for this, pushing him for this.
There's, of course, a Saudi Iranian Shia Sunni, you know, kind of proxy.
happening for hegemony in the Middle East. So what do you make of that part of this story?
As you say, I don't think Netanyahu's made a bunch of a secret about his desire to deal more
comprehensively with the Iran threat than he's done at the best. He's been prime minister a long,
long, long, long time and has never been able to felt he could, I suppose, deal with Iran
and the way he hoped and maybe both the military capabilities and the stuff they did to Hezbollah,
which took away that threat mostly, you know, after October 7th, and then getting a American
president who's willing to take the third of our fleet and move them all to the region and use up
an awful lot of munitions. He thought, okay, this is his moment. So I think that's quite possible.
As you say, he's not really, he's candid about it. Would Israel have done it if the U.S.
hadn't moved all those ships there? I don't know, honestly, that would be a interesting quote.
Maybe they've done a more limited thing. But obviously, it's Trump's decision. But I think,
get back to your earlier point, I mean, somehow Venezuela was very important, right? He did that one day
in June, in Iran, at the end of 20.
12 days of Israeli pounding of Iran, and that went okay. Then he was, he talked about Greenland.
Nothing came of that so far, at least, Panama. But Venezuela, they gave him a good plan and he did the
special operations thing. I don't know that Venezuela is that much better off, honestly, now that it was
two months ago. And I don't know that it's going to be much better off four months from now.
And I don't know a lot of oil is going to come out of there. And I don't know a lot more freedom's
going to be there. But whatever, it was a victory. I mean, and then that went to his head. And I do
think he now looks at the world and where can I move all the U.S. troops.
and beat up someone.
And in this case, it's a regime that really is awful.
So people like me want to at least be instinctively for it.
And Venezuela is very bad, too, actually.
But there are actual tradeoffs here, right,
in terms of we haven't done anything to help Ukraine,
which is actually fighting in Europe against an awful brutal invasion.
Well, it's because he doesn't want to fight a great power.
Right.
So that's a key point.
Yeah, that's right.
I think that's key.
In China, God knows, all the China hawks in the administration,
their whole line about the Middle East,
they hated people like me who thought the Middle East.
least was important because it's all a diversion. It's all ridiculous. We need to have all our
forces ready to fight China. Now all of our forces are busy fighting Iran, which is sort of an
ally, sort of of China and of Russia. So it weakens Russia a little bit probably, which is good for
Ukraine. But also maybe distracts us and resources that could be given to fighting Russia, honestly.
So yeah, so maybe it helps Russia a little bit, actually. It doesn't weaken Russia.
No, it helps in terms of, I think, yeah, so much we're using things we can't help Ukraine.
I mean, we're going to move a lot of troops around and use a lot of air power and stuff.
Maybe we should use some of it to help Ukraine directly, honestly.
I mean, they were invaded by Russia.
Iran is a very horrible regime.
And what they did at home over the last two months is really terrible.
And for me, would be a ground for kind of intervention just because of their domestic slaughter of their opponents.
But if you are on a more strict Pete Hegsef, America First, J.D. Vance, you only get to deal with countries when they cross borders.
If then, you can't deal with anything domestically.
isn't Russia the example of this?
Iran hasn't invaded anyone very recently, you know.
Yeah, also, and if you're talking about, you know, defending democracy and freedom,
it's like, well, there's a free Ukrainian government that we could help, right?
And it's still not even clear who those people would be in Iran.
You know, and Pompeo, and Lincoln is pushing M.EK, which, like, has more support in Roslin than it does
in Iran as best I can tell.
And it's like, okay, I'm for it.
But what's the plan?
And, like, Ukraine, there's a clear plan.
you could move this type of assets there and have actually helped them.
There's one more item on this, like, the geopolitics and the incentive structures in the Middle East.
This also ties directly to the corruption story in America, right?
It's like, how can you disentangle it?
Is the fact that Saudi, you know, put in a billion dollars to Trump's son-in-law?
Did that give them more sway here?
You have to say, maybe, right?
Is the fact that Qatar is giving Trump a plane and the UAE and Qatar investing in these media,
companies that Trump is, you know, encouraging to be taken over by allies in America. Is that
part of it? Is the fact that the UAE is in a crypto deal with Trump? Is that part of it? I mean,
Trump is like mobbed up from a business standpoint with Saudi UAE in Qatar in a major way.
And, you know, obviously, Bibi has big influence with him. We have the acute story of like the war,
what's happening in the war and that crisis. But it's, I think it's an interesting subplot.
But like, it seems like we're being walked around the dog track by Arab and Israeli interests, actually, right now.
Yeah, and by Trump's own wish to bully people he can get away with bullying and shying away from confronting Russia and China, the two great powers.
Which, incidentally, as Mark General Hurtling pointed out in our conversation Saturday and Sunday with him, in the actual defense strategy, this administration produced just two or three months ago.
It's all about China and not about the Middle East.
kind of if they're shunning the Middle East a little bit.
So if Iran was such a threat, when did it suddenly become such a threat?
I mean, again, I don't want to be pedantic.
I mean, who cares if they mentioned it in a strategy?
Maybe there are things would have changed and there are reasons you've got to do what you've got to do militarily.
I mean, they're not a threat to us, right?
Like, it's just, it's not even worth, like, you know, giving them any sort of credence on that.
And throwing your weight around all over the world, if it's against a noxious regime,
obviously people give you more room to do that.
But it's not cost-free.
I mean, it's literally not cost free in terms of lives and money and material and resources.
It's also not cost free in terms of just attention and what other countries can do elsewhere.
And the lessons that people learn from this, the lesson people learn from this is not that we're, unfortunately, I say this genuinely with a terrible regret, is not that we're on the side of freedom.
I'd say at this point, it looks to me like the lesson they're likely to learn from this is, you know, we have a very capable military and we're willing to go in and use it against regime.
that are kind of flat on their back like Venezuela or Iran
and that already have been terribly weakened.
But we're not willing to help Ukraine fight Russia.
And God knows what we're willing to do in Asia against China.
I mean, maybe it's mercantilist also is what people take away.
Like, you know, you can do whatever you want, actually, domestically.
Because, again, nobody believes that Trump did this
because of the killing of protesters in Iran.
It was a heinous killing of protesters in Iran,
but we've killed protesters in America this year.
and we are not letting Iranian refugees come to America.
In fact, we've been sending Iranian refugees back to Iran.
And some of the countries that we're dealing with in the Middle East
have terrible human rights records themselves, right?
And so obviously, to me, if you're around the world,
the lesson is that at least as long as Trump is around,
this is like a pay-for-play thing.
Get in, get in with Trump.
And who didn't get in with Trump on his corrupt BS,
Maduro and Kamani.
The Bel Air Direct app
includes crash assist,
which detects an accident
the moment it happens
and even offers you
emergency assistance
at the tap of a button.
Okay, but what if I don't have an accident?
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Bell Air Direct, insurance, simplified.
Conditions apply.
One more thing on the Arab stuff
because I think would be interesting to watch.
It's pretty clear at this point.
And obviously Saudi U.S. for it,
we have the reporting.
It's pretty clear that UAE and Qatar
folks were on board with this
at least to some degree.
That said, the Saudi official to Al Jazeera this morning says America has abandoned us
and focuses defense systems on protecting Israel, leaving the Gulf states that host its military bases
at the mercy of Iranian missiles and drones.
Just something to watch.
Not unprecedented that Saudi would be behind the scenes talking about how they're for America
and then to the public audience talking about how they don't trust America.
So we'll see kind of how that shakes out.
But there have been serious hits.
The iconic hotel in Dubai, you've kind of seen the picture there by the airport.
That got hit.
There are people fleeing Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
There's a great Samafor story about how it's like charging $300,000 a pop for people to take a 10-hour black car from Dubai and Abu Dhabi to Riyadh.
And then a private jet from Riyadh to Europe to get out of the Middle East.
So again, that's this kind of thing.
When you go into something like this, maybe they're on board at the start.
start, but the case wasn't made to their populations either.
Like the Emirates and Qataris and Saudis, like who, it's just who knows, right?
Like how, you know, especially if this escalates, how that ends up shaking out.
And energy prices look like they might be short term.
We'll see what happens, obviously.
But I've been assuming they would settle down, but maybe they'll go up.
I mean, look, you start a war, things start to happen, right?
And Trump was to go bully these guys and they bully those guys.
But I also should stipulate that that has second and third order effects of its own.
as we're seeing here, right? And the Saudis may be sort of spinning for now and just trying to pretend that, oh, we're very unhappy.
But at some point, maybe they really will be unhappy. Or maybe other allies really will get hit in ways that we don't retaliate.
And suddenly they're like, what the hell is happening here? You know, we encourage Trump to do this.
We thought they had a real plan. And now we're paying a price. And what are we getting out of it, right?
Or there's uprising among the people. People get pissed. Like, why are we doing it? You know what I mean? Who the hell? I got it. You know, could there be protests in Kuwait?
a UAE against us?
Possible.
TBD on how that all shakes out.
Just one more geopolitics thing was Iran also attacked British targets,
Kirstarmer, as came out and said that we can use their bases.
So again, kind of how this thing trickles out remains to be seen.
You mentioned the energy crisis.
This is, I think about what the domestic impact is on the politics.
And this is part of the reason why I just,
I just think that the idea that this is a distraction from Epstein,
there will be a rally around the flag as part of an old construct.
You know, it's like the Wag the Dog was a movie in the 1990s.
In the 1990s, people really did rally around the flag.
And I just don't know that that's true anymore.
We live in deeply polarized times and we weren't attacked.
You know, maybe they'd rally around the flag if there was, you know, all the conspiracy
theorists always talk about how there's a false flag.
You know, this attack wasn't real.
We did it to ourselves.
Maybe if there was a false flag attack on America, then maybe that would change.
Maybe not.
But I just don't see it.
In the polls, we right now, Ipsos is the first poll out, 27% support, 43 oppose, means a bunch
are still unsure, so events will matter.
Among independents said that this was noteworthy, 19 support 44 oppose a bunch, unsure.
I think a lot of times people think about independence wrong.
A lot of independents are kind of these, you know, folks that don't pay a lot of attention,
aren't big fans of war, aren't reading, foreign affairs magazine, you know, and don't like have
deep thoughts on all that.
So I thought it was pretty noteworthy how among independence it was less popular.
Only 7% of Democrats for.
And you mentioned the energy prices.
It's just gas price is only up about 10% here, but 50% in Europe this morning.
Again, we'll see how that all plays out.
But I just think even if this goes well, at home, this feels like something that's going to be a political problem for Trump.
I mean, yeah, as you say, events matter so much.
You said this yesterday, too.
Yeah.
Wars are real, right?
Events, things are very event dependent.
And we'll see what we learn.
in Iraq, obviously. It looked great, mission accomplished. Whoops, not so good for Bush, you know.
But I agree. I mean, this could be bigger than Epstein, actually, in terms of its actual effect.
I mean, this could be a defining moment of the Trump presidency. He deserves to pay a price
for it. It's very politically on the other head. I hope it's not in the sense that I hope we don't
suffer some horrible defeats. And that becomes what's defining. But we could, obviously,
in terms of our geo-strategic position, as well as in terms of just, you know, obviously actual losses
there in the region. I think the Democrats are pretty, are on pretty safe ground. You said,
this yesterday in just opposing the war, right?
I think so. And you saw some blowback to Mark Kelly who was kind of waffling on this a little
bit yesterday. I think that Democrats, if they want to be on the more hawkish edge of the party
and they want to be on the more, you know, flag-wading, patriotic freedom end of the party,
I think taking the Bill Crystal position for this podcast would be totally fine, right?
Like, that I have no love for the Ayatollah, this regime is horrible. Like, if we are
are working with allies and had a legitimate plan to help, you know,
support the people in the streets.
I would be for that.
But like, that's not what this is.
This is a shit show.
They don't have a plan.
They haven't offered a plan.
Four people are dead.
They haven't come to Congress for support.
They haven't made a case to the American people under this administration with the way
they've behaved and how they've lied and how corrupt they are.
I'm a no, no war with Iran.
I just, to me, like, I actually feel like that's a totally.
appropriate place to be that's not really going to alienate anybody except for, you know,
small niche groups that have, you know, various interests.
Now, and I think I think the actual vote they'll have in Congress or votes, I guess,
in each house are basically on some versions of war powers resolutions, which require Trump to
come back and get authorization within 60 days or something like that.
It's a little confusing 90 days, I'm not too sure.
But the normal charge that would make me hesitate of four days into a war, you shouldn't demoralize
our troops and have to cut them by voting to get out or something like.
that or cutting off funding. That's not what the vote is. The vote is a kind of Trump has to do what
he should have done before and come to Congress. That's sometimes belittled on the left. I understand why.
That's just process. They've got to be more, you know, ferociously anti-war. But I think it's not just
process. A, it really is the Constitution. It is like we're in a constitutional crisis that he's
gone to a major war without Congress, different from a one-day strike and or killing Soleimani.
There's no justification. There's no authorization for this. They have to use, if they use one at all,
it'll be the 2001 al-Qaeda authorization and Iran's but a terror sponsor but man that's a 25 years later that's a bit of a stretch and again it's a stretch for the kind of war we're fighting if you're knocking off the head of the IOC who has genuinely sponsored terror all around the region by some of which has killed Americans as Ebola that's one thing a major war like this you need to go to Congress so he didn't go to Congress so I think Congress has a very sound ground and say we need to speak up now and insist that he come back to Congress and that's the
defending the Constitution. That's not attacking Trump necessarily. It's not even being anti-war.
People can say if they wish, I didn't see Mark Kelly's comments, but I might say if I were there,
look, I concealing could have voted for this, you know, if it were properly explained and defended,
and we had a coherent strategy to authorize certain use of force. It's not like you're necessarily
fully 100% anti-war, most of them would have been, and probably certainly would be at this point.
Maybe I would be too. So I think the Congress argument isn't just a process argument. It has to be
a constitutional argument.
I agree with that.
I mean, I just, look, I think that
to people want the politics of this are
going to be better, just being against it
all the way down. But that said,
putting them on the record matters.
Like, the Iraq war vote matters.
You know, like this war vote would matter.
And I think it's a tough vote for a lot of Republicans,
by the way, which we can get into next.
But I don't know if you had a more thing on the Democrat side
of this.
I think as you said, the Iraq vote,
I guess you were thinking I was thinking, too, of the original
authorizing vote.
But then there was a whole bunch of other votes,
you know, funding and,
and so forth as we went forward.
And it's not like this thing just goes away.
I mean, maybe it'll end in a week and everyone will forget about it in two months.
And it's a kind of Venezuela.
That would be Venezuela, right?
Sort of a slightly better maybe government takes over.
It's not too much chaos spilling up beyond its borders.
There's not a huge refugee flow.
It's just kind of not great, but not terrible.
And everyone kind of moves on.
I think that's possible.
In that case, it won't help Trump.
I don't know if I hurt him that much.
But, I mean, most of the other outcomes
that I can think of are much more problematic, obviously.
And so I don't know, would it be crazy for the Democrats
six months for now to say we end the war?
End it, you know?
No, three months.
I mean, it would be a 90-day authorization.
I revisit 90 days.
End the war.
The Bell Air Direct app includes crash assist,
which detects an accident the moment it happens
and even offers you emergency assistance at the tap of a button.
Okay, but what if I don't have an accident?
Well, just keep on, keeping on.
Bel Air Direct, insurance, simplified, conditions apply.
To the point about how it would be a tough vote, I think, even for MAGA,
Sager and Genti, who is over breaking points,
I just thought this was blunt in how he put it on Twitter.
He goes, this is the most profound campaign betrayal in modern U.S. history.
He's more on the MAGA isolationist right.
We've seen Davidson out of Ohio already starting to put out statements kind of hedging.
Massey would be against us, presumably Rand.
And so, you know, how far that extends out into MAGA world in the house, TBD, to the Lauren Bobrits of the world, I don't know.
But I think it's a real potential problem for them.
And it is highlighted by the fact that the person that is the biggest avatar for isolationist MAGA politics right now is the vice president, J.D. Vance.
He's missing.
He's not sent to tweet since the war started.
He loves to tweet.
He sent a picture of him at like the kids' table and like a back.
up situation room with Tulsi next to him. It was like J.D. Vance in the cuck chair. I just want to
play a couple of clips from J.D. Vance. One was from the campaign and interview with Tim Dillon and the
other one was from Meet the Press a couple months ago. Our interest, I think very much is in not
going to war with Iran, right? It would be huge distraction of resources. It would be massively
expensive to our country. I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years
of foreign entanglements in the Middle East.
I understand the concern,
but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents,
and now we have a president who actually knows
how to accomplish America's national security objectives.
So this is not going to be some long, drawn-out thing.
You can see why J.D. isn't out there today,
and he was saying this was not going to be some long-darn-up thing
this was months ago after the first attack on Iran,
and now it very much is, I mean,
even if it isn't a long-drawn-out thing in the Iraq war sense,
It's drawn out a lot longer than he said it was when he was on Meet the Press a few months ago.
And so I think this is real, he's in a real pickle.
And Trump has said three or four weeks was kind of the plan, as of course, that was a plan with Israel.
And again, that is even leaving aside, what about Iran hits neighboring countries and they ask for our protection?
What about if our troops are not safe in Bahrain because Iran still has missile capabilities.
And we haven't changed the regime.
And some IERGC thug has taken over and decided he's going to try to make us pay a price.
So we just, we need to beef up support there.
will have to be maybe continued raids to try to take out their missiles beforehand.
I mean, again, this is where the dynamics of war become so unpredictable and problematic
and why you shouldn't start down this road unless you've thought through different options,
but also unless you're willing to stay the course.
I mean, it's to some degree or other, right?
I mean, and that's where I think, I kind of assume, well, where are you on this?
I kind of assume Trump deep down is where JD is in the sense that he'll want to get out at some point.
and he'll pull the plug and hope that the world won't quite notice how much disarray he's leaving behind, or will he get sucked in?
I mean, those are sort of two.
I think that Trump is a little bit Jekyll and hide on it.
You know, I think I do think he'll want to get out.
I mean, you could tell already in some of these phone calls that that was his instinct.
Another phone call since we've been on, I just got sent, was I talked to Brett Baer.
Has it called you yet, Bill.
You know, phone line is open.
You talked to Brett Baer, told him he was the Venezuela models.
what they're going for. The Delsi Rodriguez of Iran is dead. So, okay, we'll see how that goes.
Also, the Delsi Rodriguez of Iran, I mean, whatever you think of, God does I have nothing,
they're used for Maduro, and they did a huge amount of damage to that country. Iran is a
theocratic state. The Delsi Rodriguez of Iran is not like the Deli Rodriguez in Venezuela,
who could be bought off to some degree and the whole security structures, a bunch of thugs and
corrupt people. Iran has plenty of thugs and corrupt people. But I don't know.
You can't, leaving that regime in place is going to be.
not quite like leaving the Venezuela industry replace.
No, for sure.
I mean, look, I'm no expert on the internal politics of Iran,
but I've been doing a lot of reading.
And it's like, yeah, and there's just a lot more different contingencies and groups.
And, you know, it's a very complex situation.
Like, yeah, I do think his instinct would want to be, like, JD wanting to leave after, you know,
he's got his scalp, you know, demonstrate US strong.
And now we're out.
But like, as we've been talking about this whole 50 minutes, like,
like events can get out of control things can get out of hand and you know trump is also you know
driven by kind of like uh the masculine uh you know small dick like i need to respond i need to push
back if they hit us i need to hit you harder kind of element so right like you know he might want
to get out in three weeks but we have four americans dead don't want to minimize that but what if
iran has it much more successful attack than that like what if there's an attack where dozens die
there's a terrorist attack somewhere.
This is, you know, like the oldest story in the book, world history of, you know,
men getting into pissing matches where it's just escalation, escalation, escalation.
So I think that's also possible.
Just back to the political part of the JD thing.
It's not as easy as like, oh, there's this maga crack up where there's this isolationist wing
and there's this, you know, more interventionist wing.
It's more complicated than that, right?
Because like the Republican electorate, I think instinctively is more America first, right?
like in a pure vote, like, you know, outside of context of everything else,
would you want America to be entangled in forward wars or not?
It would be like 70, 30 on the isolationist side, I think.
Like, I think that there is, but there remains a strong pro-military interventionist wing in the party that those people still exist.
There's not a majority anymore.
So that's like a quarter, a third of the party, let's say.
They'll be on board for Trump.
Then you have another third, basically, that's like in a cult.
And so whatever Trump.
says they'll be four basically. So that takes you up to about 60% of the party. And right now,
if you look at polls, I met, Eppsos poll I met, I read it. There's like 13% that was against.
The big risk for Trump is where you get into Bush territory where like 40% of the party is like,
no, this is crazy. And that will be event dependent, et cetera. But I think you can see the seeds of that
in the MAGA right wing media. Fox will be cheerleading for this. Fox can be more excited.
but the more alternative media side, you know, from the Nick Flintes, racist, Young Right,
all the way towards the comedians who have been for him, towards even like the Megan Kelly's
the world, I think that there's a Tucker.
There's going to be a lot of ranging from skepticism to hostility, depending on how things go.
Develop a point you made earlier in this context.
It's very, very important, which is this.
War is a dynamic and things can spiral and so forth, which is where the downside for
Trump here is greater, I would say, than the downside, even on maybe the economy
or Epstein or all the obvious ways in which we've talked about.
Trump has lost popularity and could continue to drift down from 40 to 38 to 36.
A little bit of a recession.
He's mentioned more prominently in the Epstein files.
A million different things like that, obviously, more ice outrageous.
But those really probably are incremental, as they have been, they can add up.
This is the one thing that could really catastrophically capsize this, right?
If things go badly, we went through this with Bush.
I mean, your ratings don't go down.
what are two points if you get casualties at a failed war and a war spilling out further and further
commitments then, as we did in Iraq, to try to save the situation after we've screwed it up.
And suddenly, you know, you're at just a whole different political universe.
So I think you're right.
I think this is the one issue where Trump could go from 14% defactions to 40% defactions in six months.
Among his voters, for sure.
Yes.
And I like this, getting into a prolonged entanglement here where there are a lot of deaths.
and economic collapse are basically the two things that could cause that.
I think basically the cultists will be the bulwark keeping Trump from 40% negative among his voters in any other scenario.
You know, who knows, alien attack or something.
Who the hell knows what could happen?
But yeah, no, the risks are great.
Anything fine on that?
I want to get to the Texas primary tomorrow.
The only thing I said is that a full effect the long hoped for, hey, will Republicans and Congress every?
Defect, will candidates ever defect?
This is the one thing that really could lead to it, I think.
The Bell Air Direct app includes crash assist, which detects an accident the moment it happens,
and even offers you emergency assistance at the tap of a button.
Okay, but what if I don't have an accident?
Well, just keep on, keeping on.
Bell Air Direct, insurance, simplified.
Conditions apply.
All right, so there is election tomorrow in Texas.
We're going to Texas, March 18th and 19th, the Dallas sold out.
We still get tickets in Austin.
come hang out with those March 19th,
the board.com slash events.
There are two Senate primaries,
Senate primary on both sides.
Cornyn's incumbent Republican,
Ken Paxton,
the corrupt,
just disgusting on a personal level.
All of the vices of MAGA
encapsulated into a single man,
into a single vessel.
That's Ken Paxton,
Bernie General.
He's primary,
Cornyn.
Another MAGA guy,
Wesley Hunt got in,
hoping to,
like, offer,
like,
more of a clean-cut MAGA alternative
to Cornyn, that hasn't worked out. He's in the teens and the polls. It seems like it's going to be
Paxton or Cornyn. On the Republican side, the Democratic side, we have Crockett versus Telarico.
I've talked about this race ad nauseum. I do not particularly think this primary has served the Democratic
interests that well in winning the seat, which I do think is winnable if Paxton wins. The new
interesting poll came out over the weekend that has Tel Rico barely beating Crockett. And it's
really a coin flip. Crocett's winning with non-college voters, older voters, black voters. And
and led to a lesser degree with women.
Telarico's winning with younger,
college-educated voter to a lesser degree with men.
Slight edge to Telarico's Latino voters.
That might be the battleground.
Any thoughts on either side of the Texas Senate race tomorrow?
I may assume Paxton coordinator assuming
Hunt doesn't surge unexpectedly goes to right off.
It'll take enough votes, presumably if it's close.
Presumably more of those Hunt voters are Paxton inclined, I should think.
So you've got a slightly favor of Paxton for the actual nomination.
Do you think, yeah, for sure?
I have a friend that's
that's still in Republican politics
that is suffering through
the hopeless.
That's a little suspicious.
Yeah, I know.
I asked about that race,
and they felt very strongly
that Paxton was in pole position there
without a Trump,
unless Trump comes in and saves corner.
Yeah.
Which he did it do this weekend.
He went to Texas this weekend.
Some people were thinking he'd endorse.
If it goes to runoff,
I guess that would extend the timeline for Trump to...
But then he won't do it if he thinks he's going to lose.
Corners go lose.
And I am I totally uninformed gut instinct?
I mean, if I were there, I'd vote for Telarico, but I think Kroket beats him.
I just feel like the momentum seems greater on her side.
But I could be totally wrong.
Could be very close, much less likely to be a runoff.
Yeah.
Look, Tala Rico is at least presenting a case to Trump voters.
I'm not sure if it's a winning case, but at least he has a theory of the case.
And to me, that's what separates him from Kroket.
Crockett has no message for Trump voters.
Crocett's message is that she will energize non-voters to vote.
And like that just that might work in Georgia.
I think that would be an interesting race, an interesting political science case.
In Georgia, there aren't enough non-voting Democrats to win a Texas Senate race.
Maybe if the economy tanks and gets in the Iran war, sure, like accidents happen all the time.
People accidentally win races when there's wave elections, so that could happen for Krakka, but she hasn't presented one.
That's right.
I fall on the Tel Rico side of this, but this primary has hurt Tel Rican.
He's going to need turnout with black voters.
I think that'll be, you know, I think that'll be add to the challenge for him and the general now because of the nature of how this race is gone.
gotten really personal, particularly on the Crockett side aiming at Tauil Rico in a way that I don't think was very helpful.
Just a little subplot on the Texas races tomorrow.
Dan Crenshaw, not a friend of the pod.
Yeah, your friend.
And Tony Gonzalez, the congressman who has six kids in a marriage, had an affair with his staffer.
The staffer set herself on fire, killed herself.
Tony Gonzalez got congratulated by Trump at the rally this weekend.
unclear what the congratulations was for, but both of them are in primaries.
And I don't know that it serves the pro-democracy mission at all for either of them to lose their primaries.
But we would enjoy it.
It's nice to, you know, it's nice to enjoy the pain of people that deserve it.
And Dan Crenshaw has been like the most, the biggest condescending prick and like the biggest disappointment possible of all of the quote unquote normie Republicans.
And I don't know.
If you happen to be living in Dan Crenshaw's district,
and don't have a horse in the Tala Rico Crockett race,
consider pulling that Republican ballot tomorrow
and voting against him.
Just a thought.
One idea, but I don't know if you had anything there.
I like the idea of Tim Miller doing in Crenshaw,
he's been such a pain.
But, you know, Gansel is not to get too high and mighty and moralistic.
I mean, he bullied this staffer, it seems like, right,
into this affair in a really horrible way.
And sadly, she committed suicide, it seems.
He shows up Friday at this Trump rally,
was Friday, Texas?
Yeah.
And they're all there.
Cornyn and these guys.
Trump explicitly welcomes him right from the stage.
Yeah, congratulations.
The others are all fine with being with him.
I mean, it's nauseating, really.
I mean, this guy, he's fine.
The Republican Party's fine with him.
Speaker Johnson's fine with him.
John Cornyn, the establishment Republican,
who is in my dealings with him in the past, in the before times,
is a nice guy and a decent guy.
He's fine with just being up there.
I don't know if he's literally on stage with Gonzalez,
but being in the group, let's say.
With Gonzalez, none of them has said a word.
As a single Texas Republican that we know of said a word that, you know, this guy should resign.
It's a disgrace that he's, I hope, I mean, it really would be good for the country if he lost, honestly.
No, nobody said any of that.
I mean, in part because the Republican House majority is so narrow now that if Gonzalez resigns, like, Massey,
as like a controlling vote on a lot of stuff.
So that's the reason.
And also just that they, it was just depraved.
And the Trump era has removed, you know, any sort of moral red line from consideration.
If you're in Republican politics, like there's literally nothing that you can do to cross the line now.
In Republican politics, pretty dark stuff.
Bill Crystal, thank you.
Another Monday in the books.
We'll see you next week.
Hopefully, who knows what's happening in this world tomorrow.
I think we'll have a double-hatter.
We've got a good one for you tomorrow.
So everybody, we'll see you back here then.
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