The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: A Tacky, Low-Life Con Man

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

The vulgar carnival barker used the holiday weekend to hawk crummy, over-priced sneakers, and compare himself to Navalny. Plus, the House skips town before voting on Ukraine aid, and Haley now declines to say whether she'd vote for Trump. Kristol is back with Tim Miller.

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. I'm here with Bill Crystal and it's President's Day, but we're giving you a holiday episode. We're working. Bill, how are you doing? I'm fine, Tim. I'm in California and it's raining. It's like an Arctic river here, which is not exactly what you want when you're coming to Los Angeles. And I wish that Alexei Navalny was president of Russia and not dead. But besides that, I'm doing pretty good. I'm desperate for your insights on Navalny. I know you've been talking to eggheads all weekend. But before we do that, if you wouldn't mind indulging, just a little report from the Idiocracy campaign trail. Happy to have that always, yeah. Yeah, let's make sure in case folks were enjoying their weekend and they missed Donald Trump's campaign stop this weekend in Philadelphia. Let's get a couple of those reports. Wow, a lot of emotion. There's a lot of emotion in this room. Thank you. Thank you. So the really nice thing is we have lines and I want to thank Chase and I want to thank Alan. There was a big win for Trump this weekend, hours after he launched his new sneaker line

in a surprise visit to SneakerCon in Philadelphia. The gold never surrender. High tops officially sold out. No word yet on if the limited supply of $399 kicks will be restocked. So there you go. You heard the boos and the mixed reviews to Donald Trump's announcement at SneakerCon, followed by the Fox News sputnik report about our former president, Mountain Duke Camacho. You know, from your campaign experience, anything like that, selling branded sneakers, anything like that you can recall from campaign trails past? It doesn't really ring a bell.

I remember with Vice President Quayle in 92, we tossed, you know, Bush Quayle t-shirts to the crowd occasionally when we stopped at Waffle Houses, where our subtle that you remember bill clinton waffles on the issues so we visited like every waffle house and 10 swing states or something in the in the south but that was kind of the extent of those we gave away for free we didn't sell the the bush quail merchandise uh that the vice president tossed out so the sneakers really are 17..99 sneakers, I think, right? You can buy the gold-plated crummy sneakers on, I guess they're crummy, I shouldn't say that, just the gold-plated high-top sneakers, which Trump is selling for $399. That's a pretty impressive markup to get your Donald Trump logo on them. It is beyond belief, but I mean, he's such a tacky, low-life

con man, right? But as Charlie Sykes liked to say, right, a clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower and can be very dangerous. You know, an incredibly tacky con man can still be, I guess, the dangerous leader of a dangerous authoritarian movement. I don't know. It's important to just take in the surrealness of it, like the idea that this would be a campaign stop that that this guy who is yeah who is just having to pay hundreds millions of dollar judgments against him is now you know trying to con people into a whatever that is 20x markup on sneakers and that he's speaking at a convention it's like the kind of thing that pete rose would do you know after he got kicked out of

baseball like that like i'm going to show up at a convention and sign some things to get a little extra scratch for my whiskey. And yet that is the person that is overwhelmingly winning the Republican primary to become the president. I do think that that's rather notable. I mean, that's certainly unusual. It is amazing. And of course, he's been a con on his consumer facing ventures in his 40, 50 years as a con man, as opposed to his intra business kind of dealings, which is what he got convicted on in New York, where he was, you know, lying to a bank, basically, right? Falsifying records. But he's always been, of course, a con man and dealing with normal people. And in fact, taking advantage of them. I mean, here, at least I suppose people know what they're paying for, you could say, whereas the Trump University and some of those other things were really astonishing. I think you and I both, I mean, we were involved in trying to publicize the Trump University stuff in 2016. And for one fleeting moment, I thought, you know what, this could really do a man because this is understandable to people. It's just a flat out con of people who don't know better, who don't know much, who are just taking advantage of people

in a way that's a little more complicated than, gee, he's running a shady real estate empire or something like that, you know? And of course it had no, seemed to have no effect at all, right? So I don't know. It's really. Well, I do think that maybe hopefully there was one accidental slip that might've helped Biden, which is we can't be in a recession if you're selling $400 sneakers. So this is where Trump's hubris is going counter with his talking points, because he's got to say that they sold out the sneakers. But if you're selling out $400 sneakers, we're living in a time of abundance, not a time of American carnage.

No, Tim, those sneakers would have only been $349 in the Trump years. And now they're $39999 thanks to Biden's inflation. Greedflation. Once again, you're just trying to cover up the devastation, the unbelievable damage that Joe Biden has done to our country. This is greedflation in action. Okay, Bill, I want to get all of your thoughts about Navalny. You have a great newsletter this morning also about the political implications.

But first, I want to start, we have this morning, Donald Trump finally, almost three days after the death, has put out this statement about the sudden death of Alexei Navalny. It said, it's made me more and more aware of what is happening in our country. It is a slow, steady progression with crooked, radical left politicians, prosecutors, and judges leading us down a path to destruction. We are a nation in decline, a failing nation, all caps. MAGA 2024, he sent out another bleat that was one of those syllogisms that said Putin is to Navalny as Biden is to Trump. So he compared himself to the martyr and also said that the assassination of Navalny reminds him about how America is failing. It's a little bit of a departure from the foreign policy of your kind of era.

I mean, it's a departure from every decent American president, every honestly decent human being who has commented on the Navalny death, which even if you're not in favor conceivably of aiding Ukraine or certainly not in favor of the kind of foreign policy I'd be in favor of, people have still said, you know, this is terrible and want to express sympathy to the family and condemn Putin for jailing and murdering political dissidents who want free speech and free elections in Russia. So, I mean, you don't have to be, you know, a huge Biden supporter or a neocon internationalist or a lover of Ukraine to say that. But I mean, Trump really reveals, I mean, it's unbelievably just, you know, vulgar and debased, obviously,

compare himself to Navalny. No sympathy for Navalny, no expression of sympathy, no expression of disapproval for Putin, no condemnation of Putin. I mean, he really is all in for Putin, basically. It's really startling. And this takes us to your newsletter this morning, which talks a little bit more about the domestic political side of this was headlined hanging Putin around Trump's neck. Let's talk about that. I mean, I think you point out in the newsletter rightly, that even in spite of all of the pro Putin propaganda that we have now seen from Tucker and from Trump and on Real America's Voice and all these right-wing news outlets, his approval rating is still, in America, 13% and overwhelming

opposition to him. Generally, the murder of a foreign dissident is not the type of thing that flips an American election, but you're making the argument that there really is a way to kind of use this moment against Donald Trump politically. So talk about that. It could be a moment if you combine it, of course, with the invasion of Ukraine, which we're now two years into, unbelievably brutal. If you combine it with the New York Times reporting this weekend, which I'm not sure got huge pickup, but it's pretty astonishing about Putin planning to put nuclear armed anti-satellite weapons into space and the implications for that, which are really startling in terms of not just war fighting, but also in terms of just disrupting our economy and our society by knocking down

satellites and how much that ability to do that would strengthen Putin just as his vague threats about using nuclear weapons have deterred us and others from doing some things we probably should have done to help Ukraine. And then you put those two things together with the murder of Navalny, not the first, God knows, dissident he's murdered, but brings it home, I think, the character of his tyranny. I wonder whether it could break through. And I wonder after February 24th, 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine, we are in a slightly different world from that post-Cold War world from 92 on, where foreign policy allegedly at least didn't matter in elections and probably didn't except for 2004, I suppose, after 9-11. I'm old enough to remember the Cold War years and foreign policy did matter. It's just really worth bringing home how appalling

Trump is. I mean, let's say I was a Reaganite and I was for Reagan and against Carter and Reagan against Mondale and Bush against Dukakis. And we thought those people were too soft on communism, isn't quite fair, but we thought their policies were not tough enough in dealing with the Soviet Union. Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, they were for the Soviet dissidents. When Natan Sharansky was imprisoned and then released in February 1986, I'm sure this is true, that Mondale and Dukakis were pleased and said so and denounced the fact that he was ever in prison. The spectrum was there were policy differences about how to deal with the Soviet Union, but the leader of the other party was not in favor of the Soviet Union. I mean, and I just come back to sort of how astonishing that is about Trump and in the more dangerous world we live in, how does Trump not pay some price for that and could not a good campaign help make him pay a price for that?

Appalling is a good word for Trump's behavior, yes. the sneakers to the more serious message here because you know i mean there is this kind of notion of taking trump this seriously but not literally he gets a pass from people sometimes like even if he just does the bare minimum if his comments about this was just the bare minimum that's kind of like you know this is wrong and putin is terrible and you know but like it also makes me think about how the deep state's coming after me, like that would still be really gross and bad, right? But he's not doing that, right? Like he is literally kind of basically siding with Putin in this situation, in the middle of the Tucker nonsense that we talked about last week, in the middle of the invasion, in the middle of the

story about the warheads in the space. And I do wonder if that is kind of a way to make this argument the hanging putin around trump's neck in support of just kind of the broader argument to your wall street journal republican types that's like this is just too crazy like this guy is too fucking crazy we cannot risk it yeah that's a good point to maybe make make the argument not just the sort of solemn foreign policy argument that i guess i make in the newsletter this morning but tie it to the cloudishness so that it's both terrible and unserious i guess yeah preposterous yeah it's both seriously appalling and ridiculously preposterous right yeah right i don't know it's a funny combination but that's trump i mean he is it's probably why he is an effective demagogue. I guess the flip side of that is one reason he's gotten away with so much is the ridiculousness allows people to say, it's just the tweets, right? It's just he's a kind of clownish character. And I don't have to prove of all the things he says, but in reality, he'll be more serious. And that was 2016. And to some degree, even 2020, where people could look back to an administration that had McMaster and Mattis and Esper and so forth. This is where I do think it is different post-January

6th, post-February 24th, 2022, that the cost we pay for the combination of clownishness and terrible, you know, pro-dictator views, maybe that can be brought home to people more. The other side of that coin, you mentioned it, the New York Times reporting about the warheads, but you've kind of been having these conversations. I'm just curious to pick your brain, like, just about the seriousness of the threat from Putin, not the obvious elements of the threat to Ukraine, but the, you know, expansionary nature of that, right? Like talking about the warheads in space, what else might be coming like what in policy expert world like what what are the feelings right now i mean it does feel like there's been a change

for like last year where maybe the view of russia was like this invasion has been incompetent and sure that they're evil and sure that they're a threat but you know i mean it's kind of revealed how pathetic they are is there a sense with that new reporting that that's changing at all? Yeah, I think that combined with the fact that they've stuck it out in Ukraine and made a little advance in the last week, and the pressure at home, the disqualifying of this anti-Putin presidential candidate who seemed to be getting a little bit of attention and momentum. I mean, a year ago, people kind of thought,

well, maybe it'll be evident that he will have failed in Ukraine by now. Maybe it's a lesson. Maybe some of the elites turned against Putin. Remember the Progozhin, however you say his name, thing in summer, I guess, late summer. And that, you know, evidence of certain weakness. But now he seems to be pretty firmly in control in Russia. He seems nice, not going anywhere in Ukraine. And he's building weapons that would, so he wouldn't use them, one hopes, but it would

give him more blackmail or bargaining power when he does whatever he wants to do after Ukraine. So I do think there's been a bit of a shift in sort of the seriousness of the danger, a little less cockiness about, well, it's a declining power and he totally miscalculated. And, you know, maybe there'll be a coup next week, which will depose him. You don't hear that so much anymore. The best way to learn a language, immersion, living where the language is spoken and using it every day. If that's not in the cards for you this year, it might be next year for some of us,

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limited time deal for our listeners right now. Get 50% off a one-time payment for a lifetime Babbel subscription, but only for our listeners at babbel.com slash bulwark. Get 50% off at babbel.com slash bulwark spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash bulwark. Rules and restrictions may apply. As far as now looking to Ukraine, so the other political issue related to this, right, is that we have, you know, still the House of Representatives kind of hanging the balance. I'm interested in your view on kind of whether the political dynamic has changed at all for Johnson in order to pressure him to do something. And on that account, here's President Biden talking about the House going on

vacation amidst the unrest in Russia. Anything you can do to get ammunition to the Ukrainians without a supplemental from Congress? No, but it's about time they step up, don't you think? Instead of going on a two-week vacation. Two weeks and walking away. Two weeks. What are they thinking? My God, this is bizarre. And it's just reinforcing all the concern and almost, I won't say panic, but real concern about the United States being a reliable ally. This is outrageous. So thoughts on both Biden's message there and whether, you know, the politics is kind of changing for Johnson on whether he can kind of hold the line on preventing this from coming up for a vote. I mean, the two weeks recess is bad. It was previously scheduled, I guess, as the defenders of the House will say.

But, of course, they've now been delaying the passage of the Ukraine package for four months, which not only has done real damage on the field, and we've seen that recently in reports from Ukraine, but also has done damage in terms of telling the Europeans, oh, we're there and you guys should do more. And so it's had a very bad effect. And it's good that President Biden's calling it out. I do think enough Republicans are saying, at least House Republicans are saying, we do need to do this one way or the other, that kind of thing, that they're beginning to, they're putting real pressure on Johnson. Will they really put the real pressure on though, which is to say, I don't know, some version of we're going to vote against you unless you do this, or we're going to sign a discharge petition, vote against you on other things, or vote against you as Speaker, or temporarily defect to Hakeem Jeffries and make him Speaker for a week or two

and let him pass this? I mean, I don't know, but this is a good question whether DiValli will change and that reporting about the space weapons will change this a little bit. I would say still last week, there wasn't enough of a sense of urgency, in my opinion, about doing this. There's still a little bit of, well, we're going to try to work it out over the next several weeks. We have a government shutdown to think about two of those, so it's kind of complicated. I really hope they come back with a sense of urgency.

President Biden, I think, was good. But you know, one thing that's helped, I do think, actually, is Nikki Haley, who's been very good on Ukraine and very tough on this set of issues. And it's not that she's going to beat Trump in South Carolina, and it's not that I suppose that any House Republicans are supporting Haley, but I've got to think it helps a little bit among certain class of Republicans and Republican donors to sort of legitimate the argument that we just can't go all the way down the Trump path on this set of issues. Yeah, I want to get to the alias of it all, but just really quick first on the funding. It was pretty striking to me, I thought. There was the briefing with Zelensky

at the Munich conference that J.D. Vance refuses to go to, right? And the main takeaway from this meeting is what you're discussing, like that there have been real damage to the war effort conference that J.D. Vance refuses to go to, right? And the main takeaway from this meeting is what you're discussing, like that there have been real damage to the war effort. This delay has caused like real on the ground damage to Ukraine's readiness, etc. And Vance doesn't even show up and basically says, I don't need to hear from him. I know what I've already known, right? So that shows a lack of courage in itself. But to me, it's pretty striking that like, despite the fact that there's a very concerning amount of the Republican Party that has become among at the voter level that has become sympathetic to this isolationist argument that we shouldn't do anything in Ukraine at the politician level.

They got 22 Republicans center votes, there's still plenty of people to get this through. And the group of those that are resisting is very small and pretty petulant and petty. And, you know, like, J.D. Vance can't even engage on the issues. So, it feels like if Johnson just can bring this up, you know, like, the group that are opposing it, it's still pretty weak, at least in Washington. Yeah, it's about half the Republicans in Congress. It'll probably be about half in the House. But they'll get 300 plus votes, I think, if it goes to the floor, which will be good, actually, a good signal that to the rest of the Republicans in Congress. There'll probably be about half in the House, but they'll get 300 plus votes, I think, if it goes to the floor, which will be good, actually, a good signal that to the rest of the world

that we have one and a half responsible political parties in America. I mean, on the J.D. Vance thing, I've been to that Munich Security Conference several times and they have a congressional delegation, which Vance is part of, senators and members of the House. And then they have a few hangers on,

journalists, think tank types and so forth that I've been a hanger-on a few times. The conference itself is tedious. And I mean, there's some good speeches and some bad speeches, but you're sitting in a hall. You could be watching it on a live stream. You don't have to be there. There's some mixing and mingling, which if you're a foreign policy elite type is good and useful.

But the one thing that the members of the delegation, the members of the House and the senators can do that the hangers-on can't do is go to these private meetings with heads of state or foreign ministers from other countries, right? That's why you go on the delegation. I mean, that's the point of being there. Because otherwise, J.D. Vance didn't speak at the conference. He's just sitting in the hall like he's an audience for all the panels. And the fact that he would skip the meeting with Zelensky he allegedly has concerns about Ukraine he allegedly has concerns about why we're not pushing much harder for a ceasefire and why people are continuing to deny he doesn't have the nerve to raise them in a meet a private meeting with Zelensky that's really pathetic it is it just shows like shows the weakness of their arguments. To me, what it says is, if the, whatever you want to call it, negotiated peace, whatever words that they're using now, side of this argument was stronger, they would not need to lie so much about the state of affairs in the

war. They would not need to duck meetings with Zelensky. I do think that it exposes just how really weak their argument is and reveals the fact that, like, honestly, they're backfilling. They recognize that voters and conservative media don't like this, and they're coming up with post-hoc rationalizations for opposing it. Otherwise, you'd be up for a conversation like that, right? You'd want to reveal the weakness of the pro-Ukraine funding side. You'd want to go for that reason. Well, you might want to, I took on Zelensky, I confronted him, right? That's sort of more normal. You might say what you do if you're opposed to a policy and you have a chance to speak privately and personally with the leader

of the country whose policy you're unhappy with. But you're right. It's interesting that he ducked that meeting. Yeah. For example, I would not turn down a meeting with Donald Trump or someone from his orbit to discuss the election fraud. I'd be very excited to take that meeting. I would not hide and say, oh, well, I already know that Donald Trump's wrong. Why would I need to meet with him? Back to Haley, though. So, you know, we've discussed this a little bit, but I do think it's worth putting a finer point on. Again, here's a moment where she is speaking the obvious truth. She is sounding like a traditional Republican. She is sounding like a responsible leader. I think that is all good and useful, and yet not getting any cover from anyone else in the party. And so this would be the negative. Earlier, I was saying, well, maybe all these events

happening at the same time put more pressure on Mike Johnson to kind of get this to the floor, and that's a green shoot. The other side of that coin is this feels like it should be a moment for Haley that's coming up on the South Carolina primary. This is an issue set that's a good contrast for her, and she's saying the right things about it. But the environment around it is, again, people are just not stepping up to the plate. It doesn't feel like to me. No, it's a good point. And if she gets crushed in South Carolina, I suppose it could have the opposite effect of signaling there's only 25 or 35% support for Haley's position among primary voters in South Carolina. I mean,

35% is not nothing. And she has stepped up pretty well. I mean, she now says she won't say she'll vote for Trump in the general election. I mean, people like us who've been critical of Haley and wished her to be more forthright in staking out the alternative position to Trump and criticizing Trump personally. She's certainly doing that now, maybe could have done it a little earlier, but she's doing it. And so let's see if the voters of South Carolina react at all. Again, with the poor voters, not poor voters, but the voters of South Carolina, it'd be nice if they moved more towards Haley. But what about all those members of Congress and other Republican big shots and conservative elites?

How many of them are saying, you know what would be very important? Vote for Haley on Saturday in South Carolina. That would really send a message. I mean, it's really pathetic that all these senators voted for aid for Ukraine, to their credit. They have pretty sound views on it. Could a few of them possibly go to South Carolina and say, hey, I'm Senator so-and-so from here, and you may not like me about everything, but I actually voted for Trump twice, and I intend to vote for him if he wins

the nomination again. But I think it'd be very important to really vote for Nikki Haley. I mean, the total absence of anyone doing that is because they think Trump's going to win, and they want to get along with Trump still, etc., etc. Or they just think it's hopeless. Or Mitt Romney, even, who I respect, obviously, who's been good. Well, that'll just turn off more voters. I don't know about that. I mean, they did all vote for Mitt Romney 10 years ago in a general election.

It's not nothing, right? The fatalism is very bad and damaging. I probably wouldn't tell if it was just mitt but i i think that what you're saying is like you can imagine a world it almost feels ridiculous to bring up these sort of counterfactual hypotheticals but i i do think it's important like in in normal times right if you go back to 2012 even 2016 what mar Marco did in South Carolina, right? You have the big event with Nikki and Tim Scott. It would create at least news and attention and pressure and interest if even just you got together five of them. Could you pull together a couple of the Trump national security people, like Bolton and McMaster and two senators and one congressperson and Dick Cheney, whatever. I don't

know. Could you get a rally with seven of these people that are all together saying, this is important. We need to focus on this. That would make, I think, it feel less limp. It would make Nikki's arguments feel less limp. It would force the hand of the media to cover this and take it seriously. I don't think it would lead her to victory, but I think that it would be a meaningful show of force that there's not just total capitulation to the Putin side of the party, and yet that's just absent. Totally. I mean, you could say the same thing about a lot of youngish veterans in Congress, some on the Republican side, some on the Democratic side. Some of those Republican veterans have been good, actually, both on Ukraine and also in condemning the criticisms or Trump's dismissal of

Michael Haley, Nikki's husband's service. He's now stationed in Africa, in the heart of Africa, I think, in the South Carolina National Guard. One of them could show up in South Carolina and just say, hey, you know, I mean, it's great what Nikki's husband's doing for the country, and I served, and Donald Trump didn't, incidentally, and shouldn't be disrespectful to those who are serving. But again, there's been very little of that. Well, I want to close with you had in the newsletter this morning, an emissive from the letters that the Free Press reported on between Sharansky, you mentioned earlier, and Navalny. And I thought it would be nice to hear in the end, just kind of any final thoughts you have about Navalny from a legacy standpoint, or what we've

learned about this fight that now goes back, God, a half century, and something that you've been involved in. I mean, there's such moving letters. It's two letters. Navalny wrote Sharansky from the Gulag, saying he'd been able to get a copy of Sharansky's book, Fear No Evil, and how much it had spoken to him and meant to him. And then they have, honestly, for your generation. And unfortunately, he's not out. I don't know. There's no prisoner exchange this time, and he's dead. But I just hope this death has not been in vain. And I think it's really up to all of us, from the administration on down to normal citizens here, to try our best to make sure that his death has not been in vain. Yeah. the one thing struck me in the letter from Navalny you know is where he talks about how the virus of freedom is

far from being eradicated it's no longer tens or hundreds as before but tens and hundreds of thousands who are not scared to speak out for freedom and against the war despite the threats I hope that is true but you just you see what is happening in Russia, the arrests over the weekend of people that are showing up. I think that is such an important element of this, right, is not getting worn down from being willing to speak out. And the risks that we have here in order to do that are very little. And that's why it's so frustrating when some of these Republicans refuse to do the right thing as compared to the risks faced by do that are very little. And that's why it's so frustrating when some of these Republicans refuse to do the right thing, as compared to the risks faced by people that are speaking out in Russia. To me, that hopefully is the thing that can be taken from this, the legacy

that can be taken from this, from Navalny, that he did not have to go back to Russia, right? There were plenty of opportunities to stop speaking out, but that is really the key element. You know, if this authoritarianism is going to be, it's going to be overthrown or going to be combated. Yeah, no, it's well said. And I mean, the combination that Navalny showed in the letters and otherwise too, of incredible courage and good cheer and kind of sense of humor almost about it. And, you know, it's really extraordinary. It's a human thing. And we began with Trump and the sneakers. I mean, just as human beings, you know, we should all want people to be like Navalny

and not like Trump. Understatement of the year. Thank you, Bill. It's been a wonderful President's Day session with you. I will be back tomorrow and we'll be talking next week. Thanks, Tim. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie cooper with audio engineering and editing by jason brown