The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol and Michael Weiss: Catastrophic Success

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Trump is threatening members of Congress with jail and Republican senators may be circling the wagons around his nominees, but we still need to protect ourselves from a nihilistic mindset. Plus, cautious optimism and uncertainty after the fall of Syria's brutal dictatorship. And no, Tulsi: You were wrong. Assad was our enemy. Bill Kristol and Michael Weiss join Tim Miller. Show notes: Tim's Triad piece on fighting a nihilistic mindset

Hello and welcome to the Bullword Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. The Assad regime has fallen in Syria and we're going to have an update on that in segment two from Michael Weiss. But first, it's Monday. So we have our editor-at-large, Bill Kristol. Bill will also get your thoughts on Syria at the end. But we've got to start with some more pressing matters, such as the fact that we should be

together right now, but we're on opposite sides of Manhattan. I'm in my comfort zone in Brooklyn, and you are aware? I'm on the Upper West Side. You're in Brooklyn with the Young Hipsters, and I'm on the Upper West Side with the people I grew up with. It's appropriate. This is natural. Natural laws coming back into order in the country. You can already feel it. We need to start today with the Meet the

Press interview that Donald Trump did, lengthy interview. I've got a bunch of thoughts on it that I want yours, but I think the most significant, I don't know if you'd call it news, but the most significant exchange was related to Donald Trump's thoughts on the January 6th committee. And I want to play a little bit of that for you now. And Cheney was behind it. And so was Benny Thompson. And everybody on that committee, for what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.

So you think Liz Cheney should go to jail? For what they did? Everyone on the committee you think should go to jail. Anybody that voted in favor... Are you going to direct your FBI director and your attorney general to send them to jail? No, not at all. I think that they'll have to look at that, but I'm going to focus on drill baby drill. There you go, Bill.

He's not going to do it though. He's not directing them. So is that encouraging there, that slight moment of encouragement? I think that six sitting members of Congress should be jailed, but I'm not going to actually tell anybody to do it. How do you feel about that? Yeah, nor is he going to explain, I guess, and Kristen Welker should have asked him this, what should they go to jail for? I mean, usually one goes to jail or what is indicted with the threat of going to jail for a crime. What crime did they commit? Trump seems to get to say, I mean, get to say that he's the president of the election, I guess he says what he wants,

but he says they should go to jail. But he doesn't get the follow-up question, what they should go to jail for. Maybe people are asking his people today, is there actual like statute? There are these things called books that have laws in them and statutes that if you were convicted of X number of them,

you get X penalty, you know? And that's sort of the way it works in the US supposedly, not him opining that these guys deserve to go to jail. I mean, the other point, Andrew Edgar makes this point this morning in warning shots, is the Speaker of the House going to say anything about him threatening six, I guess what, is it six current members of the House, I can't remember, three former members, to go to jail for serving on a duly constituted committee of the House and having lawful proceedings and asking questions and so forth?

I guess I don't expect Speaker Johnson to really object to what Trump said though. Mad Fientist This Cheney put out a response statement that Donald Trump's suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed as a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic is a good, correct statement. I think we were last together last Monday. I've been persuaded more against the idea of the preemptive pardons for people such as Liz Cheney.

But obviously when you have Trump saying something like that, and you have reporting from Jonathan Martin and others that the Biden administration is considering those pardons, that that kind of interview will probably be pinging around the White House Counsel's office. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that after, you know, kind of interview will probably be pinging around the White House Counsel's Office. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that after a little bit more time to let it ruminate. Yeah, I remain pretty firmly against the preemptive pardon, certainly against a very broad swath

of them. If there are individuals who are being targeted who, well, I'm against it. I'm for raising money and having an infrastructure to help people who are unfairly charged, especially people who aren't wealthy and aren't famous. They go after some lawyers, GS-15s, who were assigned to work for Jack Smith, and those people don't have the ability to raise money as, hopefully, Liz Cheney does and don't have the fame to rally people to their side, and they deserve support. I know some lawyers who are working on that and others.

I think that'll be in place. I prefer that and I prefer an attitude of solidarity and sort of taking on Trump than the individual pardons, which will always leave some people out and some people therefore more vulnerable and some people would accept them. And I think it's kind of a mess. People can individually appeal for preemptive pardons to Biden, I guess the way people appeal privately to the justice department, the way people appeal for pardons for actual crimes. I'm not necessarily against individuals doing that who feel extremely vulnerable. I think Liz Cheney's attitude is more bring it on.

And I actually think she should say, what's the crime? Let's have a debate about it. Let's have a discussion about this. You and I get a peer on the next Sunday's Meet the Press press. You tell me what crime people who served on that committee committed. And I'll tell you what crimes you committed as president of the United States. You know, I just think that attitude would be the right way to confront this. I concur. I mean, initially, like I had an emotional reaction to it that was like, yes, they should. He should do this.

The president should this like pardon, be aggressive, you know, protect. And it's just the more that I've thought about it, the more I just, to your point, she didn't commit any crimes. So you're pardoning her for nothing. To protect her from what? And if you're worried that Cash Patel is going to trump up some reason to investigate her, he can do that based on things that happened in 2025. You know what I mean? Like that, there's, it's not like it's going to limit him. If we're working from the theory that they're going to make shit up to go after Liz Cheney, which is what they'd have to do because she hasn't committed any crimes, well they could make shit up that happened after the pardons, right? Like it's not like that would be any less credible than what

they did on the January 6th committee. Okay. I'm wondering what your other thoughts are about meet the press. Was there anything that struck you big picture? I didn't see it. I skimmed through the transcript. I couldn't tell. Part of me thinks he sort of was careful. He tipped out onto the line as he did, and that encouraging that they deserve to be investigated and convicted. But then I'm not going to order the FBI director to do it.

There were several issues where I thought he, on the Dreamers, where he's, well, we might have to go after all of them. Ultimately, it is they were illegal. By the other hand, I really want to work it out with the Democrats he of course vetoed deals with the Democrats that would have Arranged for protecting the law the dreamers who've been here a lot of time when he was president Previously, but he's pretty I mean he remains kind of cunning in the way that he gives his morals

But it's way he's more respectable supporters the excuse of saying well, he's just he's blustering But at the end of the day he indicated he might be willing to be okay with the Dreamers. He said he's not going to order Cash Patel to do anything. So what's the problem there for with he's not, you know, ordering an FBI director to break the law. I thought he did a pretty good job from his point of view of straddling the line of red meat for the base and, um, you know, excuses for the, for the high toned excusers of him,

an apology for him. I mean, having said that, this is like in Trump's universe. In the broader universe on Earth too, the president-elect of the United States is threatening members of Congress to go to jail for no crime at all, and threatening others, of course, as well, and talking about mass deportations,

which might not be quite as mass as you thought they would be. We should not lose the ability to be astonished that this is happening at all. The other things that he said that were executive orders, I think were interesting, he was pretty clear that he's going to pardon all the January 6th prisoners. He was like, we're going to look at them on an individual basis. So he kind of leaves the door open for maybe a couple of them that attacked the cops the most aggressively might not get far. I don't exactly know.

There was no specificity there. But he strongly suggested that's happening immediately. Similarly, suggested that birthright citizenship should be revoked via executive order, which is not legal on day one. We'll see whether that happens. But Lindsey Graham was quick to come out in support of that idea. He posted that President Trump is right to end birthright citizenship by executive order

on day one. So to me, those felt like, as far as news is concerned, actions that he said are coming that are, I mean, not unexpected, but also ludicrous. The other thing that struck me, you know, because of all the like insane stuff, because you're talking about Hank South and Patel and, and the part, the pardons for prisoners, like the actual functional first piece of legislation that is going to be coming up in the first hundred days, supposedly he talks about a lot and like more than he would on the campaign. When, when Welker asked him about the first 100 days, he really honed in on that extension

of the Trump tax cuts, which is something that kind of got lost in the debate during the campaign. I think probably because Biden and Harris didn't really want to take a side on it one way or the other, frankly, they're going to negotiate it out. So it didn't end up becoming a huge campaign issue. But I don't know, I was just struck by the fact that he focused in on that over the tariffs when asked about the economy. And just thinking about the fact that it is not going to be very easy to get that done quickly. Like, you know, you have to go through reconciliation in the Senate, then you have this narrow house

majority, you're going to have the blue state House Republicans that want to deal with salts, you're going to have the crazy House Republicans that want to, you know, make sure that there are offsetting cuts. And I, maybe Trump can bully them all through, but they can't, like they're not going to afford to lose, but a couple of votes. And so I don't know. I just, to me, that struck me as like, that might be more of a briar patch coming up in the beginning of the administration on like a substantive issue than people have expected. Yeah. And if Congress works anything like it has traditionally worked, which is a question mark, coming up in the beginning of the administration on like a substantive issue than people have expected. Yeah, and if Congress works anything like it has traditionally worked, which is a question mark, I suppose, in the year of Trump.

I mean, the Congress does think they have a lot to say about tax bills traditionally. They actually mark them up in ways and means or in Senate finance. People have opinions and people have interest groups to represent and you can't, it's this kind of, we're just going to have opinions and people have interest groups to represent. And you can't, it's this kind of, we're just going to update or whatever the word he uses is, you know, the Trump tax cuts. It's not that easy in some cases. I mean, it's a different time, right?

And some of the stuff was few years and some of it was for longer. I don't think you can just Xerox the bill from 2017 and stamp 2025 on it and say, pass this for another five years, you know? And then of course, as you say, everyone wants to get in and add writers and stuff. So I kind of agree.

And look, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and others at the committee chair level did a lot of work on that in 2017. This was kind of their bailiwick and this was their whole, in fact, the way they ignored everything else horrible that Trump was doing was that this was what they focused on. We don't have that kind of leadership in either house.

I haven't looked really closely at ways and means in Senate of Finance and so forth, and very narrow majority too. So I agree, that will be interesting. I mean, they'll get some version of the Trump tax cuts through eventually. I don't know, on tariffs, he was pretty bellic. Wasn't he pretty forward leaning on us, so to speak?

He loves tariffs and all that nonsense. But yeah, we didn't see an actual number. What happened to the 10% across the board tariff that was supposed to happen on day one? Yeah, exactly. I think that's what I noticed too. Sure, he was still pro tariff, but when it was on the substantive, what are your day one executive orders? What are you going to do the first 100 days? He was leaning more towards the tax cut bill TBD. Okay, a couple other items from the weekend, a couple of hirings. I really

wanted to focus on this one in particular. It's not the director of policy planning at the state department. It doesn't tend to be a big name or a position that everybody should have an opinion on, but I think in this case, we probably should. That job announced this morning went to Michael Anton. Longtime listeners of the pod will know Michael Anton. He was the author back when he was anonymous of the Flight 93 article that made the case for Donald Trump in 2016 about how we had to storm the cockpit to prevent, I guess, Hillary from crashing a plane into American democracy. That was kind of hard to exactly wrap your head around the argument, but that was Michael

Anton's famous essay. But I wanted to focus on this. The day after the election in 2020, the day after, he wrote an article which had this headline, Game On for the Coup. That was his headline, not what we're saying. Game On for the Coup, day after the 2020 election. He wrote that one, we should challenge the late night fines in courts, scare quotes around fines. Two, he said we should hold rallies in contested states. Three, we should urge GOP officials in close states to expose shenanigans and if necessary refuse to seat Biden electors in the event of a fake count. Four, we should mount a campaign to marshal grassroots public opinion in the president's favor. All that happened in 2020.

And he outlined the coup plan the day after the election in 2020. I think that it probably should have some limits on America's credibility around the world when the director of policy planning at the State Department was outlining the plan for a coup here domestically. So I don't know if you, do you probably know Michael Anton a little bit, huh? I did back in the day, he was a political philosophy student and I voted for the weekly standard back in the, it was a Bush, served in the Bush White House at a lower level, I believe it was the National Security Council there, and then served in the Trump National Security Council at a somewhat

higher level. I knew him when he was a Bush Republican, and haven't known him since he became a Trump Republican. He was very offended when I, I guess, harshly criticized his Fight 93 essay in September of 2016. Yeah, look, you know, you think being an election denier or even being a little more than a denier being an election plotter or co-conspirator to overturn the election or

encourager thief yeah encourager of the election that I was disliked in a way the term election denier which is a little too passive It's sort of like well after the fact you denied it I mean that's important to incidentally right but it's one cut more to have been in the middle of the planning to overturn, to stage the coup. But of course, Casper Tell was maybe even more than Anton, who was not part of the administration at that point. You think senators might raise this? I don't know, in confirmation hearings.

I'm not sure policy planning is a Senate confirmed position. I wonder if it's not maybe. I think it has been sometimes, it hasn't been at other times. It's a bit of a consolation prize for him too. He wanted to be deputy national security advisor. He was in the running for that. He didn't get it. Some people say he didn't get it because he refused to serve with Seb Gorka.

I guess they have some deep hatred for each other. It is kind of fun when the, you know, different little sex or pods of authoritarians get and turn out to hate each other and to get in fights with each other and, you know, undercut each other. Let's hope there's quite a lot of that actually in the Trump administration. That would be good. It seems to me like the senators are circling the wagons and we've seen some, I think Tom Cotton commented over the weekend about how he thinks all of Trump's nominees are getting

through. We weren't really holding out hope for Tom Cotton in any of these situations, but when you start to think about the Tulsi Gabbard of the world, who would be the ones to go with Murkowski and Collins and Navy McConnell to oppose her? You would think that somebody like Tom Cotton, who disagrees with her, I assume in every way about her foreign policy views, might be be one but for him to be out there today saying he was going to support It felt like there was momentum after Gates for a moment for the senator showing some spine And I'm sensing that momentum dissipating. I don't know about you. I think that's right. My only copy I would be it could

Undiscipline if new things come out about these different Nominees and there will be presumably FBI checks and people have really looked at, you know, have been confronted with the things Tulsi Gabbard said over the years. God knows they're capable of ignoring this confrontation. But are a few people, the Mike Rounses of the world and others who have shown some signs of being willing to not, you know, Joni Ernst, to not simply cave in. Will they ultimately, you know, find an excuse to say, well, I hope to be for that person. I hope to support the president, but it's just too hard.

Or go to him privately with five senators, as happened with Gates, and say we can't support him. So I'm a little hopeful that one or two of them go down still. It's always been a good thing to bet against Republicans hanging in there. They're always tougher on the first day. I mean, let's put it this way. That's certainly been the pattern from January 7th, 2021 on that, well, of course, during

the administration as well. They indicate a little bit of, gee, that's kind of a problem. I am a little alarmed actually. And a week later, it's kind of less alarmed. And two weeks later, it's a great nomination. And I just look forward to seconding it on the floor of the Senate. So we might be in that circumstance. I mean, if I could say, you're going to talk about Syria later with Michael Weiss, I mean, to have Gabbard and Hegseth, it's one thing to have them in, it's pretty

horrible anyway, in a kind of quiet world, I guess you might say. To have them in, in the world that Trump administration will be facing in January 20th in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia. I mean, it's really appalling, I got to say, just a matter of basic responsibility to have competent, sane, sober people running these, qualified people running these departments. I was with a lot of Republicans in Iowa on Friday. You're the Jones here. It's tight. Republicans, staffers, and former staffers. It was intriguing to me that the consensus view among everybody was essentially, we hope that Joni will do the right thing with Hexheath.

We think that she's doing something good now, which is like creating some space maybe for other people to come forward or maybe for Hexheath to drop out if more bad information comes out. But when information comes out. But when push comes to shove, you know, and I'd ask them, do you think she would really vote him down in the Armed Services Committee? I didn't find anybody who thought yes. And I think that that is like pretty reflective of like the state of play, right? Like if they, if they can do the right thing without too many negative consequences politically for

themselves with the base voters, they will or try. But when push comes to shove, it's not going to be there. So I don't know. I would love to be proven wrong, but that was the sense for Ernst. Yeah, that's very interesting. I mean, I haven't followed this super closely, but my sense is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the enablers of the sort of upscale enablers of quote respectable Republicans. They haven't really taken a strong view one way or the other.

Maybe they've grumbled a little about a couple of these appointments, but they published Hexsys op-ed. They published a piece by Trump's first term national security advisor, Robert O'Brien, defending the appointment of Patel. They've given their readers, which is like Republican donor class and upper middle class voter class and people who talk, Joni Ernst friends and donors, plenty of cover to sort of say, well, I think these attacks, they said some foolish things in the past, and Hexath had a slightly misspent youth, but you know, I think they're up to it. I mean, they've given plenty of cover for these senators to do the wrong thing.

One other hiring note at the White House. We got to shout out Trump's defense attorney, Alina Habba, who has received the role that Kellyanne Conway had in the first administration, counselor to the president. I was looking at her bio and it's like, it is insane that this person is the counselor to the president. She was working in fashion until not too long ago, and then did go back to law school, but has had very few actual trials. I was reading a list of some of the cases that she has actually represented. I want to read a couple of them to you now.

In July 2021, she represented Siggy Flicker, a former member of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, who alleged that Facebook had disabled her account for wishing Melania Trump a happy birthday. Haba wrote a letter to Facebook, which Facebook appeared to ignore. Later that month, Haba represented Cesar De Paco, a vitamin supplement entrepreneur, in a federal court case where she filed a lawsuit against Portuguese journalists for revealing his close connections to the far-right Chega party in Portugal. I mean, this is not your father's counselor to the president.

This is no James Baker type resume here for Alina Hoppe. I mean, I guess counselor means anything they want it to mean. So she won't do the legal stuff. I guess the White House counsel, who I think is problematic himself, and suddenly will organize that. But it just means, I do think it just means PR flack for the president, especially on Fox News and all other right wing outlets. I mean, that seems, I mean, Kellyanne actually knew a little bit more about, you know, real politics and probably was involved in some of the strategy sessions.

Who knows how much, honestly, but choose mostly also a PR person. But I assume that's what Alina Haba will do. But I realized what I just said was kind of stupid because of course, to say that someone there is only a PR person or is only involved in the actual council's office, doesn't stop them from giving substantive advice. And for that matter, legal advice.

And if Dan Scavino can be shaping policy, why can't Alina Haba? It's gonna be a great second term, really fantastic. It's gonna be, I mean, the mix of sort of Trumpian chaos and idiocy and unqualified people and then ferocious, somewhat intelligent and knowing what they're doing, authoritarian ideologues that's Vaught and Miller,

I would say especially, and JD Vance to some degree. I mean, I guess that's what characterizes a lot of authoritarian governments, right? Sort of a certain amount of idiocy and showmanship and chaos, and a certain amount, unfortunately, of actual steely determination to deprive us of our civil liberties and centralize all and personalize all power in Donald J. Trump. Well put. I don't have anything to add to that. I will say to your point that Haba, yes, even if she's just the PR person at the beginning, that's up until Trump's actual White House counsel gives him advice he doesn't want. And then he's got a backup lawyer around

who can tell him what he wants to do. So we will, of course, continue to monitor that. Hey, y'all, this podcast is sponsored by MD Hearing. MD Hearing just made their neo-rechargeable digital hearing aids only $297 a pair. That's over 90% less than clinic hearing aids, and they recently cut their price in half despite all of the inflation craziness. It's really important, by the way, that you guys out there who might need a hearing aid have one so you can hear clearly my dulcet tones and the witty remarks that I sometimes make under my breath.

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Let it play out. Do not get involved. That was Trump on Syria. You write, does Trump even know we have 900 troops in Syria, that we have real interest in the fall of Assad and a defeat for Russia and Iran, and in shaping as much as possible what follows? I'm curious what you have in mind on that front.

I mean, just a couple of points, and Michael, obviously, you know Syria much more detailed than I, well, three points I guess I'll make maybe. One, you know, the Russians and Hezbollah and Iran did not come to Assad's defense at all, people noted that and noted the irony that the Russia Putin invaded Ukraine in February, 2022 Hamas backed by Hezbollah and Iran and supported after the fact, at least by them attacked Israel on October 7th, 2023 and, you know, kind of poetic justice or something, or irony

of history, Assad, who was buddies with Putin and buddies with Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, gets deposed in December 24th. So I think there is a little bit of poetic justice there. But it's also the case that the reason Putin is not strong enough to have helped Assad, the reason Hezbollah has been so decimated is because the Ukrainians and the Israelis fought back. I mean, they do deserve some credit for this. And it's kind of a little reminder that if you fight against dictators and authoritarians

and terrorists in one part of the world or in one front, maybe you help weaken them on another front. I think that's really a kind of... But anyway, I want to just pay tribute, especially to the Ukrainians, for all the talk of how they are in some trouble and they're not as big as Russia and so forth, but Putin is weaker. This is a big blow to Putin. He invested a lot in Syria as his entree back into the Middle East, first in 2013 and especially in 2015.

So we shouldn't lose sight of the, this was a victory not just for the Syrian people, and I think it was for them, but for people fighting dictators everywhere, really. On the second front, just quickly on the Syrian people, I don't know what's going to happen and some of my friends are more alarmed about the people who are going to come to power. Other of my friends think it's very fluid. It's hard to tell. I'm slightly on the fluid, hard to tell side, but final point, we can help shape this.

This is why Trump is so wrong to say we have no stake in this and we should just stay out. I mean, we can't perfectly shape it. Things can go awry, God knows. But if we have troops there, we certainly have an interest in destroying and removing the chemical weapons. We have an interest in further weakening Hezbollah and not letting Iran move back in if they decide they kind of find their nerve again and try to cause more trouble as the troubles with understatement for Syria.

So I think the outcome now is very fluid and variable. And I would prefer to have the US have the attitude of we're going to do our best to shape things there within certain limits, obviously, of what we can do as opposed to sending a signal that it's hands off. That signal, maybe Putin and Hezbollah wait a month and decide, okay, you know what, we can go back in and cause more trouble, or others, Taliban can go back in and decide to help HDS, the more Sunni fundamentalist group and so forth. So I think it's a very, it's hopeful.

We should be grateful when a dictator like Assad gets deposed. But I think Trump's tweet or whatever it was, was a sign that his instinct is to go in the wrong direction. Can members of Congress do something on this? But can members of his own administration who know much, much better push him to be less irresponsible? That was a question in the first term. It'll be a question in this term.

I want to close with a little feelings talk. For Friday's newsletter, I wrote about just something kind of concerning that I've noticed out in the world, particularly among my friends, my Democratic friends and some of our readers. That is falling into a kind of a nihilistic world mindset. There were a lot of Republicans in 2016 who used this phrase, LOL, nothing matters. After Trump won, it's like, ugh, this is so absurd. This is so ridiculous. I have no choice to just assume that none of the rules matter.

None of the norms matter. My behavior doesn't matter. I might as well just go along and get money, do whatever job I can do, get whatever access there is, or that I just need to check out of this, this is stupid, this all doesn't matter. And I've noticed that feeling percolating among Democrats now, the same idea. That Trump winning again means that none of the things that we had valued actually have value and that we should just blow it up.

I think that there's a big fuck it mindset out there on the left. And I think that is, I'm concerned about it. And so I wrote trying to encourage people to guard against that, encourage them not to become what Donald Trump says they are. Don't be what Donald Trump says you are. He wants everybody to be like him, because his theory of the case is that everyone is like him. And I understand that it's sometimes challenging to guard against it. But I think that there is a way to do that while still fighting aggressively, pushing

back on him, etc. So anyway, I was wondering if you had any thoughts along those lines for about a month out, whether you've descended into nihilism? Do you have any other wisdom for us on that? I thought your piece was very well said. It seemed to have gotten a huge response. I think it hit a nerve. It was important to say that. Look at that. I mean, after the defeat, for Trump to be elected twice in 2016 and then 2024 is not. I mean, people are entitled to a little bit of temporary nihilism and temporary, you know,

I don't know, wanting to just give up, I suppose. And individuals can make up their own minds about what they do over the next four years, obviously. But look, he won by a point and a half in the popular vote. He won the swing states by a couple of points. It was bad. He's got a Congress Republican House that's going to go along with him and enable him, which is bad, but it's, of course, by a very tiny margin. So what do you think?

I kind of think denialism recedes at this point. Maybe your piece will help push it along. Obviously, individuals at different stages of life and different responsibilities will make different choices. I had dinner with my friend, Jay Northlinger, last night, who said he really was demoralized the next day and spent basically three weeks reading 20th century literature that he hadn't read before and discovered Stefan Zweig, who I've never read, who he says is really fantastic incidentally. But he's now back in the fight. So maybe that'll become kind of the people are entitled to a little break, but not to

not to four years of nihilism. People are entitled to reading some literature about mid 20th century authoritarian or to read sad fiction or whatever people are people are entitled to all that I have also participated. But I don't know. I do worry about it though, Bill. I think that the but he fights element of Trump, the Democrats like, we just need somebody like that who doesn't care about the rules, who just fights back, who just says screw it all.

And this ties to me to some of the things I've been seeing online about this assassination of the healthcare executive, the United Health Care Executive, where there's like, it was a New York magazine had a headline the other day that was like, I don't have the exact headline in front of me, but it was essentially like it was inevitable that this was going to happen because people are so mad. I don't know this like mindset of this is a revolutionary moment. I underestimated how easily that took hold on the right in 2015. And I'm not saying that there is a parallel to that right now at all, but I don't, I think we should at least monitor it and guard against it and push back on it when we see it.

That's really a good point. And I'd say the comparison, I suppose, might be after Romney lost in 2012. And honestly, I was disappointed, but you know, life went on and Republicans won the Senate in 2014 and so forth. And, you know, I didn't like Obama's second term, but life went on and Republicans won the Senate in 2014 and so forth. I didn't like Obama's second term, but we lived through it. But I think I underestimated at the time, just to really, I think, confirm and strengthen your point, I very much understood at the time how radicalizing that was for the Republican right. Rush Limbaugh said, I think the day after the 2012 election, it's not our country anymore

or something like that. That became pervasive, obviously, by 2015, and we got Trump. So I guess what you're suggesting maybe is that that would be bad if this became the equivalent on the left and got more widespread among Democrats. I guess I've assumed it stays kind of on the marginal left, but I could be wrong. So I think you're right to fight back against it,

maybe a little more than I've really been focused on. Yeah, I'm not trying to make a parallel just as far as, obviously there are a lot of other factors that end and the media environment on the right. I've just, I've been a little disquieted by the degree both online and in my personal life of people that have just really, you know, started to say some things about how to push back against this that have echoed some of the things that I heard nine years ago. So anyway, don't do that. Don't let them take your soul people.

That's it. We can fight, we can kick them in the balls from time to time, but don't don't let them don't let them take your soul. And some norms are good. Not all. We don't have to save all the norms either, by the way, but like the good ones we should keep. So anyway, that's my that's my final final message bill will be discussing this more next Monday

I'm looking forward to a full debrief on the fall of a side from Michael Weiss up next so thanks much bill. We'll see you soon All right. We are back with Michael Weiss, editor of the Insider, a Russia focused independent media outlet. He's also the host of the Foreign Office podcast. Long time no talk, brother. Oh, is it like three days ago? Yeah, it feels like it. I don't know, it was last week, I think, that we had John. And in the ensuing couple of days, we had the Assad regime be toppled by the Turkish backed rebels HCS and Assad is now in Moscow presumably

preparing for his new role shoveling snow at the Kremlin. A remarkably fast defeat though I think things were on this trajectory when we last spoke so but I'm wondering you know what you think are the implications of all this and maybe we'll just kind of tick through the geopolitical ones and we'll sort of take through them one at a time. Well, the first set of implications, I think the most important, which is before we get into what happens now or how it's going to change the landscape of the region is for the first time in 50 years, quite a lot of people are able to breathe easily.

Yeah. I mean, I've been watching over the past 72 hours, horrific footage from Sednaya prison, which was this kind of not even a prison doesn't describe it. I mean, it's a sort of a complex of dungeons within dungeons in the Damascus outskirts where all of the political prisoners of this regime, some going back decades, you know, Hafez al-Assad was still president when they went in, had been in a sense just sort of abandoned by the world, buried alive in some cases.

Women detainees who had been raped by prison guards and given birth, having to live with their children in these squalid cells, I mean it's it's it's Third Reich stuff and I think we need to appreciate that. In the West, we had a moment perhaps with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and then a little bit with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 of celebrating the blossoming of democracy and all that. We got a little too high on our own supply and a little too eager and happy. But it has to be said. I mean, this was a brutal totalitarian dictatorship that, I mean, destroyed the lives, destroyed the families of so many people, including

those who were not necessarily political looking for the overthrow of the Assad dynasty, but simply wanted a little bit of liberalization or the ability to say what they wanted to say. So just on that point, I think let's just give the Syrians their due here. They're celebrating for a reason. In terms of how all this went down, I mean, the last time we spoke Aleppo had fallen, I kind of explained the dynamics of how that transpired.

I think I might've used the phrase catastrophic success. So just as a small recap, every country in the region was normalizing with Assad. A month ago, he ain't going anywhere, he's won the war, he's the King of Damascus, and even the United States under the Biden administration, although now they're trying to change their tune about this, they were sort of facilitating normalization and rapprochement, watering down the Caesar sanctions bill, trying to kill the anti-normalization bill,

allowing all kinds of weird diplomatic overtures with the Emiratis who have emerged as his sort of dead-enders and his great defenders, even though at one point they were very much opposed to him. It looked like he was sitting pretty. There was one problem, one holdout in this scenario, which was Roprochement with Turkey. And the Turks were saying, look, you know, we'll do a deal with you. We'll recognize your government. We want refugees, three million plus of them, to return to Syria, but we want them to return safely. Don't put them to the sword. Throw them in Sidneya. And also, our big issue is with the Kurds, right? I won't bore your readers with the history of how the Assad family has used the PKK, which is the Kurdish militia, still technically a designated terrorist organization by the

US and the EU. They use them as leverage with their relations with Ankara for decades. But suffice it to say, when ISIS came into Syria and the US intervened, we propped up the PKK and created for them a protectorate slash statelet right on Turkey's southern border, pissing off the Turks like no other, right? Turkey wants the Kurdish issue solved, and they're gonna do it in a military fashion.

And they saw the writing on the wall. Donald Trump is elected. He wants out of the region. Syria is a place of what? Death in sand, I think he once called it. Not enough oil to interest him. The idea, the conventional wisdom, is he's simply gonna hand off America's responsibility

in Syria to the Turks. So they were kind of rubbing their hands with glee. And it couldn't get to yes with Assad. So HTS, I wouldn't call them Turkish backed. They're Turkish enabled, Turkish protected, Turkish empowered, but Turkey has its own Janissary. Did I use that word the last time? Yeah.

Yeah, we're back to the Janissaries. Yeah. HTS has been begging Erdogan, put us in coach, let us have at it. The regime is bombing us. The Russians are bombing us. You're not getting what you want with Assad. Let us sort of put military pressure on him." And the Turks said, sure, go for it.

They told them no in October, November they said yes. And the idea was a limited offensive that would creep up into the Aleppo outskirts and then stop and then suddenly let's restart the negotiations. Well, it's like they put their finger through a husk and the husk just simply collapsed into dust, right? I mean, there was no regime. The Syrian army melted away. There's footage of guys, or at least photographs of the aftermath of guys, who took off their army uniforms, put down their guns, and melted back into society. And HTS said, well, let's keep going. And they took Aleppo.

And they took Aleppo almost without shots being fired. And suddenly, I think the Turks realized, oh, OK. I mean, maybe we can get what we want now through regime change, and very easily so. And they didn't rein HTS in, if they could have at that point, I don't know. And now all of a sudden, Assad is toppled in Damascus. And here's the important thing. This was not a military fight for Damascus. Damascus was abandoned. It was seeded to the opposition in lieu of a pitched battle, which is absolutely extraordinary. If you're

watching this take place in real time of the last 13 days, it was like, okay, they took Aleppo pretty easily, but now the battle for Hama commences. There was fighting, but not such a battle for Hama. Oh, okay. They got Hama, but they'll never get homes so easily. That's going to be the real Stalingrad. I woke up and homes had fallen. I was asleep. And then all of a sudden they're in Damascus. And it's not just HTS here. The actual first elements that reach Damascus, funnily enough, the Southern Front, which was a consortium of reconciled rebel groups. Russia did the

reconciling. But so the idea was you put down your arms and we'll let you kind of run your little autonomous zones. But really, you know who the new master is it's asad. It's hasbala It's iran these guys never liked the regime and they were obviously now we know Lying in wait all the time to take up arms again and press the fight forward a lot of these rebel groups in the south Like near the jordanian border are former assets of the cia Jordanian intelligence. They're known to the West. They reached Damascus first. Anyway, it's not just HTS here. I keep trying to get a credible number of how many fighters does HTS have.

The number I keep getting from Western stakeholders is probably between 60 and 80,000. 60 and 80,000 is not enough to hold all of free Syria. They're going to have to do deals. There's going to be bargaining. In fact, there already is. Local administrations popping up in these liberated cities, other rebel groups that are, they're with it for the revolution, but at some point maybe they're not going to be so amenable to Jolani's new governance or leadership.

It's so early days. I can't make any predictions as to what may happen. I just follow the reporting. And so far, the reporting is okay, cautiously optimistic, happy for the Syrian people, but deeply, deeply terrified that Syria becomes ungoverned space or a new safe haven for... I don't think people in the West are concerned necessarily about jihadism in Syria. They're concerned about transnational jihadism. The rise of ISIS again, Al-Qaeda, other new groups that might feel empowered who want

to not keep it within the borders but start exporting terrorism abroad. And Jalani so far, and again, you don't have to be a babe in the wood and you have to trust this guy and there's plenty about him not to trust. He's a deeply Machiavellian figure, but he's a shrewd politician as well. So far, he's being pragmatic. He's cutting deals with the Russians, so say the Russians, to allow their forces safe passage out. It may well end up being the case that the Russians don't have to abandon their naval

base in Tartus or their air base in Latakia because HTS has reached some kind of accommodation with them. He did outreach to the Iraqi government, don't send your forces in, we have no coral with you even though they're the Shia. He comes from an organization pre-Al Qaeda. He was a member of what was known as the Islamic State of Iraq, which soon became the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. This is a guy who used to belong

to a genocidal terrorist organization telling Shia, we have no quarrel with you. We wanna build a pluralistic, multi-ethnic. I'm joking with my friends who study this. I'm like, you know, you got MAGA guys in the West who are like, oh, we just gave Syria over to Al-Qaeda. Wait till they find out what DEI Jihad looks like. I mean, this guy is, I mean,

he's far more progressive than a lot of elements we have here, at least in terms of the rhetoric. You know, I mean, so he has reinvented himself or trying to reinvent himself as somebody who can be let alone. He doesn't want foreign intervention destroying what he's doing, much like the Taliban. You know, he's looking to kind of model it on a slightly softer version of their authoritarian rule. That's kind of my question. I was hoping you were to come on and give the 13 keys for Jelani to maintain power within

Syria, Lichtman style. But if you're not willing to do that, make predictions. I am just, like, just on this scale from, I guess, what is the range? Is the scale, could this could end up anything kind of like Turkey, where it's sort of an Erdogan model all the way to this could be like the Taliban in Afghanistan? Or like what are the comps, what people are thinking might be possibilities? Turkey is going to have a huge say in this. They've been dealing with HTS for seven, eight years.

I mean, their corner of Idlib, where they started to really ply their trade in terms of governance and state building and everything from enforcing traffic rules to COVID relief plans, to all of this stuff. I mean, that was done at the pleasure of the Turks. There's Turkish garrisons in Idlib, protecting them with artillery.

All of the cross border commerce was through Turkey, money aid, you know. So they have leverage here, they have skin in the game. And I think the United States is now, I mean, there was a New York Times article, the Biden administration is doing an assessment on who and what is HTS and what is their relationship with Turkey.

If it turns out that the Turkish relationship is even profounder than we thought in terms of intelligence coordination and infiltration, then the West has some skin in the game here because they will use Turkey as their kind of intermediary with HTS. People are starting to talk about delisting HTS. The Brits are kind of mulling it over. Well, if they're the de facto government, we don't want Syria to become a failed state. We don't want them sanctioned up the waza. We're going to have to deal with them in some way.

Early days yet. Early days. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The bottom line is America still has, what, 800, 900 soldiers in eastern Syria. The Syrian Democratic forces have also bitten off more than they can chew because the regime and the Russians pulled out. Just yesterday, the US was able to bomb ISIS camps in Badia in areas that had been governed above by Russian air power and below by this hollow SAA force, the Assad regime. And suddenly ISIS is getting their clock cleaned in the East. So it's not as bad as it may seem because there are players on the ground, including

American allies, that will have eyes and ears, and they'll have some influence and leverage now. Yeah? The other question that I had, just listen to your kind of description of the husk that collapsed, like the big reason why it collapsed is what you just said, like the Russian backing, right? Like the Russian and Iranians have been weakened based on what's happening in other theaters and it just they didn't have the interest, I guess, in intervening. I mean, wouldn't that have been the way for Assad to hold power? He would have needed them to intervene one over the other?

I mean, you know, there are two moments that I would love to have been, well, more than two, but in recent years, two moments I'd love to have been a fly on the wall as Putin was getting his briefings. The first is when the Russians invaded Ukraine and Kiev not only did not fall in three days, but they ended up getting booted out of Kiev and then a lightning counteroffensive in Kharkiv and then Kherson. Where's the Russian intelligence assessment of the Ukrainian fighting capability? Similarly, now, who's the guy who had to tell Putin that Assad and his army melted

away, didn't put up a fight, melted away, and in the space of, what, not even two weeks, it all just fell apart and crumbled, such that Putin said, screw it, I'm not coming to the rescue this time around. And the Iranians too. What a busted flush this guy is. All the blood and treasure invested by two, one regional power, one nuclear armed hyperstate in Europe now invading its next door neighbor over the course of a decade, more than a decade, and the guy simply just collapsed. And he didn't even, I mean, he didn't put out the last fight, he just boarded a plane and flew to

Russia. I mean, you know, he and Yanukovych can do a kind of new version of the odd couple, can stream it on Netflix. I mean, you know, two asshole dictators. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so if you're the Russians and the Iranians, there might even be a creeping sense of relief. Like, finally, we don't have to, we don't have to prop up this, you know, this paper tiger, the human toothbrush, as Christopher Hitchens used to call him. I want to be a fly on the wall when Assad has to go have dinner with Putin on one of those long tables.

And here's what's interesting, and this is also, I mean- The food checker? Exactly. The questions I have are the speed with which the Russians just pulled out, not from, again, the sort of their perches in the coast, but all of the other forward operating bases, air bases, that they had occupied.

That suggests to me perhaps not just exasperation with Assad, but more of a vulnerability, weakness on the Russian side than we have yet fathomed, right? Possibly because of the attrition that they're suffering in Ukraine. Even Donald Trump tweeted the other day that Russia has suffered more than 600,000 fatalities slash casualties, which tracks more or less with what the Brits had put out publicly. And remember, Trump is now getting intelligence briefings. So is he basically declassifying through X as is his want?

I don't know. But the Russians are weaker than they were. Iran is, I don't know, it's like that scene in Rocky when Apollo is completely exhausted and just everybody's covered in blood and they're still kind of... I mean, Iran has nothing left here. Hezbollah was completely decimated. Shura Council wiped out. Their arsenal wiped out.

If they even had the arsenal that they were said to have had, 150,000 rockets. What's left to save here? The Iranians are already talking to HTS. The Russians are talking to HTS. The Syrian Revolutionary flag is now flying over the Syrian embassy in Moscow. What a humiliation. The Russians allowed that to happen. So the extra star, we're adding a star?

Is that the Syrian Revolutionary flag? The independence flag. It's actually more of a historical flag than the, it's the pre-Bathist one. But anyway, I think that a lot of people are beginning to reckon or strike these new accommodations with dawning realities. That they pushed too far, they projected too much power, and now is the time for retrenchment. Which is interesting, and also it poses, dangerously so, but nonetheless, an opportunity for the West here. Not to do too much itself, but to start negotiating with different players to further weaken Iran's

presence in the region. And frankly, if this culminates with Russia getting kicked out of the Eastern Mediterranean, that's going to put a damper on a lot of things, including their ability to intervene in Africa, because Khamenei Air Base is what they use for resupplies and so on to go from Europe to Africa. Otherwise, the supply routes are too circuitous. I mean, our enemies have kind of, they took a bloody nose and the new guy, the new sheriff in town, he's saying he doesn't want to have a quarrel with us. Well, I've seen that movie before, but you know, it's early.

It can't be any worse than Assad, right? I guess we've been down that path before. Something can always be worse than what came before. It's just, I really want people to appreciate the depth of depravity and cruelty that this regime has inflicted, not just on its own people, but keep in mind, and this is what gets me about somebody like Tulsa Gabbard. I can at least appreciate, I don't agree or necessarily respect, but I understand a sort

of Kissingerian Realpolitik, well, he's an awful dictator, but we have to do business with him because the alternative is worse or we have bigger fish to fry and we need it, right? Whatever. I've heard that before. You know, that's just IR Theory 101. She goes to Damascus. She meets with this guy. He's not our enemy.

Excuse me. Excuse me. He spent years importing foreign jihadists, including people who ended up joining al-Qaeda in Iraq, sending them into Iraq to blow up American and British and coalition forces, as well as Iraqi troops, as well as Iraqi civilians. There's a great piece in The Guardian about how the Iraqi intelligence service,

they were actually good actors in the Iraqi intelligence service, anatomized an operation plotted in Zabadani in Syria that consisted of Al-Qaeda operatives and the Syrian Ba'ath party to basically import explosives into Iraq and blow up the health ministry and Iraqi government institutions, killing hundreds of people. This is Assad. Okay, when he presents himself as secular, as the protector of minorities, no, that's propaganda and bullshit designed to persuade gullible actors in the West who are terrified of what may come if he's not in power anymore. But I

see Christians celebrating his demise, who'd have thunk it? You know, to listen to JD Vance, they're going to be put to the sword immediately. So things are a little more complicated than they seem here, you know, and again, you have to take it day by day. And let's not project our own fantasies onto a part of the world that is hard enough to understand how it got to be the way it is, much less where it's going from here. All right. Last thing, you spoke powerfully at the beginning about just these prisons.

It's horrible. And you're right. Like, you could use the word depravity. And just the depths of depravity of Assad, it's like the most horrific regime in the world, probably, over the past decade. One of, for sure, yes. So one of those prisoners is American, Austin Tice. President Biden spoke briefly about the believing that he might still be alive. He was a freelance journalist and a veteran that was kidnapped, God, over a decade ago now. Do you have any sense for that or any other potential American interests? I don't. I know Austin.

When I was covering Syria in 2011, might have been the beginning of 2012, he and I connected over Twitter. I was actually leaving southern Turkey and he had just arrived. My fixer became his fixer. So he got into Syria, and then he and I were staying in touch. He was doing incredible reporting for McClatchy. And because of his military background, his reporting was even more powerful,

because he understood sort of the dynamics with air power and all the rest of the things that are foreign to me, or at least at the time were foreign to me. And I never believed that he was captured by jihadis. There was a video put out, you know, showing him being taken up a hill. But the guys in the video, for jihadis, I mean, it looked like they had their clothes freshly pressed at the dry cleaner. It was all very staged and artificial, right?

And then lo and behold, it turned out the regime had captured him. I mean, look, I hope to God this guy is alive. He's a great journalist. He's a friend. He's been through hell. I don't know the state in which anyone's gonna find him at this point, because you've seen some of the detainees, the prisoners, the hostages really of Sednaya.

I mean, one was a medical student taken 13 years ago who has complete total amnesia, it seems. He's memory loss of everything. Yeah, I have no, I mean, honestly, if I knew where he was, I wouldn't be talking to you about it. I would... Yeah, I know. Yeah, I just thought, you know, there's buzz, there's discussions, and I'm sure rumors,

et cetera. No, for sure. And, you know, but again, you have this country that is honeycombed with torture facilities, dungeons, places to keep human beings alive, such as it is. And I think everybody's now trying to scramble to figure out where these facilities, where these sort of pockets are. So, you know, it's again, it's too soon to tell. But I have no doubt if he's been kept by the regime, then he will be found. Michael Weiss, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Much happening. Much happening. And then as we have a transition into the next administration, I think that we will have much to discuss about foreign policy in the new year as well. So thanks for coming back on so quickly and we'll be talking to you again soon. Okay. My pleasure. All right. Thanks, Michael Weiss. Everybody else, we'll be back here you again soon. Okay, my pleasure. All right. Thanks Michael Weiss.

Everybody else will be back here tomorrow with another edition of the Bullork podcast. See you all then. Peace. I don't 23rd and fake, half naked and joking high And when I come through swinging, you can hear me singing I said nothing really matters Nothing really matters Nothing really matters Yeah, cause if you did I couldn't handle it And anyone can have a go If you wanna touch me, let me know

When I'm at my lowest low That's when I'm most comfortable I must go up to the world And when I come through the swan-y You can hear me singing And on the pavement, I'm a leader You can hear me whisper Nothing really matters Nothing really matters

Nothing really matters Nothing really matters Yeah, cause if it did I couldn't handle it So count me wise, I know you'll with tonight I guess You can count me with, I know you'll with tonight You can count me with, I know you'll with tonight I guess You can count me with, then I will tonight