The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Are the Winds Finally Shifting?

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

Orbán’s loss in Hungary was so overwhelming he couldn’t cheat his way out of it. But the decisive defeat for both Putin and authoritarianism may also suggest that the vibes they are a changin’. For instance, at home, Trump had to take down his Jesus post because of the backlash from across the political spectrum. People can see he’s flailing on the war and the economy. Plus, Vance has the stink of a loser, Dems can learn some campaigning tricks from Peter Magyar, the Melania-Epstein mystery continues, Trump and Marco are likely to regret those images from the UFC fight, and The Bulwark remains Team Pope Leo.Bill Kristol joins special guest host, Sarah Longwell.show notes This week's Focus Group pod with sad, mad GOP base voters Bill's "Bulwark on Sunday" with Sarah Matthews Monday's "Morning Shots," with David Baer from Budapest Pre-order Sarah’s book, How to Eat an Elephant, coming in September! Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/BULWARK and use promo code BULWARK at checkout.

and welcome to the Bullwork podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bullwork, and I'm sitting in for my good buddy, Tim Miller. I didn't have my pearls today, but I'm going to try this hat for just a minute. Actually, Bill, what do you think of the hat? Excellent. But you look better in it than Tim Miller.

I'm going to just say that for the record. But you can take it off. You can take it off now. You've made the point. It's over. Okay, well, just because I am sitting in for Tim since he is, nobody works anymore, Bill. No one works anymore, these kids.

Except for us, you know. Except for us. I know. But just because you don't have Tim doesn't mean you don't get Bill Crystal. Bill Crystal's here to join me. After a action-packed news-filled weekend, so many things happened. In fact, Monday hasn't slowed down one bit. We have this morning Donald Trump posting himself as Jesus. He is in a hot war with the Pope. America has now closing itself the Strait of Hormuz. And most importantly, and where I want to start is with the big election in Hungary, where Victor Orban yesterday was defeated resoundingly, resoundingly. And for people who maybe at a macro level say, I know Orban's a bad guy, and I'm glad he lost, but maybe they don't understand all of the implications, both for Europe and for us. So I thought, Bill, I'd just turn it over to you and let you set the stage for why yesterday's election was so important. Happy too, and it was important, and I found it exciting and moving, really, when you saw

the scenes from Budapest and elsewhere in Hungary and read about what everything that had happened to make this possible. I do think we're living in a new world, and I was at this long-scheduled kind of social get-together yesterday afternoon and evening, and checking my phone constantly for updates on the Hungarian returns, looking at this one website that had me too. And I don't speak Hungarian, needless to say, but luckily they had like the colors. You could see the blue dots increasing in the, in the Hungarian parliament and actually getting over two thirds, which is important. So Orban's been in Paris since 2010.

He's been the model of what he called illiberal democracy. He used that term proudly way back 2011, 2012, something like that. And it became a kind of an inspiration and a calling card for authoritarians around the world, including here for MAGA for Trump world, Bannon and people like that, close to him, various American conservative right-wingers went to Hungary and set up camp there. Obviously, as recently as this was last week,

JD-Vantz went to Hungary and had a big rally with Orban. So, you know, it's a small country, and you've got to be careful, obviously, that extrapolating the results too literally almost, but the fact that he lost overwhelmingly, having really consolidated power, suppressed opposition media, imagine Trump had power for like 10 years doing what he's doing today.

So it's not just CBS News and X that are controlled, but it's everything except for the bulwark, basically, a couple of websites. And it's every business is kind of in league with him, not just some of them and so forth. So the fact that the Hungarian people were able to do what they did is really inspiring. And it seems like it's going to hold. It was such an overwhelming victory, Orbán's. Orban did a lot of things to monkey with the elections,

but it didn't end up mattering. It doesn't look like. Huge defeat for Putin. Orban also within the EU has been one of the main apologists for Putin has stopped certain actions against Putin. And so that's important, I think. Yeah, so really a defeat for global illiberalism and authoritarianism and a real inspiration. And I think the one thing I will say is I just highest regard for the Hungarian people for pulling this off. I mean, I might go old enough to remember, you know, 1989, obviously the fall of the Berlin wall, very exciting. And Americans, many friends of mine, went over to Central and Eastern.

to Europe to try to help them set up, you know, a functioning democracy. And they did, I mean, a lot of them did good things. And they helped, I think, get things going there. And many of those places are still very functioning democracies. Hungary is a failure. In this case, so maybe now we'll get a success story. But it's the opposite here. We can really learn from what they did. And I think we have to have real humility and sort of abandon our usual. We're Americans. We're the place with the sort of 50-year-old democracy and these other places are struggling to kind to imitate us. We now have to try to imitate what the Hungarian people have done and what the movement that Peter Magyar led has accomplished. Yeah, let's talk about some of that, because of course,

I basically learned all about Hungarian politics in, you know, the last week or so and started going deep on it. And one of the things about the opposition, Petjar Magyar, is that how you pronounce his name? I think so, Peter, yeah, Petar, yeah, whatever they say in Hungarian, but yes. You can call it Pete. You can go on Pete. You can go on Pete. He's our buddy, you know. But he was basically a version of a never-trumper, right? He was sort of a center-right.

He used to be in Orban's party was an actual Orbanist for a period of time who then joined the opposition party and began to lead it. That was an interesting wrinkle to me because one of the things that I think people who are looking at this for the first time might not know is they might assume that Magyar is the liberal opposition candidate. but he is not. He's sort of a center right who also was tough on immigration, but he is somebody who believes in liberal democracy. And so it's not a straightforward analogy to sort of the Democrats rising up in America. So can you talk about that a little? No, I think that's, as I understand it,

also having learned much more about Hungarian politics the last week, that's very true. But I knew people who were in touch with sort of old-fashioned liberals, good people, Apple people have been fighting of Orban for 10 years in Hungary. And there was a little touch of resentment's too strong, but like a little, you know, irony in the fact that he is the leader and he will be now the prime minister of Hungary, president, I guess it is of Hungary, and not one of the sort of people who stood up to Orban the longest. But Magyar certainly broke with Orban, and he did so decisively. I think that's really important to say. So it's a little more like the never Trump is. I mean, he's later, more like Liz Cheney in the sense that she was, you know, went along with Trump longer than we did, you know,

and didn't face until January 6th. I mean, I think Orban maybe a little more like that. It would be as if Nikki Haley and Mike Pence had, I was trying to think of a good analogy, you know, had sort of turned against Trump and run against him, but then really stayed against him and become the leader of the opposition instead of, in the Nikki Haley's case, endorsing Trump in 2024, and Pence's case going off to do whatever, you know, within the Republican Party. But, I mean, one forgets, Orban had been a Democrat.

I met Orban back in May 8, these early 2000s, he was a real star of the had been, as a very young man of the Hungarian Democratic opposition. After he lost one race to a populist, and I think 2004, he totally flipped and became what he became, which was embraced the populism, the nativism, and all that sort of stuff. And then Putin, as Putin was rising too. The left in Hungary deserves a lot of credit for going along with Magyar as the leader. Again, it would be as if the entire Democratic Party, decided to support Liz Cheney or a, you know, more outspoken Mike Pence or something in

2024 or 2028 for that matter, or maybe Adam Kinsinger, if you want to have a slightly less shocking example. And they did. Magyar is a very talented politician clearly. And that's also show, but I'm just pure talent, you know, and talent, but also a vision of building a movement, not just a party. People I talk to, and we have a piece on the website this morning and morning shots by David Baer, who's covered hungry for us and has been way ahead of the curve. He thought Orrond was in trouble a year ago when people thought it's impossible. Anyway, David has an excellent piece, making the point. Magyar saw himself as leading a social movement.

And when you see those videos, it is, right? It's tens of thousands of people in city after city and small towns even in Hungary, embracing Magyar. He channeled a lot of the historic opposition to Russia, way back to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which was obviously crushed by the Soviet Union, and used some of the chance from that era, some of the slogans from that era, to turn against Orban and against Orban subservience to Putin. So they use social media and non-print media, non-traditional media,

which they didn't have any access to in Hungary, very, very effectively. So probably a lot of lessons there, both in the sense of Magyar being the leader, but also everyone agreeing to consolidate behind them, which again, I give the left credit. It was a bitter pill for them to swallow. Magyar didn't, I think he's fine on democracy. and I think he's fine on the basic issues of tolerance and civil rights. But he didn't make a big issue of some of the stuff the left.

And people like us, honestly, would have in the U.S. made a big issue of with very different circumstances. And he didn't run away from it. He just didn't make it the center of his appeal and ran a very broad-based campaign that made a lot of conservatives who had voted for Orrbott in the past. Think about the swing. You work on this all the time. Persuasion, not just mobilization.

There was a high turnout election. So there was some mobilization. of people who hadn't voted before. But you get a swing like this, or you're talking 30 points or something, you're getting a huge, large number of people who had voted for Orban before feeling comfortable voting for Magyar.

Yeah, I mean, some of the things that I read about what Magyar did, to me, were just fascinating examples of how you do this. Number one, like you said, Orban controls the media. And I do, I do want to draw some comparisons to the United States,

because it is fair to say, and we're going to get to J.D. Vance in a minute, but it's very fair to say that the Trump administration is actively following a lot of the Orban playbook. Like I think Hungary, like CPAC went to Hungary. The conservative right has been observing what Orban has been doing. And I would say Project 2025 was very Orbondist in what it was trying to accomplish. But one of the things that Maguire did was he started in 2024, so a couple of years ago. And because they had shut down like a free press, he went in person.

all over the country. He was just, he went everywhere, especially to rural areas and spoke to them directly. And I think that this ability to think about the fact that Trump is, of course, buying up the information infrastructure. He and his allies selling TikTok, CBS, Washington Post. Like, if you watch that, it is very reminiscent. But we still have a lot more access to opposition media here in this guy, I mean, by a million times. So how did he do it without access to the media? He did it like hand-to-hand combat. He went everywhere and made the case and brought people over to his side. And I think that that is, it's almost like an energy thing.

It's the ability to say if it really depends on it, here's what I'm going to do. It's shoe leather. It's going. It's meeting people. It's making the explanation. That level of leadership is really something. You don't have to travel far to lend a helping hand. When neighbors help neighbors, hope can blossom.

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Learn more and volunteer at peopleof hope. When I was also reading about it, I was staggering to me the extent to which the chips were stacked in favor of Orban. It's not just that they had the media. It's not just that they had the courts. They also had Putin and J.D. Vance. So let's talk about J.D. Vance because this is where not only has the Trump administration been following the Orban playbook, but they actively decided to go and campaign for Victor Orban. J.D. Vance went there. Bill, talk about what level of defeat this is for Trump and for J.D. Vance. Yeah, I mean, Trump, I guess, did a few posts about it and had welcomed Orban earlier at Mara Lago, as I recall just a few months ago. But yeah, they sending Vance. Rubio was there, I guess, right after that Vance this week and explicitly endorsing Orban, rallying with him. There's a photo of the two of them, you know, holding their arms up together and so forth.

In the old days, when there was a sort of liberal versus authoritarian, type referendum, you know, you could sort of assume the U.S. was probably on the side of the liberals implicitly would be on their side and maybe a little bit of help. Now it's the opposite, right? I mean, the people of Hungary repudiated both Putin and Trump and Orvon. It's pretty impressive. And as you say, without many levers of power at their disposal. So they certainly use the ones they had. I hope it has a big effect. I think it'll have an effect in Europe. I mean, obviously there's been many countries that are teetering between the populist authoritarians on the one hand, liberal Democrats and the broad sense of liberal and Democrat on the other.

There's back and forth in some of these countries, Poland, Slovakia, elsewhere, or Czech Republic. And so this has got to make other people think, hey, if the Hungarians can go down this path, we can too. And I hope it makes Americans think that. I do think, you know, I kind of feel like, geez, if the Hungarians can repudiate Trump advance, can't we repudiate Trump advance? It's kind of easier for us, as you say.

We're not as nearly as far down the road to authoritarianism as they are. and we have a long tradition, a much longer tradition of liberal democracy than Hungary. So I don't want to overstate it. Obviously, there are many zigson's eggs in the fight against authoritarianism. And many countries have gone, you know, the right direction, and others have gone in the long direction, Bolsonaro lost in Brazil that other people have won. You know, it's been a very much of a mixed bag in the last several years. This was such a explicit referendum.

He was one of the first, one of the first of the ill-liberal Democrats. And as you say, so prominently, by all these Trumpists and maga types in the U.S. That I think it's a little more significant than maybe just, you know, sort of different elections that have gone back and forth around the world. Yeah, I mean, Bill, when you and I were starting out in our Trump opposition, right? You and I were the OGs together. And we were, you know, working ourselves up about what we could do.

And we started going, you know, trying to learn more about the environment. It's when I started doing focus groups. But it was also, I think, when it, I realized just how much. Trump was part of a global phenomenon at the time. In large part, I think at its most basic level, there's all kinds of things that feed into this, but at its most basic level, it seemed to be a bit of an authoritarian backlash against mass migration to a lot of different countries, right, and including ours. I do wonder now if, you know, we're 10 years on here, they were 16 years on in Hungary, because remember, these are people who voted for Orban in the first place, just the way people here voted for Trump.

But the economic stagnation that is basically post-COVID that caused the inflationary environment, that ended up getting Joe Biden, right? He was part of the incumbent wave where sort of all the incumbents lost in that post-COVID inflationary environment. Is it possible, though, that we are at the beginning of a global backlash to the competitive authoritarianism of Orban that is basically like, okay, we tried? you guys out, you authoritarians. And actually all we got for it was a ton of corruption, which by the way, that is another lesson I would really like to point out. I think in this country, this is also what happened in Russia. Like the way that you could get at a lot of these leaders, and Trump, this is another place where he borrows the playbook almost exactly, which is how to be completely corrupt and give everything out to your buddies and enrich them and enrich yourself.

but is it possible that this is a beginning of a global backlash against these corrupt authoritarians? Yeah, I mean, for one thing, as you said, it's harder to be an authoritarian in power than to be a demagogue out of power, and Trump has twice defeated incumbent parties, the Democrats, in 2016 and then 2024. And now having been elected, he's now unpopular again,

and they're going to have a big defeat, I think, in 2026, assuming it's free and fair election. So, you know, I think it's just harder to govern and they get blamed for their poor policies, which genuinely, in Orban's case and in Trump's, this is a good, I think, comparison, are poor policies. And as people had the sense that Orban's policies were hurting them. It wasn't just that, you know, globalization and technology,

that could also become a grievance, and that could be a legitimate grievance in some cases, and it certainly could be demagogue, as Trump has shown, and others have shown. But this was particular policies Orban was pursuing that were just, Hungarians could look across the borders to Romania and to other countries and say, well, those countries are doing okay in the last 15 years, you know, again,

whatever their internal issues like we have with, you know, I suppose, with distribution of wealth and so forth. But basically the living standards have going up and not so much in Hungary, population's been decreasing. So I think the degree, there's a good comparison there with some of Trump's policies. I think, but I think your point about the global character is really important. I mean, it turned out in retrospect that Brexit, the summer of 2016, was a real harbinger of Trump, right?

I mean, the global populist movement was going to start winning some victories. And Brexit was a close thing in Britain and Trump's victory. Obviously, in 2016, it was very close and somewhat flukish even in the electoral college in the U.S. But people like, and this made me think about the 70s, which you weren't boring yet, but it really helped us young Reaganites. It helps give us a sense that the wind was at our back and sort of momentum was on our side when Thatcher won in 79 in Britain. And then this is a bit of a stretch, but Pope John Paul took over in the end of 79 and went to Poland and, you know, he was a great anti-communist. So if you were a young anti-communist, you had had a rough time with Vietnam and the Bidsevades and Carter and all the defeats.

And suddenly there was a sense of, no, you know what, you can fight back. And suddenly it's like, I don't know, maybe Thatcher's the way of the future, not Jimmy Carter or not sort of, you know, having to kind of exceed to communism in a sort of detente, Henry Kissinger way. and not to torture this in this comparison too much, but I think they benefited on the right from the sense that liberalism was the way of the future, don't you think? We were the ones sort of defending the old institutions and the old ways.

I think we were right to. I think the world is better off with those with the post-World War II order, but we were kind of playing defense, and you tried, and we tried to turn the defense into offense, but it helps to have the sense that it's happening elsewhere. I do think Hungary is not Britain. It's not a swallow country

and less connected to us, obviously. And the Pope analogy is pretty good, incidentally, though, right? I mean, having a Pope who sort of is speaking for what you believe and also came out of nowhere, right? John Paul was the first not Italian Pope in 400 years, I think, and then the first is American Pope. So some of these analogies are a little, are kind of striking. And, again, I do think it just helps practically.

For all the people say, Americans don't care about the world, and there's some truth to that, you want to have a sense that you're in sync with some other people else, in the world, you know? Yeah, I mean, I think there's the wind at the back point. I also just think, you know, JVL, our great friend JVL, and I have this talk a lot, and when he's doing dark JVL, and he's feeling especially bleak, one of the things he's always hitting me with is Sarah, how are we going to rebuild after this? How do we ever get back to something after we've cratered our credibility and we've destroyed so many of these institutions? And by the way, they're in Hungary,

they did a very similar thing to Doge, right, where they got rid of all the people who ran their their institutions. And it's a tough thing to look at what's happening in America and think, well, how do we get back to this thing that we used to be, right, where we had a clear sense of who we were and our role in the world. And I just think Hungary is a little bit of a slice of hope against that that you can now, to be fair, I don't want to overstate it just like you. You know, we are, this guy just won. Then he says he's going to go dismantle many of the illiberal things that that Orban has done, but we'll see. And obviously, America and Hungary are quite different. The impact of our role in the world is deeply different. The fact that we've betrayed our values

with Trump is, like, it has just a much bigger impact on everybody else. So they're not one-to-one comparisons, but I should, and I'd like it to. It gave me hope. What I like about it for America is to see what it means to have people who once voted for Orban, once supported Orban, turn on him aggressively. And to see that that, there's this, sense in America that we are so polarized, and of course we are, that something like this could never happen. But I think history moves on, right? These guys become the old guys. I mean, I'll just take, just because we're talking about two things here, but Trump posting a picture of himself today as Jesus, not being held by Jesus, not as the Pope, not earthly figures, which he has done in the past, because he is a

narcissistic, lunatic. But today, he posted a picture of himself as Jesus. And the evangelical community is up in arms. And there is a little bit of me that wants to say, oh, did you notice that he's a terrible person? Is that something that you're just waking up to? Good morning. Welcome to the party, pal. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that part of why you're seeing such an enormous backlash against this, this is everywhere today, the fact that Trump did this, and lots of evangelicals are, who normally are very supportive of Trump, are freely upset about it. I don't think that they would be as willing to criticize Trump the way that they are today if Trump weren't flailing to some degree.

If people didn't feel like the winds are shifting a bit. And this is what can happen. The winds start to shift. People realize the guy's a lame duck. They realize he's failing at his job. He realized that the people that they called names going into the last election were correct. And they're starting to move to get on the right side. And that is how things shift.

I don't know if you agree with that. I'm just making a statement now. Yeah, no, totally. And I mean, and sadly, I mean, you've been tracking this very closely. People have moved against Trump. I mean, again, if you want to think of the analogy here, I mean, Orban lost X percentage. I don't know the exact numbers of his supporters. He had been, I think, 160% or something in the 50s, certainly in 2020 in the last election. And now this election, he gets maybe more like 40% of the popular vote. It's a little hard to figure that out, actually, for the way that's very complicated electoral system they have. Anyway, and Trump himself got almost 50% in 2024, and is now at, I don't know, 39% I saw on the CBS,

you got a poll, which is a pretty mainstream poll, I'd say. Not usually a terribly bad point for Trump, actually. No, and they're all hovering. And they're all hovering at 40. It's very, yeah. 50 to 40 is a pretty quick drop. I mean, it's not that different for Robo. I mean, he'd have to go down another, you know, 10 points to your favorite, 32%, you know,

push a number to really be in Orban territory, I guess. But incidentally, the Orban drop also came late. the real collapse came as the momentum built, which is another hopeful sign perhaps for 2026 or 28 or maybe we're already have that momentum now. I guess what you think with him flailing. I feel like these things do become a little self-reinforcing people. They do. Once you see some of your peers deserting Trump and also saying, you know what, he's flailing, then somehow it's not like you and me have been saying it for years. It's like, oh, okay,

I guess I can say that too, right? I do think that's happening a bit now. Those are those pesky permission structures I always talk about with the voters. I've got a quick word from our sponsor, Delete Me. Delete Me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. With Delete Me, you can protect your personal privacy or the privacy of your business from doxing attacks before sensitive information can be exploited. The New York Times wire cutter has named Delete Me their top pick for data removal services. It's easier than ever to find personal information about people online, having your address, phone number and family members' names hanging out on the internet can have actual consequences

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not only did J.D. Vance go campaign for Orban, as we just discussed, so therefore put his stamp all over the defeat, the Trump administration's stamp all over the defeat. In fact, I was gratified to see that it appeared that when he went there and gave his speech, it actually caused Orban's approval to drop. It actually caused his polling to drop. So J.D. Vance really does seem to have the sort of the kiss of death, especially this weekend. He's having a particularly embarrassing stretch after being somebody who, you know, was good. going to be like the no more stupid wars. We're never doing these things in the Middle East now to have to sort of drag Trump's war around with him. Number one, number two, the Orban defeat. And then number three, Trump was like, hey, I'm going to a UFC fight with Marco Rubio. Hey, J.D. Vance, you go deal with the Iranians and do that negotiating in Pakistan. And, you know, he comes out on, I don't know if it was Saturday morning or it was Friday night, but it was basically like, yeah, no deal. We couldn't get one. It turns out actually this stuff's hard.

Turns out if you just start a war and negotiate later, it gets hard. What did you make of them sending JD Vance, of the failure of J.D. Vance? And also, this has led us directly to the fact that now the Strait of Hormuz once again is completely locked down. And I don't know where things are going this week, but we very well could be in a hot war again any minute. Well, just to begin with the least important thing, I suppose, which is going to the cage matches with Rubio. I had a billwork on Sunday yesterday, Sarah Matthews, our colleague and former deputy press secretary in 2020, to Trump, who therefore knows Trump. You know, much better than we do and knows the Trump white hells. It still talks to people who talk to people, to people who are there.

I asked her on boardwork on Saturday yesterday, did Rubio invite himself to that? How does it work? I mean, does Trump invite you or do you sort of angle for an invitation? And she said, well, people are always angling, of course, to be close to Trump and invite him. But no, Trump, in this respect, Trump knows what he's doing, right? Trump wanted to have Rubio. He didn't have to have Walker Rubio. I mean, you don't think, I don't think UFC championship fights.

I don't think Marco Rubio is the obvious guy to have. There are a million other people in Trump's orbit who are kind of, you know, like that stuff better probably. But he's wanted to toy with Vance somehow and maybe have Rubio there. I don't know, which is more insulting that you're at Secretary of State and you're at some match in Miami and not at running the most important negotiations that the Trump administration has been engaged yet in foreign policy. Maybe it's a consolation prize for Rubio, but maybe it's also sticking it to Vance a little bit and Trump playing, you know, kind of cute games with Vance and Rubio and so forth.

Trump's certainly capable of that. But, I mean, on the substance, I mean, they are flailing. They didn't reach the deal. They had hoped to reach the ceasefire, I guess, is still holding on the eye. And Trump then announces he's closing the straight. It's little unclear who he's closing it to. and how we're going to enforce this, but oil prices promptly went up, you know, about 10 bucks, I think, overnight. Andrew Hager has a good piece on this, and warning shots.

I mean, the flailing, the back and forth now is gotten ridiculous. The one thing he doesn't want to do, I do think this is, you may still change his mind, of course, is sending ground troops. I mean, all the bombing, the closing of the strait are all ways of avoiding sending in ground troops to really try to destabilize the regime or to really guarantee the opening of the strait. I'm not force sending in ground troops. I have no trust that these guys could do it competently. And I'm against the whole war has been so misconceived. I'm against making it even bigger. Don't get me wrong.

But this is sort of a box Trump's got himself into. And I don't know quite where it goes. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm worried, Pacific. Always could escalate. I had a good conversation last night with Pete Wayne, our friend, who has been very interested in the psychology of Trump. I'm more than I have. I've been a little, I'd say, I'm not interested enough in it,

because I just sort of think it can be a bit of a distraction, and we should just focus on the, levers of power and the sort of the fight and not so much on analyzing him, which is a little bit of an endless rabbit hole. But I've got to say Pete's been good on this. And some of our colleagues have been good on this. Pete made the point that he's pretty worried. And I am that, you know, just as Trump gets frustrated and we're desperate and watches the polls going down and the Iranians not doing what he wants and Orban losing, the lashing out can get more and more dangerous. I mean, the destabilization of his own psyche. Whatever one thought of him in the past, and God knows, there was plenty of

destabilization and plenty of terrible, terrible things. One also sort of thought that he was canny in a way and a little bit pulled back for the brink of doing really catastrophic things for himself for the country. He kind of knew that, you know, those would not help him, even if only for his own personal self-interest. But I don't know. What do you think about that? I mean, how worried should we be just about the personal kind of meltdown and unhinging of Trump? I would worry about it, a great deal. I mean, and I even think, like, last night, when he, in the middle of the night, he kept posting and posting. And one of them was this thing of Trump as Jesus. I mean, he's a, and these long screeds against the Pope. I mean, I don't know. In any other time

in American politics, don't you think everyone would say, I'm sorry, he's lost his mind? And this is really scary. Why is the president of the United States who is in the middle of this negotiation for this insane war that he started without Congress. He doesn't go himself. He hosts this enormous UFC fighter goes, men takes Margo Rubio, whatever. The one place where Donald Trump is still going to get an unreservedly warm reception, probably a UFC fight, if that is the case, it's cute playing them off each other, it's Trump playing mind games with Vance and Rubio, well, that in itself is an insane thing to be doing with American foreign policy. And you're right, though. I also looked at it And I was like, I don't know who he's, like, who's getting the shaft here in this?

Is it, is it Vance? Because Trump's like, I'm going to take Rubio with me. Vance, you go handle this horrible thing over here that is a, that is a total catastrophic mess that I've made. And also that you were the one person against. And now you're leaking to people that you're against it. Or is it, no, Marco, I'm going to let J.D. handle this, even though your secretary of state and maybe the only person in my cabinet who has any legitimate experience, you know, I mean, because what? They're going to send Trump's builder buddy Whitkoff and his son-in-law, neither of whom, both of whom

have conflicts in the Middle East who actively make money or lose money depending on what happens over there. So, like, those are not our best negotiators. And so he sends those three in Vance, that's a strange choice. Anyway, I just didn't know what to make of all of it. All I did know is that when gas is seven bucks, remember that picture of Trump at the UFC fight with Marco Rubio. I mean, here's what's happening with voters. It's very simple.

They do not tolerate the price increases, I guess, at least not for any length of time. And over and over now with swing voters and even with Trump voters, the episode I released this weekend with Amy Walter, that was a group of two and three-time Trump voters, all of whom are extremely down on Trump and horrified by what's happening and frustrated that prices are still going up, which, by the way, just to take it back really quickly to Peter Magyar, he ran on health care. affordability and education. Like, that's what he ran on. And really on affordability and prices, because that's what people are frustrated about. They didn't want this war. No, I think that's right.

I mean, with Maggar, I think he ran in all those particular issues to make clear he was in touch with people's concrete frustrations, against the backdrop of a broader, can't go down this path of being Putin's lap dogs and being, you know, alienated from Europe and, you know, and not being a freedom of democratic nation.

So I think he did a good job of combining kind of the, let's call it the broad liberal democracy message, but making clear that that was not at the expense of caring an awful lot about and being very attuned to people's very concrete concerns, and then trying to tie them together, because, of course, for Hungary, you know, being at odds of the EU has practical consequences. The Trump sort of decompensation or whatever is scary, I think. I mean, honestly, in another world, if we had a non-maniac, a secretary of defense and a non-toddy, a secretary of state, and a serious person as chief of staff and stuff, they would be privately calling the congressional leadership

and say, you know what, you guys need to start impeach for proceedings, we're moving full proceedings here. And we're going to be, we're not going to say anything publicly. We're working for this guy, but we'll keep things under control here as much as we can. They'd be calling the military and saying, we want you to check things with us. If he ever calls you directly, as happened at the very late stage of Nixon. I mean, none of these guys is doing that,

which is one reason why it is genuinely a scary moment, I think. Yeah, I think the scariest part is, is that the two mechanisms that we have at our disposal in America are the 25th Amendment and impeachment. And I've seen a lot of renewed calls for the 25th Amendment, including from some on the right, it makes sense, right? Because people are watching him decompensate in real time, and it's starting to freak people out, including people as part of his own coalition. But unlike the first go-round, Trump 1.0, where you had a cabinet that could potentially, you could potentially convince of 25th Amendment.

Even now, of course, they didn't, and we really only heard them talking about it in the wake of January 6th. But you're just not going to get this cabinet, anyone in this cabinet, to do anything close to the 25th Amendment. You know, the impeachment failures of the last two, I think make impeachment a pretty unlikely.

People are like, I've seen this movie before. It's not even the voters don't like impeachment. They're just like, what's the point? But even before you get to the 25th Amendment, But again, which makes it even scary is we do know as a fact that from especially after November, after Election Day in 2020, the Justice Department, Bill Barr, Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, Secretary of Defense, Mark Esprey was then fired. But other people at defense who were still in touch with him, General Millie,

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, they did a lot to stop Trump from doing things that he wanted to do. That's right. That's right. We focus on January 6 itself, the date. But of course, those two months were very, very important. And Liz Cheney was involved behind the scene. and that's when she really broke, obviously, in a totally decisive way with Trump, and they organized that secretary's, former secretaries of defense letter.

Anyway, a lot of things happened within the government to provide some guardrails against Trump. None of that is happening. So you got a Republican Party control in Congress that hasn't yet broken in any significant way with Trump, at a cabinet that isn't doing anything even behind the scenes to check him, and he's decompensating. Yeah, that's not good. I do think that there's some incredibly on the nose. irony about Trump and Rubio going to watch two like greased up shirtless men beat the crap

out of each other. And they're like, see, this is what alphas do while there's an actual war that America is like teetering on the brink of is in and out of that is affecting us domestically. But it's like, no, we're going to go watch like greased up men beat each other up. We're not going to go do like our foreign policy jobs. You know, it's a good point. I hadn't really thought about just the visual. I mean, I was thinking so when I was in the White House ages and ages ago, what would have if they were in the middle of foreign policy crisis in a war and you aren't going to literally go to the front, let's say,

and what would you do? Well, you'd visit troops here. Yeah. You'd visit the people. You'd visit families here, maybe. You'd visit the soldiers who were deployed over there. You'd visit one of the bases from which the soldiers or sailors had deployed, and you'd sort of thank them from their home base and talking to their bob buddies who were

still here or getting ready to deploy. There are many places Donald Trump could go and take Rubio or hex with him that would be appropriate, you might say, last weekend. Yeah, a UFC fight maybe isn't one of them. So let's talk about the Pope really quickly, just a little bit more, because, like, he is really mad at the Pope. I have trouble with his truth socials now. You know, Twitter really was a much better medium for him, if nothing else, that it, back in the day, it curbed his ability to get real length. And now they're like genuinely difficult to read. They're so long. And they're obviously, they're the rantings of a deranged person. The Pope one is especially deranged. Why is he so mad at our American

Pope? Because our American Pope is an outstanding pretty traditional Catholic teachings about preferring peace to war and so forth. And I guess because he's American or I don't know, because it's having an effect. I mean, this is a question. Does he have reason to believe? Are people telling him this kind of actual practical political problem for him that the Pope is saying these things he may well be. He is the first American pope, after all. He's saying them in English. It's so striking to me. One is so used to watching popes speak Italian, basically. I guess even in John Paul's case, I think he'd speak Italian when he spoke to the kind of people press core, you know, abroad the plane. And here you see little clips and it's like the guy speaking

like English, not just English. He sounds like a guy from Chicago. It is kind of a little, I'm still not really used to that, I've got to say, you know. But I guess it has much more effect back here. I call him the bulwark pope too, but I can't even with the origin of that is. I mean, part of the fact that we like him and we think he might be kind of where we are and being sort of conservative-ish, but anti-Trump. But I mean, why do we call him the bulwark pope? I think it's exactly that. I think he's got, he's got like a maga brother who Trump's always truthing and being like his brother loves Trump. And so he's better. And this pope is, you know, I think like us, just a normal guy who previously kind of had some center-right cultural ways.

or different center-right positions who also, though, believes in liberalism and human flourishing and taking each life seriously and not demonizing different groups of people. And as a result, he finds himself in that very weird sweet spot of bulwark, those of us at the bulwark, but Trump hates him the same way Trump hates, particularly never-Trumpers. But to me, what's interesting about, well, there's a lot about it. that's interesting. Some of it is, again, goes to decompensation and also Trump clearly feeling under siege in a lot of different areas. But part of it is like J.D. Vance. And I do think J.D. Vance is really the through line of so many of these stories, right? J.D. Vance, this is a meme on social media

that is just a little bit funny about J.D. Vance being a cooler. You know, like the last Pope, he went and visited and then the Pope died. And then he went to Hungary. and campaigned with Orban and Orban gets crushed. And then he goes to Islamabad, Pakistan, to negotiate. And we find ourselves back in a war. Like, this is not a talented guy. And so, but the Catholic piece, you know, Jay Vance is a book out right now. His second book following Hillbilly Elegy.

And it's all about his conversion to Catholicism. I don't know if I could have imagined a series of events lining up so clearly to ensure that J.D. Vance doesn't have a political future. To have an American Pope actively dislike J.D. Vance, number one. Number two, J.D. Vance to run as an anti-war president while he's got to now carry around Trump's foreign adventurism, stupid Middle East war. And also just getting into a place where, like, voters just don't like him. People have a stink of a loser all over him by the time he tries to run in 2028. What is your assessment of the political prospects of one, J.D. Vance? From your ellipse to Gaziers, God knows who will end up as the nominee without Vance.

I don't think it's going to be Rubio. I think it could be someone more extreme. I mean, when these movements break apart, when these authoritarian movements break apart, they go in very unpredictable in different directions, different parts of them go in different directions. Some will be more radical. Some will be more fanatical. Some will be, you've got to get back to some version of normalcy. So we've got to go outside of politics. because we've got to come Trump family. I mean, God knows where they go. It's funny, we've been talking, though, about this.

I just, there's been so much you used the last three days. Melania Trump, that was kind of a big event. I haven't talked to you about it. I mean, we haven't talked to even all fair about it. So I just want to get your time. I discussed it at some length with, I think, a good conversation with Sarah Matthews, who had real insight, obviously, has insight into her and to how that works in the White House.

How does the First Lady, you know, giving a speech in the cross hall of the White House, which, just to be clear, is that's where presidents give major speeches from. where Trump gave his Iran speech from the week before standing at that podium. We've all seen the image. You walk down that red carpet to come to the podium there with a seal of the president on the lectern, which is supposed to be used for the president, with all due respect to the first lady. And then she arranges to give a five and a half minute speech about where which she defends

herself against charges of having been, you know, knowing what Epstein was up to and so forth without defending her husband at all. I don't know. What is that just, I mean, that's got to be another example of something Trump isn't very happy with and a bit of a meltdown in general in Trump world? I don't know. What do you make of it? Yeah, I mean, I didn't talk about you. JVL and I did talk about it, I think, on secret. But my general assessment just as like from a communications matter, when you look at that, the obvious thing is, okay, so she's trying to get ahead of something. There's a story that's about to come out.

I actually thought it was going to come out this weekend. I assumed it would. Now, I did see one explanation, or I would say that the explanation that seems to be out there is that her best friend, Melania's longtime best friend, had like her husband as a Trump friend and they got divorced. And so the husband tried to have her deported. So she's kind of in a rage state ready to tell all. Now, that may or may not be true. I don't know. But something.

There is, you don't do something like that without, especially one of the things that that seems so strange about it is it doesn't, it's not clear it was sanctioned by Trump or that Trump even knew it was going to happen. And I didn't hear what Sarah Matthews said about the actual interim. internal machinations, but the level of tight control around narratives like that from Trump, from the White House, like, that is a rogue move. So you got to think something else is coming. You know, now he's fired Bondi. He's looking for a new person in that role. I mean, look, you want to be so careful about saying the walls are closing in, the wheels are coming off.

You know, you think about Orban. I thought a lot about this with Orban with like 16 years he was There were clearly times when people thought you can't beat it, right? There's no way. But, you know, time goes on and people do get tired and events do matter. Like Joe Biden lost for a lot of reasons, but one of them and then Kamala Harris, one of them was just where inflation was. And people feeling, in fact, that was a major one. And so, like, I want people to not lose hope that nothing can change because, I do think whether it's Trump's age, which is a real issue, right, for I think he's lost a step.

Like, he's not the same person. He's the same person in the sense that he's evil and corrupt, but he's not the same person in that he is as good at deflecting it, as good as controlling the narrative as he once was. And at some point, the wheels can come off. And this feels as close as we've been in a long time. Yeah, and on the Biden point, I do think. In 2020, maybe well have been the right person because people wanted some reassurance and stability and so forth. So the almost 80-year-old, I guess he was late 70s.

And, you know, former vice president for eight years was kind of the right person to nominate and also a moderate Democrat. That's right. It's the easiest to win. But not the right person for 24, obviously. And Harris never just, I mean, whatever. She either didn't have a chance to or didn't succeed in defining herself as much other than Biden's vice president. So it was still sort of the status quo ante, you might say, running against Trump. I mean, one thing about Magyar, I know this is in common with Zelensky, who I think is also a very important figure if you think about the broader picture here.

So we have in Europe now two leaders, two anti-Puton leaders who have come, Magyar was more traditional, more traditional politician than Selensky had been, but are both young, both dynamic, both very talented and skilled politicians. And I got to think that's got to be the model for us. Maybe someone who hasn't been in politics that much, that would be Zelensky, but or someone who's been in politics but has sort of is different from. from a traditional politician repudiated his past to some degree as Magyard did. And then turned out to be a real talented leader of a broader movement than just a typical Paul who's adjusting his positions and stuff. I'm not sure who that is in the U.S. incidentally. And maybe our system isn't quite as well set up to make it as easy to penetrate.

Though Trump did, incidentally, I mean, speaking of people who hadn't been traditional politicians, I don't know, but I feel the generational change part with Maguire. I mean, Orban's obviously not nearly as old as Trump, but isn't that much older than Magyar. But being the credible candidate of change at a really a new start in a way that Biden couldn't have been. And Harris couldn't really, wasn't able to be either. I think that's very important going forward for 2028. I'll tell you somebody who is not going to be running for president in 2028, and that's Eric Swalwell. A guy who was once kind of an up-and-comer, he was leading in the gubernatorial race out in California.

He dropped out this weekend after what are a number. number of credible charges of sexual assault. I'll just leave it at sexual assault because there's a lot of different things flying around. And I got to say, my main takeaway from this, because this started Friday, he was out by Sunday. Democrats turned on him quickly once it was clear the allegations were proven, which actually led then a lot of people to say, oh, well, it was an open secret, what a kind of guy he was and how he behaved, which then led a lot of response to say, well, if this was such an open secret? Why didn't somebody say something sooner? And so there's a little bit of all of that going around. I have two main thoughts that I'm going to lay out. One is, I think it speaks well of Democrats

that when this kind of stuff comes out, like everybody abandoned him and they said, nope, we're not going to tolerate this. And he's out. And that is, in contrast, I think, to how Republicans have treated similar allegations, whether it is Gonzalez, who was one of the more recent ones, congressmen who the staffer, who he'd been having the affair with, killed herself. And then lots of other things came out about him. Republicans weren't out there calling for his ouster. They weren't doing anything about it. Then also, obviously, Trump and Corey Mills.

Like, the Democrats have just been a little bit better at cleaning up their own house is my main takeaway. What about you? I very much agree with that. And Cuomo, they dumped and then didn't nominate him, even though people like us probably would have been closer to him ideologically than to someone like Moundani. But to the, you know, I don't blame the New York Democrats for saying, no, we're not going back to some sex pest here. You know, we had to quit his governor two years before.

And now we're going to make him our mayoral nominee? That's crazy. So for me, the Swarwell thing and all the others, but Gazales, Mills. And the Epstein matter, people are going to want. change, turnover. I think the odds for every challenger to any incumbent are going so much better than they were, you know, a few weeks ago in the sense of, it just say, this guy is part of the system. And essentially, every single Democratic rep was getting along fine with Eric Sawwell, and every single Republican member of Congress was getting along fine with Gonzalez, right?

And now it's not fair. It's obviously, but they didn't know presumably, or they knew they didn't know for sure. And anyway, you've got to, he's your colleague. You can't do anything yourself about it if someone's unwilling to press charges. So I guess. But the degree, Three of anti-incumbent, anti-status quo, anti-old boys club sentiment that there is in this country now, and I think we'll be for the next three years, can't be overestimated, I think. I would just want to say real quickly, this is the difference between, it's not the thing that everybody seemed to know is that he was kind of like a, he'd get drunk and like he was, you know, out there, you know, flandering around. That's different than like assault, which it also sounds like he was, it sounds like people kind of knew about the bad behavior, which is very, very different from knowing about, like, actual criminal activity.

But he is now, it looks like they are going to prosecute him. And I noticed with some interest that Anna Paulina Luna had tweeted that she was sort of, she was going to lead the charge on expelling him from Congress. And I think you and I, I assume we're on the same page here, like, go right ahead, expel him from Congress. But like, have you met Donald Trump, Anna Paulina Luna? The extent to which Republicans are sort of blind or unwilling to grapple with, And because I pointed this out on social media, which social media is a cesspool and whatever.

But many, many people came to tell me that Donald Trump, nothing's ever been proven against him. Nothing. And I'm like, are you kidding? Like the willful blindness on not only did he tell us on tape about where he grabs women because he's a star, not only did he say in a deposition that, well, it's just true. You know, men are allowed to do this if they're rich and famous. Unfortunately, it's that's true. also he's been accused, I don't know, certainly in the teens amount of times, maybe more than that. And he was found liable by a jury for sexual assault against Eugene Carroll.

Like he has a conviction on that. So like, I don't know what to make of it other than exactly what I say, which is the, it would be nice if Republicans cared about any of this whatsoever. I know. I think you're right. I think Democrats would be wise to certainly not defend Swalwell, not defend it because another Democratic member who's charged with, about to go to trial for, I think those are more financial crimes. I'm not mistaken. But anyway, that one should be defending people that shouldn't be defending at this point. And, but again, I come back with it. Melani, we were talking about it. Melani Trump

stood up in the White House and said these rich executives who benefited from Epstein haven't paid enough of a price. Who is one of those executives, you know, who's who sort of has not been held accountable for Epstein? Some of them, I think she said something like, some of them have, you know, left their jobs, but we need a more thoroughgoing. The truth needs to come out. well, what chief executive hasn't left his job because of his association, very close association suddenly with his pal, Jeffrey Epstein. So I think the Epstein thing will not go away also, partly not just because of a lot of him, but because it just isn't going away, period, at this point. It's one point I'll make, though, maybe we can close with this because you and I, and Tim have all made

this point a lot over the last few months. This is not a matter of ideology. You can be a centrist Democrat. You can be quite a conservative Democrat. You could be the equivalent of Agar, if you want, in terms of where you are on particular issues. You could still be as resolutely anti-Trump, as resolutely pro-individual rights and liberal democracy, as resolutely, we need fundamental change. If you're the way in which you want to end up with fundamental change is more of an FDR-type reforms

than, you know, democratic socialist changes, that's great. But the FDR didn't pull his punches because he wasn't in agreement with Huey Long and he wasn't in agreement with the communist and socialists who there were around in the 13th. he easily didn't go in that direction. And I think the moderates need to be as fervent in their desire for fundamental change, don't you think, as the progresses. Do I think this? Oh, my gosh. I mean, this is where, you know, you brought up Momdani earlier. Momdani, I want to take what he's doing on the

communication side and just force-feed it to the rest of the Democrats. I mean, it is, although I got to say, right now the best communicators in the Democratic Party are AOC, Mamdani, and Pete. Now, Pete, Pete's really good on a CNBC panel. I don't know if you saw that with him and Joe Kernan, but Pete just like took him apart and it was so glorious. I needed a cigarette afterwards. But this is such an important point. And honestly, at the end here, I'll just say,

this is what my whole book is about. It is about rejecting the idea that you need to be more centrist or more progressive. You don't have to align yourself with the far left or with the never-Trumpers. You don't have to do any of that stuff. it is about thinking about the voters and what the voters want. And you know what they want?

They want you to take the economy seriously. They want you to take the border seriously. They want you to be anti-corruption. They want you to tell them that they can have a better future, that education can get better in this country. And it is about Democrats finding somebody who can lead. Because the way you build the big, broad coalition isn't by like, I'm going to go on this podcast and this podcast. and you should go on, you should go on all of them, but it's about you being a leader, you being able to set an agenda that other people can lock into.

And a lot of that is by looking at what is happening right now and going so hard at it as the antithesis, but also having a clear, and this is what I think you can learn from Maker, which is he also had a clear vision of where he was going, not just being anti-Orban, but also what he was going to stand for, what he was going to do, how he was going to improve people's lives from where they are right now. And so that is the part I would love to see more from Democrats because, Bill, I got to say, I do think the wind is at our backs a little bit. The backs of those of us who believe in liberal democracy. And it's a good day. It's a good day for liberal democracy today. Having the wind at our backs, got to take advantage of it, though,

right? Not just coast. That's a certain tendency to say, well, illiberalism, anti-authoritarist was inevitable for a while. And now liberalism is inevitable for a while. That would be the worst possible lesson to take from this last weekend. That's exactly right. We have agency and we've got to use it. Stop crying, start working. Bill Crystal, thank you so much for joining. And thanks to all of you for listening to the Bullwark podcast. Don't forget to rate and review us. Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcast. Tim will be back soon. Don't worry. Thanks, everyone for listening. The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper,

Associate producer Anseley Skipper and with video editing by KD Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.