The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Call the Pool Police

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

Trump is so embarrassed by his own personal vandalism of the Reflecting Pool that he's got the Justice Department investigating his latest conspiracy about bad guys that don't exist. Of course Fox News is happy to oblige by menacing journalists who dared to report on the damage POTUS did to the national monument. Meanwhile, Vance's Catholic conversion story is almost more fake than Trump's tough stance against the Iranian regime. Plus, Tulsi has been under the sway of a cult leader, Italy's Meloni is a pleasant surprise, Brexit was stupid and ruined the political careers of British prime ministers, and the World Cup is the perfect patriotic antidote to Trumpism.Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.show notes Monday's "Morning Shots" Tim's and JVL's live reading from Vance's new book Clip from Douthat's interview with JD George Packer's piece, "The Talented Mr. Vance" Jon Swaine's reporting on Tulsi (gift)

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. So, of course, we are here with Editor at Large, Bill Crystal, who is free. We're all walking free that we are watching very closely about one of our colleagues, who is the first person down there doing intrepid reporting at the reflecting pool, noticing or maybe not noticing, but documenting that the blue paint was coming off. Chipping would be the most generous thing you could say,

Donald Trump's reflecting pool paint man, huge portions of it were coming off. And in the intervening period, we've heard that the arrests happening for any troublemakers who are observing the president's failures. As Andrew pointed out this morning, it's funny, but maybe not so funny because people actually have arrested the 67-year-old bicyclist who showed up. And it seems to have simply reached into the pool to see what it feels like with all the algae and the part of the bottom coming off. there. And I think he has been arrested. I mean, I mean, and

absolutely has to, I don't know, get bail and get a lawyer and all this. Like everything, you know, it is one part indiocracy, one part menace, you know, and there are elements of it that are concerning. The North Korean elements, you know, people cannot observe our governments in competence and waste and buffoonery, you know, without fear that the state will come after them. To example of this, Judge Box of wine was on Fox News over the weekend, speaking to Peter Ducey, and they talked about how seriously they're taking the investigation regarding any so-called vandals of the reflecting pool. And that includes those in the press.

Let's listen to that. Trump's got a crime stoppers tip for you. He says lightweight ABC reporter Jonathan Carl was seen sticking his hand into the pool and trying to rip the rubber off the surface. Judge, is Jonathan Carl from ABC in Trump? Well, you know, it depends. You know, anyone who was in a position of vandalizing or attempting to vandalize the reflecting pool will face the criminal justice system in D.C. Look, the president has made it a priority to make D.C. not only safe but beautiful. And there are several citations that have been handed out to individuals. And these are cases that will be prosecuted to the full extent. prosecuted both of those people have a face and voice for print i'm not sure that what fox is doing

there um with their lineup but uh prosecuted to the fullest extent this is this is the world we're in it is farcical anyone doesn't want it mostly it's farcical and it's actually doing trump damage which is good i think was everyone's just laughing at him both at what's happened of course with the pool itself and the algae and the paint coming paint chips as you say to be charitable if you can call him that huge chunks of the whole bottom of the pool basically And then this attempt to intimidate people from going and looking at it or maybe even feeling what it's like or pulling up one of these loose pieces of stuff. Trump has invented this v. He puts on it, the vandalism of 250 feet. Then I think it became 300 feet.

I noticed in some later tweet. Someone went in and gashed the pool for 300 feet. That's kind of a big gash, you know. I feel stupid even taking it like quasi seriously. I think this thing is on camera 24-7 and no one went to the pool and gashed the bottom. And this is, I mean, the big lie thing, but here we have Fox, sort of treating it like a real thing. And I don't know. This, as I say, there could be some people who are being harassed.

Yeah, I mean, Peter Ducey, they're basically agitating for John Carl to be arrested. And he doesn't like this fake laughing voice. Right. But honestly, I mean, you're interviewing the person that arrested the sandwich man. Right. So, I mean, you know, Judge Janine is going to, you know, do investigations. And it's kind of reminiscent of, it's like a 90s movie. with a school principal. You know, it's kind of reminiscent of like a Simpsons or a Ferris Bueller's

stay off type situation where you have a grumpy principal. It's like anything you do to embarrass me, you'll get detention. You know, there's that like element to this, which is, you know, not how things should be going on a free country. I think we're enough of a free country still that it is more farcical than medicine. I agree. Unlike some of the other things he's doing, which really are probably more medicine than farcical. But look, it's very important, I think, I was out of call earlier this morning some lawyers were debating. There's actually some lawsuit that's pending from some historic preservation group. This was filed four weeks ago, but you shouldn't be messing around with the reflective pool this way. There are processes you should

go through before you change in historic site like that. And I think they're thinking the lawyers of revitalizing this suit in light of subsequent developments, why not a bad idea. And there was a little bit of an argument, well, isn't it taking it too seriously and all that? But I think the more news, the more attention, the reflecting pool gets the better. We're only what he's giving a speech there Wednesday. Trump is the beginning of this great American fair, whatever the heck it is, you know, all the artists pulled out of and that he decided he would give this opening speech at. And I'm hopeful that, A, no one will pay any attention to it, but be, to the degree people pay attention to entirely to take a look at the reflecting pool,

not to, of course, listen to Trump's interpretation of our 250th birthday. Well, there was a dead duckling in the reflecting pool over the weekend. That's bad. Don't you think? That's bad, I mean, I think you did this stuff for a living once 10, 15 years ago. And I think, I think a dead duckling is not good, not good. It's not good imagery. It's kind of the opposite of Bernie's bird. Remembering the bird landed on Bernie's podium and all the Bernie people made a big deal. It's sort of like the opposite to that. It's the dead bird. The taxpayers will pay. They'll be paying more to fix that. He posted work will begin immediately on fixing the reflecting pool. So the bill will go up for that just like for, you know, the ballroom and the bunker. Another no bid contract. Another no bid contract. A guy that looks like he's a bad guy from the 1880. movie who was part of the gym traffic can't scandal the guy part of the gym traffic can't scandal so you can't make it up right fucking ridiculous okay well justice for the bicycling men and we will continue to keep an eye on the story let's move on to iran the strait of her moves was closed again over the weekend

in response to israel and hesbola continuing fighting in in southern lebanon and attacks back and forth there. If you look at the analysis of kind of just monitoring the ships going through the straight, and it does seem like that there's maybe ghost ships going through, et cetera, but just the ones, you know, that you can monitor. Before the war started, you know, I was looking at a chart. It looked like about, you know, depending on the day,

60, 70, 80 ships were going through. That went down to basically zero. We hit a peak after Treaty of Versailles II, electric boogaloo of 15 ships making it through. That number went back down to three. yesterday as Iran closed the straight again. Meanwhile, the vice president and the president's son-in-law are in Switzerland negotiating. Yeah, quote, negotiating. They seem to be giving Iranian war to try to get that straight open again. And since, as Trump correctly said, it's going to cause it. The longer it's closed, the more problems for the global economy. This thing is ridiculous to follow every

twist and turn. I feel like part of we thought writing water shots this morning, I, Don't I have to write about Iran? It's kind of important. But I thought, oh, my God, another fake toughness from Trump, fake negotiations with Vans, fake concessions here, fake achievements there. The IA might get back in. I believe they were in there. That was the whole point of the Obama deal, you know.

They were in a very complicated and serious way, actually. And now Iran's vaguely promised, yeah, well, let's have some of these inspectors in, maybe. Vance says they promise. You don't even know if they promised, honestly. Meanwhile, we're giving up sanctions. We're giving money right and left to them. They're doing fun.

and that's going to continue to be the case. Yeah, so that was the big kind of new, quote-to-quote news this morning. The inspectors are coming in. They also, the vice president said this at a press conference this morning. Jared Kushner came up with a very interesting idea during the negotiations. Kushner and the Qataris figured this out together, Vance said. It is kind of interesting. I mean, we had the big signing on Wednesday.

So it feels like the ideas about the sanctions relief and the inspectors kind of should have been previously to the MOU. But anyway, nitpicking. Jared Kushner, according to Van Ska, with an interesting idea, which is that when we unfreeze the money for Iran, that will then actually go to buy American soy, American corn,

and American wheat for the benefit of the Iranian people. What Jared and the Qataris and the entire team here at Bergenstock accomplished to me as a classic Trump deal. Maybe true, but not in the way that the vice president means. a classic Trump deal. But like all of this is absurd. And it's desperate.

And it's just like, oh, okay, well, we've now, we took some heat that we're giving the Iranian so much money. So it's like it's going to go to the American farmers now. It's like, does anybody believe this? Did the Iranians even care? Why is Jared there? We have an agent of the Saudi government who doesn't work for our government that the vice president is crediting with being the point person on this negotiation.

I thought one interesting side sort of minor. aspect of it was Vance dragging Jared, I mean, mentioning Jared so prominently, right, that Jared negotiated this very well. So this is, don't you think this is Vance trying to make, say, this is Trump's deal. This is Trump's, the family's involved. This isn't just, they try to put me out there as the kind of, you know, sacrifice me as the sacrificial lamb on this. But I, I'm working closely with Jared. It's also pathetic on eight different levels. Or maybe Jared isn't charged at it's pathetic. I mean, he's not trying to do anything. Maybe he's just, he is just totally cocked by Jared and the Trump family.

And he's like, whatever you say, sir. I don't know. It's hard to say. And they posted, the Qataris posted a picture of Jared, J.D. And the cuttery, not representative, like in a, it looks like kind of like a hotel conference room. There's a courage machine in the back. And they're like hunched over a single laptop.

And J.D. has like a woman's ID card put into the computer. So I don't know, maybe he forgot his pass code for, you know, Jared doesn't have a security clearance. He's in there. We have a foreign agent. And then we have the vice president, who I guess didn't have his, his passwords. So some other woman's card is in there. And like, that's the picture that they're putting out.

And it's like the Iranians are kind of just chilling. Yeah. It's like all of the optics of this about who has the power in the negotiation. And there was a video from the initial meeting in Switzerland. And the Iranians didn't show up to the open press part of the meeting. It was just kind of Jared Milling about talking to a couple of Gulf State leaders. I mean, he is just clearly, you know, the beta party and the negotiation right now as we are like begging them to get the straight back open and also giving them money.

Yeah, I guess was that picture put out, photo put out by the Qataris? I think so probably, right? Yeah, by the Qataris. Yeah, so they're relishing their status here. They're a country that we have seen. We have had in the past some real issues with. I believe tolerant. You know, Hamas is headquartered there and stuff.

But, you know, they're great. And we're happy to use their pass their card for the computer. No issues there. No security problems. They're giving us the plane. We got the plane. That was a great gift. It only cost the taxpayers a billion dollars to retrofit it to make it both secure.

So we could look for all the bugs that they put in there. Yeah, also the thing, Jadie's walking around where he's knowing about the Pakistanis are also there. And Jadis, like, we love the Pakistanis. Thank you. It's like, do we? Weren't they hiding of some of them? bin Laden, actually.

Didn't we have to ascend to CLD6 in there in secret at night? If we liked the Pakistani so much, couldn't we have, like, negotiated the arrest of Osama bin Laden? Would we have needed to fly in under cover of darkness and kill him? The whole thing is absurd. This is Trump's foreign policy, right? We were in great terms with Qatar. The Pakistanis were getting on great terms with Iran.

Traditional Democratic allies, people, Ukraine, who were fighting. for their survival and for liberal democracy. We don't care that much about them. Yeah, Reuters also said I just should note that even once the straight gets back open, you are going to have to fill out a TPS report before you can get through. It's got to be submitted through three mullah bobs. And you've got to do it 48 hours in advance. Cover sheet's got to be right.

And so we'll see how that shakes out. I wanted to play a little cope from Fox about how they're feeling about things. It's really interesting to watch. You know, there are kind of two factions. on Fox, right? There is kind of like the America first, we shouldn't be involved there at all, like, whatever, who cares? Like, we should be humiliated and just let the Iranians have whatever they want to get out of their crowd and, you know, go back to focusing on things that really matter, like mass deportations and, like, menacing people at Kinseneras, you know, so like there's that

crowd at Fox. And then, you know, that kind of overlaps to just the cultists type. So I'll just, like, say everything's great no matter what happens. And then there are the Hawks who are still, kind of trying to backfill and spin this idea that's like, well, you know, Trump might be, there might be some 40 chess at play here. You know, Trump might be waiting until after the election. Trump might be, you know, leading Iranians into a trap. And in that category, we had Trey Gowdy last night interviewing the former vice president, Mike Pence.

And I was kind of tickled with the end of the exchange in that interview. I'd like to play for you. I've seen his patience run out with me on the golf course. I don't know if you've ever seen his patience run out, but that is not something the Iranians, I think. Well, let's see. There's just so many layers there. It's like on the one hand, it's like, oh, the Iranians better watch out.

It's like Donald Trump's getting impatient now. It's like, oh, wait, he just signed a surrender in Versailles in France, like last week. And then number two, it's gouty looking at Pence. being like, has, have you ever seen Trump run out of patience with you? It's like, uh, yeah, he sent the mob to kill me. I think Pence had a little grin on his face when Gowdy said that. Didn't you think Pence was aware of the irony of the situation? Oh, my God.

It's like, um, yeah, Trey. Yeah, he's, he's run out of patience with me. That's the kind of material you're getting on Weekend Fox. So, you know, it's all kind of post hoc-back-filled spin from the mega folks. The one thing I will say is like, if it were true that Trump cared about the actual result in Iran, which it isn't, like, chilling out now and avoiding the energy crisis and then handling it during the lame duck two years, like would actually be the smart thing to do. But it's just, I just don't think that that's real. Yeah, no, I think he's going back there.

And also, what would that even mean? I mean, handling it, right? We tried to handle it for 37 days. Didn't work out. So, again, another 37 days of bombing as possible. I don't take the ground troops options really on the table. Great point. This goes back to the whole, like, the premise of the war was wrong.

It's not just Trump being. It's true that Trump is humiliated and he's walking away and he's embarrassed and he's weak. But it's also true that the whole premise of the war was flawed as Bob Kagan laid out from the start, you know, and that like going back to doing it again next year would not have any better of a result. Yeah, I think that's right. The real world effects are bad. It's one of these things. This one is on the farcical plus disastrous side.

This one's farcicle also, of course, watching the negotiations and watching Tray Gowdy and stuff. But it is more disastrous than farcical. Whereas the reflecting who is more farcical than disastrous. This is the way we balance things in the Trump era. You know, there is it. All right, y'all. I've got some more travel coming up this week. It's summer.

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Just head to ridge.com slash the bulwark and you're all set. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. So J.D. has been on his media tour about the war and about his book Communion. For people that missed it, over on the Bork Takes Feed on YouTube, J.V.L. and I did a dramatic reading of some sections of his book of communion. And, spoiler alert, we weren't impressed. We weren't impressed. But people can go check that up. You guys are good dramatic readers, though. I want to say that. I didn't realize that was in your tools to get. That was good. Yeah. You know, I've got a lot of weaknesses, Bill.

But I have a few surprising strengths as well. You know, another person that did something surprising was Ross Douthat in the interview with J.D. Vance. Because Ross doesn't want to really go at him hard. You know, you can tell it's a friendly space. But Ross has not, you know, completely given himself into the devil and the way the JD has. You know, and he still has, I think he is still, you know, trying to process. how to balance sympathies with MAGA with genuine Catholic faith, which at times creates tension between him and JD, because for JD, the whole thing is a farce, right?

The whole thing. Who the hell about us? He might be a Baptist in two years if that helps him out politically, and the whole thing is ridiculous. And so that creates tension at times. And during J.D.'s interview with Ross, Ross was asking him how he manages to align. the rhetoric of this administration with Christian teaching. And I want to play a little bit of that exchange. Let's be honest. The tone of the administration is not consistently a Christian tone. There is a tone of aggressive uncharity to people who aren't on board with the administration's policies.

I'm not saying we're perfect because we're not. My point is that the tone argument is in some ways, I think people see what they want to see. And I also think that tonal arguments are ways of, frankly, policing working-class ways of communication and covering them in elite preferences. Ross's face there is worth viewing on the video version. He's just like, he can't even fake it on this one. J.D. with one of his tells there's, frankly, frankly, this is just a way of policing the way the working class talk.

What do you make of that, though? J.D. is amazing, right? I mean, he's read some of this. He's not stupid, and he's read some sort of high-tone bullshit about, you know, in defense of MAGA world and working-class prejudice world, if we can be honest about it over the years. And one of them is something about, yeah, elite policing of working class, you know, real manly talk there in Middle America or something. And so J.D. throws out this one or two sentences. Total gibberish, right? I mean, what is the relevance to what he's saying here. And essentially, it shows what J.D. really thinks about the work. class. He has, he thinks they can't be asked to do better than be aggressively uncharitable. I guess that was Ross's term, right? As if my experience with working class people, as many of them are quite charitable. They have somewhat fewer resources than some upper middle and class and wealthy people. And often they're better. They're more charitable. You know, I think there's a lot. We've all had that experience in life, the person who is a nurse or a school teacher or works in the cafeteria and is a very generous and warm person, much nicer than the wealthy guy down the street who's a jackass.

You know, but that would be the kind of obvious answer to make here, but JD doesn't go there, but he does have deep contempt. They all have such contempt. I guess you've made this point, and maybe this is a JVL point, too. I mean, they have the MAGA world leaders have such contempt for the actual, for their followers. Yeah, of course. And JD Moody's family to D.C., like this is, these are not JD Vance's people. Like, he, you know, went to Yale.

The whole thing is, is preposterous. But it is. And it's extremely revealing, like this idea that it's like, oh, well, it's the working class people who are uncharitable. Like, Ross's question was not, oh, about how you're crass. Right. It might be one thing to say, oh, you know, in these fru-frew elite circles, you know, people want us to use fancy $100 words and, you know, whatever. And like Donald Trump, you know, talks in more of a reality TV, you know, know, way, which, and he'll curse and it'll, you know, be a little crass.

Like, that wasn't the question. The question was about the administration's tone of aggressive uncharity to their opponents, right? And so he's referring to there as a many, obviously a million examples of all the ways that Donald Trump insults, dehumanizes his opponents. But JD himself, just the other day, I think he was on Greg Gutfeld show on Fox, where he's talking about how Democrats are just bad people. Yeah. Because they don't like America. That is the aggressive on charity we're talking about. It's talking about how somebody that you disagree with politically, that means that they're a bad person. And that means that you can insult them and be mean to them and be an asshole and be cruel and not consider their humanity. Or maybe the example of talking about a group of people that are migrants into a community and you create a lie about how they eat their dogs and they eat their pets because you want to use. them as a cudgel. Like, that is aggressive on charity to people. That is something that is distinct to MAGA leaders, and it is something that is in J.D. Vance and Donald Trump's character, that they are so nasty and cruel to people that either oppose them politically or that they can

use to advance their political interests. And J.D.'s response to that is, well, that's just kind of how working class people are. They're all fucking assholes like me, right? Like, They're all dicks. And that is an unbelievably revealing admission in addition to it not being true. And the whole thing shows how much of a put on it all is too. It's like, oh, yeah. Okay, whatever. Like, oh, that's how the regular folks are.

They are really nasty to people. And it's just like, that's not how America is. That's not true, actually. Like, you don't go to, like, you know, if you're at a church function, if you're at a YMCA event, if you're at the Skocker team, like, people are not, like, aggressively uncharitable to the fellow people in their community. Like, that's just not true. You know, that's a good point.

I really thought, I mean, J.D., somewhat cleverly, you might say, takes a question of Ross's straightforward question about the administration, aggressive on charity. If it doesn't defend the administration, makes it seem as if Ross is asking about or almost attacking working class people who are not in the question to my knowledge for not living up to liberal elite culture standards and then gives a fake defense of working class people, which is itself a terrible concession that somehow they're not behaving well, but that's just an elite cultural judgment of them. So it's really like a two or three or four step, I don't know, evasion plus, I mean, shows he's unwilling to defend the administration, I guess where that's worth,

but if boss, maybe if Trump's reading it carefully or listening to this, he will turn, he will get even more annoyed or JD. But it is very much their deflection, right? If you criticize anything, if you criticize ice for, you know, what they've been doing. Yeah, you just don't understand work-class America, Tim. You know, that's really some elite for inside the Beltway coastal. Because the people working in the kitchen that ice is menacing, they're not working. They're not the working in West Americans we're talking about. Actually, we're just talking about a specific type of white working class people that support us. That's what we're talking about. They also have to tell for those. And I haven't really talked about anyone. That's what's actually right. They're talking about

themselves. They're finding a way to deflect criticism with themselves. They have contempt for the working class people they don't like, especially if they're people of color. And they have contempt for the working class people who mostly have voted for them, many of whom have voted for them. So they're losing some of them now, I'd point out, because they have contempt for them, too. Vance is almost as much of a phony as Trump. I mean, it's really kind of amazing, isn't it? More. More. Yeah. Trump is a liar, but he is authentically himself. Yeah, fair enough. Trump lies in his own self-interest. Right.

He is a megalomaniac. He loves himself and he will do and say anything to support his own interests, which in a way is like, it's like the old billboard they're going around. Like at least I knew he was a wolf. I'd rather have a wolf than a wolf in sheep's clothing. Like Trump is just kind of authentically a wolf. Like the JV, the whole thing is fake. Like the whole thing is the whole thing he's trying to like the book,

the degree to which his conversion story is just so obviously phony is like hard to really put into words. Like the rationales that he comes up for it, like don't even make any sense. He's like, oh, Peter Thiel taught me that religious people could also be smart. It's like you didn't know that before. You bet Peter Thiel of all people. The whole thing is just he's so transparent. He's changed his name three times. He's changed his religion several times.

He's changed his political ideology. The whole thing is fake. But he's, he's talented. And he's, what was the George Packer wrote about this? He's talented Mr. Ripley. Like, he's a talented con man. Like, he's deft at trying to find cute sounding rationalizations for all of this. Just like in this interview, right?

It's like you can see what he's trying to do. He's trying to, you know, avert accountability for his own behavior and, you know, immediately pivoted back to an attack on some elite culture. But he also in the book, I'm sorry, now you've got me on one about JD. He fucking pisses me out so much.

No, this is interesting, though. But most of us haven't read, but you've read this book so most of us don't have to, Tim. So that's, yeah. Well, I actually shout out to Ansela, who read it on behalf. And then you just gave me key sections, because I can only take so much.

The ministers don't want me to have struck down last week. You know, I do stuff to stay out of the hospital. You know, the blood pressure gets high just talking about it. But he also reflects on, like, how WASP culture was superior to our meritocracy. This is another kind of old canard of the right wing. I'm just like, it wasn't actually that bad when before DEI and before the left wing meritocrats and tech, you know, technocrats took over. We had when we just had white Protestants running everything and, you know, handing things down. to their children.

It was better because they had this like nobles oblige, right? Like there was this, they believed in certain mores and, you know, they cared about service, and they digna. And it's like, there's something to that, right? Like, it's like the whole premise isn't crazy, but like he's citing like George H.W. Bush's type of person as like an example of this, right? And I do think that kind of era there was, you know, more of a cultural norm. and a cultural sentiment that, you know, you should be respectful and you should give back and,

you know, that because you didn't really earn this, right? Like you had an obligation to give back to the community, right? But then there's no following of any of that. And the idea that George H.W. Bush would in any way, like, defend, like, this type of behavior towards fellow Americans, and it would be totally anathema, right? And so he's trying to have these things together, like a defense of the, you know, white Christian supremacy and also a defense of like whatever crass maga nastiness Donald Trump's nastiness and he's trying to unite those ideas and it's just like it doesn't work they're fundamentally at odds

with each other I'm glad I got you to go on this rant on the book that's actually a very important point I mean they hexath attack blocks the promotion of to general officers of various women and minorities because of meritocracy but they also the maga types advanced himself vaguely remember they don't like that kind of technocratic meritocracy but that was also very bad because that's globalist that it's elitist and this so there they want to go back further to sort of white america of 1927 or 1935 or something like that but then i thought they were now so they're for meritocracy but they're not really from maritocracy yeah what it comes down to is they're for white america run by them yeah run by them run by them and that they can you know hand out

you know kind of like a spoil system i can't really where they want to take things back too, just to segregate in America with this oil system. I don't even know how to transition to this, so we'll just going to do it. There's this Washington Post article about Tulsi Gabbard's guru. The gentleman was saying is Chris Butler. He goes by

Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramamsa. I'm just going to call him Guru Chris. He's a white guy from Hawaii. And it's insane. Tulsi's whole career, he was

writing memos and giving dictates to her about what she should say and do. Her parents run this cult. She was part of it. It's kind of a spinoff of Hinduism. It's sort of rude to the Hindus, I think, to say that. But that's what they claim it is. This report of the Washington Post, John Swain, shout to him. There was a member of the group who became estranged from the cult because she was trying

to protect a kid that was a runaway. from, you know, some one of the families, there was abuse or whatever, and then the cult came after her. And so she found in her archives, like all of these memos and these emails between Guru Chris himself isn't on the emails, but he has an intermediary that is sending stuff to Tulsi.

Among the things being sent to her, Syria is the subject of many of the memos, including one from August 16, that documented tactical advice on preventing the United States from ousting Bashar al-Assad. So he was a big pusher. of Tulsi's pro-Assad stance. He'd sent through talking points for TV hits.

They looked through the talking points that were sent, and then Tulsi's remarks in 32 TV interviews. And on 24 occasions, she used the language in the memos, basically verbatim. And the other eight instances, she used different words, but promoted basically the same ideas. There are a million other examples.

You really should read the whole story. It's insane. But I just bring it up in the context of, this person was the director of national intelligence, and she was apparently under the sway of a cult leader the whole time. So I don't know if that makes you feel good about high sleep at night. Maybe Bill Pulte is looking good by comparison all the sudden. Well, so I say, maybe it's why our intelligence wasn't that great, actually, about Iran and its capabilities and what would happen and so forth. Yeah, Bill Pulte, so it's like you go out of the frying pan, into the fire.

We either have a cult leader, you know, someone who's taking orders from a cult leader, or we have a totally more standard corrupt henchman, you know, it's really, again, that's, that is sort of Trump world too, right? Where it's like the, you know, either they're crazy or they're just corrupt henchmen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of like you're either like genuinely crazy, which maybe seems like the case here,

or like corrupt and then on the take or, you know, just like a total phony strike. who like saw the opportunity to get close to power and like this is your chance to get on to get on the train or just have the personality and character of a really creepy authoritarian bully who likes making people's lives miserable there's quite a lot of them I shouldn't forget them yeah we should do a full character sketch a lot of interesting stuff happening around the world with world leaders we'll just do a little carm in san diego or what's happening around the world with you bill you wrote about what's happening in the UK for more morning shots, Tier Starrmer is out today. What are your takeaways? Fifth British Prime Minister to leave in 10 years, now leaving, I guess he's going to stay a month or two for transition. Yeah, that Brexit thing didn't work out so well. And I don't know.

And I am struck. I mean, I remember this in 2016. I don't know if you felt this. When Brexit won, it was right at this time of years, 10 years ago tomorrow, I think, by three or four points, was close. But still, I kind of had this moment of premonition of, oh, my God, it's going to happen. and there, it's going to happen here. Part of this was driven by my memory of this late 70s. Thatcher won in 79. She was such a outsider. People have sort of forgotten this.

I mean, she was the first British, first female British prime minister ever. But also, you know, she'd been a minor figure in the conservative party, had sort of toppled the established leadership. Then she had to beat labor. She did that in a big upset after they had a very miserable winter in 79. And so she won. And I remember sort of thinking as a young kind of of Reaganite Republican type by then, you know, if she could do it there, we could do it here. I mean, Thatcher's victory kind of was both a harbinger of Reagan, but also a bit of a encouragement, I'd say, to those of us who wanted a change from Carter. And I kind of feel like Brexit helps Trump, you know, that did you think it sort of... In retrospect, yes. I wish I could say that I also had that premonition.

I probably would be smart for me to lie and pretend like I did. No, I did not. I was just like, oh, the fucking Europeans, like, stepping on their own dicks again. I don't know. That's where I was at. welfare on it. So I guess a little egg on my face on that one since it did come our way afterwards. But yeah, I don't know. I thought saw it more in the vein of our friend Stan Boyger who likes to tweet the British experiment and self-government continues. And I kind of feel more, felt more that way about it. But I agree with all that. And I think that, you know, taking the lens back, the degree of dysfunction since Brexit and like the problems that have come are.

are really telling. And I think that honestly, in Europe here, like they're like anything else, like you can have access in anything. So they're like legitimate critiques of some of the immigration rules and policies. There's like the idea that's the skeleton key to fixing everything,

I think continues to bear out that it's not the case. But I was more struck about a different element of Starrmer being pushed out, which was kind of the Biden parallels a little bit. Just like, I'm not going to pretend, to be an expert in everything that's happening domestically in the UK. But directionally, he's been like kind of fine. I don't know.

I mean, the cost of living issues in the UK are really, really bad, particularly in London. And I've got friends over there and it's like tough, you know, even for like middle, upper middle class people. It's like at the cost of living issues are really bad if you're in London in particular. But like, you know, Starboard did some basic reforms. Like they're in a really shitty financial situation, you know, And people are like, well, you know, he did too much austerity. On the other hand, it's like, well, they hadn't done austerity.

Like, who knows? This is kind of an unfalsifiable thing. But, like, who knows what the bond market sort of done? And that could have, like, you know, they could have ended up in a hyperinflation place where costs got or even worse than they are. Anyway, they've got problems over there. But, like, the idea that Keir Starmor has, like, the popularity of lower popularity than Trump here is a little bit kind of hard for me to process.

I get he's a little bit of a, what's a British word, like a little bit of a milk sop or something. America would become a little bit of a wet noodle. I don't know. Like the degree of unhappiness. My guess is that they'll probably end up with six prime ministers in 12 years, I guess is where I'm coming around to this. I don't think that the replacement's going to solve their problems. I've got some big issues over there. Why don't we just keep pumping around Europe?

I'm fascinated by what's happening with Maloney. And this is, I wish that there wasn't so much craziness in our country. because one of my visions for the podcast, had Kamala one was going to be like, you know, one or two days a week we'll learn about something together. And I was like, I'd love to do a deep dive on Maloney and just like understand what's happening.

It's hard to tell. And the things like overlap with my interests, Trump, she's been like surprisingly good. She's been surprisingly good on Ukraine. She stood up to him on the Iran War. Now we have this recent kerfuffle where Trump, you know, I guess said that She was begging to be in a picture with him and, you know,

it would create an international incident and now the Italians are no longer coming for a visit to America. And she's popping off on him about how Italy's strong and she's going to protect Italy's interests. So she keeps doing some surprising things for somebody that when she came in was kind of pitched as like an Italian Orban. And I think domestically, not good for gays. And like there are other things that are not great. And so anyway, I still might do this anyway in this case because I've become so obsessively. with Maloney. People might have to deal with having one Maloney episode at some point over the course the next few months. But it's pretty interesting what we've seen from her. You should do an episode

so I need to learn a lot more. I mean, I'd like to say this, but this is based on like very little knowledge that this, you could start off as a populist nationalist with some pretty creepy associates, whatever, maybe you yourself aren't quite as bad. And maybe this is the sort of the good story, you know, the happy way it can be residing. You can work out, you know, you end up okay, some things that one doesn't like in policy terms and stuff, but not a bit of a decent agenda in terms of Ukraine and in terms of fighting Trump and also not really authoritarian, I don't think, at home in the sense of, you know, or corrupt, just conservative, you know, in a sort of old-fashioned way maybe with touches of intolerance maybe to some groups,

but not real authoritarianism. I don't know, maybe this is ridiculous in my part. This would be the combination of Magyar, who well. was after a part of Orban's party, Maloney, maybe there's a way back that, for parts of Europe, and maybe for people here in the U.S., you know, we need a Maloney here. So who's the Republican Maloney? Yeah, and again, without overstaying the Maloney part of this, what my, when people had asked me, this would be like years ago when I was doing my book tour, because like at this point, this is kind of ridiculous question, but I'll get the question a lot, which is like, do you think

the Republican Party can come back to something that you could support or something that you think could be healthy. And like, my answer was always the, like, the classical liberal, like, elements of the Republican Party are gone. You know, like, it will look more like a European right party, like in the European continent, you know, than, like, we've had these kind of outlier parties in the Anglosphere in the UK, you know, Canada here, Australia, where you have more, you know, kind of parties that are more of the free markets, free people, less of the blood and soil nationalism of that, you know, that sort of stripe. And I was like, I think that that's over. And so I think that like the best case scenario I said that you could hope for would be like a Boris Johnson type, like kind of one of

the Brexit type right from the conservative party folks who is like a little populist and a little rough around the edges, but like not fundamentally like wanting to turn the country into a dictatorship, you know and I do and and maybe now that we've gone a little bit further down the path that is even a little optimistic maybe the Malani model is more optimistic I don't know but like that's like what I do think is not the good outcome in the sense like I'm going to vote for Republicans again anytime in the foreseeable future but the outcome that like we're not in an existential threat to the country anymore if you know you have some kind of right populist that also is at least in touch with basic reality and, you know, wants to be a positive influence on the world, maybe not aggressively, you know, like maybe not an active influence on the world, but like, you know, it is not trying to be actively harmful.

I don't know. And to that extent, maybe that's how the Maloney story is, like, relevant here. Yeah, the one thing that, again, if I knew more, being more intelligent on this, I mean, one thing that I think has happened, though, that does happen in Europe, is the EU constrains someone like Maloney. That's true. Constraint Orban, but not so much. But in a way, it did ultimately constrain him, I would say, and it probably helped defeat him.

And the guardrails here have to be internal on Trump. They can be a little bit external. Someone like Maloney pushing back doesn't hurt, actually. And there are people in the U.S., not that most people know who she is. But, you know, kind of vague sense of, well, he's even alienating the more right-wing types in Europe, you know, or the more sane version of the right-wing types in Europe. So anyway, I think the EU turns out to be a positive force there that we don't have here. But the degree to which Trump, just pick up on our earlier conversation,

for one second. I mean, really, who were his allies now? His allies are literally the worst dictators, period. And the, you know, most corrupt Gulf states, basically. And he doesn't have Maloney. He doesn't have the conservative prime minister of Japan. He doesn't have, you know, kind of anyone who's a vaguely recognizable, normal conservative leader in a democracy. He has only autocrats or aspiring autocrats or corrupt cheeks. And he's about to get some more new allies. That's the other place I've swung to go and around the world. Things are not great in Latin America. We've had a series of elections in South and Central America where it's like, there's a funny meme going around where it's like all Latin American elections are on the one hand.

It's like socialist school teacher who wants to redistribute money. And it's like right wing Uber Fascist Cadillo. And then it's like, and it's like socialist school teacher, 49. 9.999% like right wing Cadillo 50.001%. And that's like every election. And it's like been true. In Peru, even though that election, I don't think it's called, they're doing California-style counting down in Peru.

And then in Colombia over the weekend. And the other alarming thing, I did just want to flag is Columbia President Gustavo Petro says that Israel stole the election. He was not running. It was his successor on kind of more the socialist side. The software was compromised.

he says the only entity in the world capable of doing that is the state of Israel. And I do think it's important to bring this up because we were simultaneously processing through a world where there's some legitimate complaints about Israel and their actions on the world stage, whether they were encouraging Trump to get into this stupid war. There also is a serious amount of Israel derangement syndrome out there. And like the fact that the Columbia president, well, does he believe this? I don't know. does he just he just wants to incite

their supporters against Israel I believe that it's something to gain social media cloud has and he posted on social media I don't know

but not great sign about what's going on down there Columbia the guy who wins is like a no political experience did AI ads with him as a tiger

and you know I mean it was like Hector Mountain Dew Camacho of Columbia is now going to be the president of Colombia and the losing socialist president said it was rigged by Israel. So not a lot to get excited about there.

I agree with that. Do you want to close with some World Cup? You said you were feeling the spirit of Scotland. But the World Cup's been impressive and I think a good counterpoint to Trump and to Trumpism and to Trump's attempt to hijack the 20th anniversary. I feel like the World Cup captures the spirit

of American liberal, liberal American patriotism, liberal in the broad sense. Just say American patriotism, a little bit that complicated, of a kind of healthy patriotism where you root for your country, but you're also enjoying it, and you're friendly with the fans from the other, mostly the fans from the other countries, and you're, you know, you're learning about the host country at the same time. It's a kind of globalist liberal patriotism, which is what American patriotism is and should be and has been, and indeed still is, because look at the reception they're getting here. People really are being very, enjoying it, I think the city is enjoying hosting it.

They're enjoying hosting the practice sites for the teams. People are getting, I myself, and not a big World Cup fan. I haven't been that interested in soccer in the last few decades. And I kind of got into it. I was in Boston last week, and the Scots were there. And that was really something. I mean, everyone was talking about them. And you could see them everywhere.

And they were drinking out every bar. You know, they were emptying out the bars and so forth. And they lost, unfortunately, Friday night at Foxborough. But they could make it for the first time. I think they've never made the knockout round. They've never gotten past the elimination round, which we're now in the group round. And so maybe everyone's rooting for them, right?

Are we rooting for the little countries, Curacao? It's kind of, I find it kind of, I've kind of gotten into it. It's kind of, watching the games is sometimes a little boring. But the idea of the World Cup has been sort of invigorating and I think somewhat heartening. I'm struggling to get into it, but I don't have a lot of free time on my hands.

And so there's a lot of passing. and I support everybody who is very excited about it. I will tie it back to my obsessive hatred of J.D. Vance, though, to close, which is I do think that what we've seen from the World Cup is a direct attack on his claim that in order to support American social cohesion, we need to stop immigration. So this is the argument that he's making as far as, you know, that's when he tries to make the, oh, I'm a benevolent, you know, anti-immigrant leader. I'm not one of these bad racists that everybody's making me out to be.

Like, one of the arguments that he makes is one of these high-minded sniffing his own farts arguments. It's like, you know, it just, you have so much immigration in a country so quickly. It harms the cohesion. You know, we can only be socially cohesive with people that look like us and sound like us and, you know, go to the same church that I just started going to two minutes ago, right? That's the only way to have social cohesion. And it seems like we've had a ton of social cohesion, actually, with all the visitors from around the world. send the Japanese and from the Netherlands.

That match we talked about last week and people from everywhere, Cape Verde and Scotland and everyone's coming and they're going in our cities. There were some of the small towns. I forget which country went to Chattanooga, but one of the teams was based in Chattanooga and Lawrence, Kansas was hosting another team. Small towns, big cities. They're welcoming in people from around the world, getting along, enjoying each other's company, having camaraderie.

It seems like the social cohesion is just fine. It seems like maybe the vice. Vice President of the United States, smearing people and making up lies about people based on their nation of origin and their race is maybe what is harming the social cohesion. Just one man's opinion. That's the podcast for today. Thank you to Bill Crystal. We'll have more J.D. Vance Durangement Syndrome next Monday on next Monday show. Who knows what kind of offenses he will inflict on the human spirit between now and then.

In the meantime, I think we've got a new guest coming tomorrow. Looking forward to him. See all then. Bye, Bill. Thank you. The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.