The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Cannons All the Way Down

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Trump's favorite judge, Aileen Cannon, has been attempting to exercise authority she doesn't have over Jack Smith's required report on his investigations of the Jan 6 case and the hoarding of classified docs—but she'll be a model of loyalty that Trump will expect for all his judicial appointments. Meanwhile, it's a big week of hearings for his nominees, Wray could do more to oppose the politicization of the FBI, and what is up with Fetterman?  Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Bob Kagan's Atlantic piece on Ukraine that Bill referenced

Hey everybody, when I taped this with Bill this morning, we were discussing these legal motions from a couple of Trump's underlings, including Walt Noda, that was trying to delay the release of the Jack Smith reports. They'd put in a filing with Judge Eileen Cannon. Since we've recorded, those motions have been denied. And so, as of right now, there are no legal barriers to the release of the Jack Smith report. So hopefully we'll be seeing that soon and we'll be discussing it later this week.

Up next, Bill Kristol. Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, so we've got Bill Krist Crystal live from Washington, a big moment for Washington. The football team has won a playoff match on the backs of LSU grad, Jaden Daniels. First in 20 years, I believe, the first playoff victory in 20 years, and they can go to Detroit next Sunday, which next weekend, I was thinking about this, will be a good distraction from the inauguration that's coming up Monday.

This will have pretty good, I don't follow pro football much like I used to, but seem like at least a pretty good playoff game is next week, right? We will have some great games next weekend. That distraction will absolutely be needed. I was, our friend Ben Stillmer's severance is coming back. Maybe on Friday I'll create a list for people of various distractions from the inauguration. You need Monday, 9 AM to midnight, you know, 15 hours of things to watch.

I'll work on that assignment for our listeners. I guess I wasn't going to do this, but since you brought it up, I was going to pretend like the inauguration wasn't happening for this hour, but we'll just do briefly. Because he announced just right before we're coming on the schedule for the inauguration, which includes on Sunday night, a MAGA rally followed by a candlelight dinner. So not exactly traditional to have a rally, a partisan rally before the inauguration, which I'm sure will have a message that they leak to the media. It's like about unity and blah, blah, blah. The night before he's going to have a MAGA rally and then a, and then a nice candlelight dinner, who knows a picnic or something.

It's all grift, isn't it? I'm sure I haven't seen it, but I haven't seen the announcement, but Trump can't personally, I don't think still benefit from ticket prices to the, I don't think inauguration, but you don't pay for it to go there, right? So people can go to that in the old fashioned way as a public civic event, but you don't pay for to go there, right? So, people can go to that in the old-fashioned way as a public civic event, but Trump can't miss 24 hours without the chance to charge people for something and he can charge them. I assume maybe there's a price to get into the rally and then certainly a candlelight dinner. Is it with him or just with other people?

With him. Oh, yeah. Wow. Very nice. Yeah, I guess that must be it. I don't have it in front of me, but somebody reported that there's a report out there that Trump, they've already filled up coffers for the inauguration because of all these suckups pre-submitting to him. And so, like some, one of his fundraising advisors was saying to a corporation, well, well, you know, you could just give the money to the pack instead.

Yeah. So, I mean, like the grift is just couldn't be more out in the open at this point, as if the 40 million from Melania wasn't enough. All right. Let's, we have a little bit of actual news here. So we're expecting today, you read about this in the morning newsletter, the Jack Smith report for people who have not been following this that closely, the favorite judge of Donald Trump, Eileen Cannon, put a stay on the release of the report based on some kind of ridiculous rationale. She doesn't even have any jurisdiction, obviously, over the Jack Smith trial.

She only has jurisdiction over the classified documents case. And today there's another delay because Walt gnawed up one of Trump's flunkies who was not indemnified by the Supreme Court like Trump. So he still is going to have to face trial over the classified documents case. He filed a petition, or his lawyers filed a petition to delay the Jack Smith report because it might prejudice the jury in the classified documents case against him. And there's no connection between these two things, besides they're just two separate crimes that Donald Trump was indicted for. And yet Eileen Cannon obviously is doing what NADA and the Trump lawyers have requested.

What are your thoughts on all that? Trump's just throwing, he's going to drop the case against NADA and to the other Trump employee a week from now, so it's all ridiculous. Yeah, no, I mean, Thursday seemed like the 11th circuit, they were going to tolerate it. Cannons, three-day, somewhat random, three days. We have to wait till after that decision, and then the report could be released, which would take us to today. And then over the weekend, there were various back and forths, specs and forths, however you say that, and accommodating in the filing that you just described, which may or may

not delay things much. I mean, the lawyers I've talked to seem pretty confident, will get the report. Maybe it'll be delayed a couple of days this week and maybe Trump will go to the Supreme Court if the 11th Circuit says no way and that'll take a day, but it's not 100%. The degree to which the Trump people just, they don't give up, they try to exploit every ambiguity or they invent ambiguities, they invent legal doctrines, they invent, is pretty impressive in a way, maybe a little bit of a lesson for the rest of us, that if they're going to play the system this way, and the Justice Department is playing it very

straight, as I say in the morning shots, and to their credit, I think, you got it, the Justice Department of the United States, they're not supposed to cut corners or avoid things, and so they're scrupulous at all this, and they're answering these objections as if they're serious objections, but it is kind of a lopsided or a one-sided thing, right? I mean, it's... Yeah. Well, it's a way for them to gain the system and get the advantages of that while people that are scrupulous are penalized.

It has been said before, it's an original thought for me, but there is the rule that the defendant has an opportunity to get a fair and speedy trial, you know, is one of the things that underline our justice system. Like, what about the other way around? Right? And United States versus Donald Trump shouldn't United States also have the benefit of a speedy trial? Apparently not. And Judge Cannon is the person who really denied that in the classified documents case

and now trying to reach over to even the lettuce and Supreme Court denied it basically in the January 6th case, and now Candace trying to reach over to delay or stop really the release of both reports. One already is apparently not gonna be released, at least for now the classified documents report, because that case continues against the two Trump employees. So the degree of yes,

the degree to which they've all gamed the system, including the judges, and this I guess is the point degree to which they've all gamed the system, including the judges, and this, I guess, is the point I try to make this morning a little bit, that the lawyers are too polite, everyone's too polite to say that Judge Cannon is behaving as a pure partisan political hack. People are too polite to say that to some degree about the Supreme Court too, I would say. And the next four years, Trump's going to appoint 200 Judge Cannons.

Trump learned a lesson. He complains bitterly about the Trump-appointed judges who willed against him in November, December of 2020. That's one of his big grievances. I appointed them. Don't they know who they're supposed to be loyal to? He's not making that mistake again. His White House counsel isn't going to make that mistake.

At Pambandi, as the Attorney General, is not going to make that mistake. We're looking at Judge Cannons all the way and the Republican Senate confirming all of them or 95% of them and at Pam Bondi run Justice Department, which is not going to be scrupulous as Merrick Garland's has been. So it's going to be, this is a little bit of foretaste of what four years of Trump could look like. Cannons all the way down. I want to play, speaking of this asymmetry, Chris Ray was on Cannons all the way down. I want to play, speaking of this asymmetry, Chris Ray was on 60 Minutes last night as one interview since he decided to resign his role as director of the FBI.

He addressed some of the questions about Trump's grievances about the classified documents case. I want to play that and then just talk more broadly about the interview. Part of the FBI's job is to safeguard classified information. And when we learn that information classified material is not being properly stored, we have a duty to act.

And I can tell you that in investigations like this one, a search warrant is not and here was not anybody's first choice. We always try to pursue, invariably try to pursue the least intrusive means. First trying to get the information back voluntarily, then with a subpoena. And only if, after all that, we learn that the agents haven't been given all of the classified material and in fact those efforts have been frustrated even obstructed then our agents are left with no choice but to go to a federal judge make a probable cause showing and get a search warrant and that's that's what happened here. I just want to lay all that

out because it speaks to exactly what you were just talking about, right? Where the FBI follows every rule here, right? Like they go to Trump in a friendly way, you know, and say, hey, you might have forgotten that you have these classified documents. Do you want to hand them back? No. The subpoena, they go around the subpo Pena and then eventually they have to go and seize these documents back as is required, as is their job as the Federal Bureau of Investigation to protect these classified secrets. They didn't know Trump was going to be back in the White House. You can't do something based upon that. And so they do all of that.

They follow the rules. And then Donald Trump, you know, after all of his delay tactics don't work, then gets to say, oh, they're targeting me. You know, he gets to flop around on the ground and say, oh, the government, the government is targeting me. And the concerning thing about this is that worked, that effort to convince people that he was being unfairly targeted, that there was a politicized government coming after him, he convinced not only his cultists, but like a broad swath of other folks in the media, particularly in the alternative Joe Rogan type media, to buy his story here. And what you see is Ray and the FBI

and our institutions punished for going about it the right way. Yeah, and I guess Joe Biden had some documents, it turned out, from his vice presidency and maybe from before, from the Senate days, classified documents in his garage or something. I don't remember how we know that, but we knew that his lawyers were going through it and discovered some at some point when there was a general concern about classified documents after Trump had a massive cache of them. Pence had a couple too, I think, which he gave back. Biden totally cooperated, invited the FBI to come in and search, and they did. The documents were sent back. This was a special counsel, whom Garland, again, being very scrupulous, appointed to look into this so there couldn't be a conflict of interest with Garland himself.

Biden appointee looking into it or someone he, you know, he has someone reporting directly to him. And so he gets special counsel Robert Herr, who does a report, which is damaging somewhat to Joe Biden, right? Says, you can't prosecute him for this because he wouldn't have good enough memory in any way and be sympathetic for your old guy. And that's report that's released by Garland. I'm thinking about that for a minute, right? The sitting President of the United States, who didn't do anything wrong, really, has

a report released. And I'm not complaining about that. That seems right. But detailing sort of what her found. And the ex-President of the United States, who purposely takes masses of documents, lies about having them, orders employees to hide them and, you know, I don't know what, mess around with the cameras and all that kind of stuff in Mar-a-Lago.

He's got a grievance and he gets lucky, I suppose, with the judge to whom the case is assigned and the judge basically runs the clock out for a year and a half and he's trying now not even to have a report that might be critical of him. So the disparity there is pretty extraordinary. Okay. So let's get the devil on our shoulder out here. Isn't the lesson that Democrats really shouldn't play by these sorts of rules? That there should be a little bit of Calvin ball going both ways?

Yeah, or at least they should know that their opponents are not playing by these rules. And maybe they still should, in my view, try to obey the law and so forth. But there are ways to do so, and there are ways to be more aggressive, obviously. I think maybe not bending over backwards would be a good start, and playing hardball within the constraints of legitimate baseball, as opposed of polite batting practice pitchings. And that's unfair as opposed to Garland and justice. And I don't have a grievance. I mean, I think Jaxwood did his best at all, but I've got to say when you go

back and think about it, that the idea that the justice department spent two years prosecuting every person who stormed the Capitol, which I'm for, and didn't start the case against Donald Trump until after the January 6th committee. I think it was at the very end of 2022, I think, when Garland announced that. What were they thinking? I mean, who was responsible for all those people storming the Capitol? If they didn't find a crime, they didn't find a crime, but at least investigated in a very serious way, not this very tiny, almost nothing really until the January 6th committee did its thing. So, I don't know. In retrospect, that was a very bad decision by Biden and Garland.

And the other interesting things from the Ray interview, and we'll get the right expert in here to have a broader conversation about this at some point, his comments about China, I think were very interesting. Six Minutes was trying to direct him to talking about terrorist threat, given what was happening in New Orleans and stuff. And he was like, actually, the thing that I think

has been underappreciated is the way that China is, is breaching our infrastructure in various ways. I thought that was interesting. I have a broader convo about that. But then the rest of the convo is just, again, Ray, just doing the, well, I wanted to make the transition orderly. It's kind of goody two shoes stuff about how, oh, the Bureau can't be politicized. And it's all kind of a worldview that's like, yeah, that all makes sense in a 2011 world, but they've nominated somebody who's literally stated that he plans to politicize the Bureau. Right? And so you have to act differently. And I think that's really what we're saying here. It's not about going around the wall or not following the wall or not respecting our

what we're saying here. It's not about going around the wall or not following the wall or not respecting our democratic norms and institutions. It's about recognizing, you know, tactically, you know, that just saying, oh, I'm going to cross my t's and dot my i's. And while the other side is just shameless about their plans for corrupting the institution, I just don't think that makes a lot of sense. Right. As you say, you don't have, no one wants anyone to break the law here, but so fine, he's now resigned. I guess he was about to resign or he has, I don't know if he's officially resigned yet, but anyway, he will have resigned on January 19th. He could testify about the bureau, which he knows a lot about and how dangerous it is to politicize it. And therefore, Cash Patel should not be the next director of the FBI. He can make clear that he's fine with people who he doesn't agree with on everything and

that there's a bunch of people who have supported Donald Trump who probably are capable of leading the FBI in a decent way. But why doesn't he join other, like Bill Webster, the long time ago former director of the FBI in opposing Patel? That's the part that's kind of amazing, right? He's going to quit and then he's going to say, well, as a former director, it would be inappropriate for me to testify before Congress or say anything like that. Exactly. He said, I don't know the exact quote of it, but he said he didn't want to embroil

the bureau in more drama and more political drama than necessary. And it's like, it's too late. Like the horse is out of the barn, it's running around the track a few times. As far as the, you know, FBI being in the middle of sort of political hay being made out there, it just felt naive to me. He would do more to oppose politicization of the FBI, which I assume is an institution he really cares a lot about. If he came out against Patel, I mean,

he would at least try to create a little bit of a barrier, a little bit of a guardrail against the total politicization of it under Bondi and under Trump. Maybe that would work a little bit, as happened incidentally in the first term where people were very alarmed and screamed and yelled and Mike Flynn was dumped as national security advisor in a month. In fact, some of these guardrails held a little bit more than they would otherwise because people were so willing to be alarmed, including Jim Comey, to speak of this particular instance, right, who

Trump fired and he went, he got fired, but he didn't then think I'm not allowed to speak about anything that happened. So, yeah, none of these guys ever seemed to say like, thank God Flynn was kicked out. Like what he did after he was pushed out of the Trump administration, going around on a tour around the country, talking about QAnon, and talking about deep state conspiracies, this man was going to be the national security advisor. Imagine what would have happened had it been him instead of John McVean. And yet the people, you guys write in the morning, Chastity, about Langford, about how Langford said, I forget which of the crazy Trump things he was talking about.

He's like, ah, you know, this isn't going to happen. This is all bluster. You got to sort of wait things out. Like the responsible ones, you know, never then talk about the value of the times when the guardrails held. Then they go silent. Or, you know, it's, it's not like there's anybody out there in the Langford, Cotton, McConnell world

who's using this very example. Look, there are times when we need to protect Trump for himself. You can imagine them saying this, right? This wouldn't be my preferred route, right? But it'd be better than doing nothing, right? Than saying, look at how Mike Flynn and how dangerous that was. And we went through the normal process, and he was investigated, and he was replaced by H.R. McMaster, and that was an upgrade. You can imagine people saying that, but nobody ever does. Yeah, and just to close that loop, a circle,

I mean, I believe Fetel personally has appeared many times with Mike Flynn and is a big supporter of Michael Flynn, so it really just brings home the point here. All right, we have other hearings this week. Hegseth is Tuesday. We're going to be live streaming some, maybe all depending on how good it is, of that on our YouTube page. So make sure you subscribe to the Bullock on YouTube and you can press the little alarm bell to see when we're going to go live on that. Christy Noem, Bondi, Russ Vogt, Duffy

are Wednesday. It's got the sent at Treasury and then Bondi again on Thursday. That's kind of the schedule for now. Alright look, you know in the afternoon sometimes you don't want the third or fourth, depending on how much of a sicko you are, dose of caffeine for the day, have another coffee, it might affect your sleeping at night. And so, I've been turning to our new sponsor, Mudwater, for that afternoon pick-me-up. Packed with cacao chai, lion's-made chaga, turmeric and cinnamon, Mudwater gives you a smooth energy boost without the heart racing jitters. Think of it like coffee's chill yoga-loving cousin who went on a spiritual retreat,

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Please show your support and let them know we sent you. Keep your energy natural and refreshing all year long with mud water because life's too short for anything less than clean, delicious energy. Other news related to these confirmation hearings over the weekend, Tulsi Gabbard apparently has been flipping her view on Section 702 in her conversations with Republican senators. I think Langford mentioned this. Section 702, if people aren't familiar, of the Foreign Intelligence

Surveillance Act, FISA, it allows the US government to collect electronic communications on non-Americans located outside the country without a warrant. This has been a big flashpoint among kind of the isolationist right, Rand Paul, et cetera. This is the horseshoe Rand Paul and Tulsi have been fighting the use of this tool. But it's obviously a tool that would be used as the person in charge of coordinating intelligence across agencies. I'm just curious your thoughts on the hearings coming and Tulsi flipping on 702. 702 is kind of complicated, but A, if Chris Wray is very concerned about China, one reason

he probably knows what he knows is because of 702 and intercepts of communications. I think it's the communications with American citizens which are masked and you know, which are mega data and so forth. And then they have to get a real FISA warrant to open those up, so to speak, as I understand it. That's what, let's say, responsible civil libertarians have been worried about. As I understand the Bill Tulsi introduced in December 2020, it would just get rid of the whole program, the whole NSA ability to intercept these communications from abroad, including from abroad to other

people abroad, certainly from abroad to here, which is kind of important to know, you know. I hope she doesn't get any credit for this ludicrous flip-flop at the very last minute when she's been harping on this thing for years and she's unqualified in a million other ways. Hey, they're all in excess, so unqualified, one doesn't even know where to begin. Russ Vaught, I hope he gets asked about the things he has said publicly and also been filmed saying what he thought he had was in private. I mean, he's a pretty extreme choice for a very powerful position, OMB director. I don't know. We'll see. It'll be interesting to see how sort of

well organized the Democrats are, how focused they are in their questioning, and whether any Republicans sort of have any interest in being at all tough or serious. And also whether you know, the FBI reports, the Democrats insist on knowing what's in them, especially in the case of Hexeth, or did they just let the two top members, I don't think they've gotten the FBI briefing yet. They got a briefing from the Trump transition team and what the FBI told them. The whole thing sounds very squirrely and I don't know, I hope Democrats are tough about this. I do think Trump himself has won the election, so it's a little hard

to go after him now, honestly. We discussed this the other week, I think. It's not hard, but I mean, it probably politically you got to give him a chance to become president and see what he does. These nominees didn't win anything. They're just picked by Trump. And I totally legitimate to criticize them and to say, and if one wants to speak to Trump voters, say, unfortunately, the president's made 15 fine nominations, but three or four of these are problematic. It happens. It's our every not president loses one or two of his nominees, things he didn't know.

He thought Pete X F was a charming guy and Fox. We didn't realize that he had this whole history and we're saving Trump from himself as you said a minute ago, right? So I don't know. We'll see how much of that there is. We'll learn a lot since Hexeth's first on the block. So we will learn a lot from that Hexeth nomination on Tuesday and we will obviously be having a lot of coverage of that here. To point about how Democrats manage this transition, there's one Democrat in particular that has taken a different approach from everybody else.

John Fetterman, Senator from Pennsylvania. Him and his wife went to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, met with Trump. Trump loves attention, loves a convert, says he's a common sense person, not conservative or liberal. This is a long way from when Trump had said that Fetterman is taking heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, and fentanyl, and that his brain didn't work. So big flip there from Trump. Is he at risk of a party switch? Is this just a strategic gambit where he's trying to do things a little bit differently

to play nice? Is it self-preservation? Is it the stroke? I don't know. What do you think is happening with John Federer? Yeah, and more broadly with others who are, there's other tendency, other members have shown, made at least much more minor steps in that direction. I mean, I'm not sympathetic to the argument they have to do this to get reelected or something. It's like the votes on the immigration bill last week, 48 of them in the House. Really, at least the House members are up in two years, the Federmans up in four and others are up in six.

I mean, really, it's anyone gonna remember a vote in January of 2025 in terms of their reelection, it strikes me as ridiculous or trip to Mar-a-Lago. I mean, Federmans kind of a character, so it's hard to generalize for his case. He's a senator. He's not the position we're in. And I can totally see if there's a tax bill in April and he has to look out for his constituents or things he believes strongly in, in terms of policies and deductions and so forth. He should go to the Treasury Department and talk to them. He should go to the White House and talk to Trump or to other relevant officials.

Making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago is different, don't you think? That part of it is what drives me so wrong. If Trump invites Democratic senators to the White House two weeks into his presidency, obviously they'll go, and he's the president of the United States and they're senators, and they have a million things to talk about. Some of them they might end up agreeing on but the pill the pre-presidential pilgrimage tomorrow I go and then all the you know talk about how what a wonderful conversation they had that's not good. Here's the thing that bugs me about it like the whole like oh guys chill out stop getting your hair on fire. It's like, this feels like a contrarian, you know, real talk kind

of position, but all it is, is it's just a total CYA. Anybody can do this, right? It's so easy to be like, guys, chill out. It's not going to be that bad. And then if things get bad, be like, well, I've changed my mind, right? Like things have gotten bad. I'm now going to weigh in. It allows you to kind of posture as more serious when it's really just, and it's not childish, but it's just kind of surface level, right? Like it's like, oh, well, you know, I mean, anybody, like, let's just chill out guys, calm down, who knows? Because like, I guess that's objectively true, right? Like, we don't know yet. So I'm not advocating for people like running around with their hair on fire saying Nazism is coming, but it does feel like there's a

middle ground between that and like doing thumbs up pictures with all the nominees. Like, do we have to do the thumbs up picture with all the nominees? I feel like there might be a more productive way to say, hey, I'll meet with these nominees and see if we have common ground in certain things, or, you know, whatever it is, like the fentanyl crisis or what, I, like there are certain issues that we can work together on. You know, there have been senators are good at that. Tammy Baldwin did this. She worked on a bill with JD Vance, uh, that was relevant to the people of Wisconsin. I interviewed about this and that's what you're supposed to do as a

person in the legislature, right? The thumbs up pictures and like eye rolling and anybody who is expressing legitimate concerns about Donald Trump coming in, that part annoys me. I don't like that. I totally agree, obviously. And it's, again, if you actually care about influencing the behavior of these nominees, because you're going to be a senator and they're going to be, many of them are going to be

cabinet secretaries and sub cabinet and the like, you should be tough on the things that they're saying or have said in the past and have said they would do in the past. You should be tough on that and say, well, that's unacceptable. Now, look, I'm open to having a conversation. Maybe I'm even open to voting for you as a Democrat if everyone wants to say that, but you've got to assure me that you're not going to do A, B, C, or D, or Trump has to assure if you're going to talk directly to Trump. Did he ask Trump any tough questions?

Did he ask Trump whether he would order Pam Bondi to not do investigations of people that are on Cash Patel's list? I mean, I have no impression, I didn't read carefully all the accounts, I guess, of Federman's visit, but I have no impression that there was any sort of sending a message to Trump. Well, no, if he did, then Trump wouldn't have been talking about how great and how smart he was, right? Yeah, good point. I mean, you don't have to read all the accounts. That's the other thing with the

Federman is now that you mentioned it, now I'm getting my hackles up. He does this thing where people ask him about, well, you know, Cash Patel said this or, you know, so and so said that. And he's like, well, yeah, I haven't seen that. And when we talked to him, he told me he wasn't going to investigate that to me. So that's okay. And it's like, wait a minute, no. Fetterman ran as a progressive, right? Like far more progressive than either of us. And so if you have nominees coming in who have stated plans that are in stark contrast to what you have said your preferences are on various policies, then it's your obligation as a senator to vet through those.

If it's like a Tulsi situation where he asks her tough questions about something and they're like, you know what, sure, I said that on Steve Bannon's podcast, but I changed my mind, I'm going to do this instead. I don't know that I would really still believe them, but at least then you're doing your job of vetting the person rather than just being totally dismissive of any concerns about these nominees and doing nicey, nicey thumbs up pictures. I don't dig it. At least Lankford got Tulsi to flip flop on 702.

Now we don't, I don't still think she's still think she's qualified and I don't trust her to run DNI. Having said that they can literally now, I believe, very hard for her to come out against 702 or not to support its reauthorization and so forth, right? I mean, and from when she's there, having said this publicly. So I think yes, at least get, minimally get the commitments on the things that are important for the country.

But I do want to see the holdout. And my one caveat on the Federman thing is just in order to be consistent with myself, the Democrats do need people who just talk normal. And Fetterman does that, right? I know, I know, take a deep breath, Bill. I know that you love the high-minded Straussian talk and the quoting of Churchill and the- I like Fetterman.

Going back to the Greeks. And I know you like all of that, but the Democrats could use a mix of people and they could use one person in there who does to the Greeks. And I know you like all of that, but the Democrats could use a mix of people and they use one person in there who does wear the hoodie, and just is like, come on, bros, I'm going to chill out about this. There is some value to that posture. And I guess that's just why I keep coming back to

the thumbs up photos. I feel like you can achieve that, and he could get the value out of that without being so obsequious. Yeah, I agree. I look, I rather like Fetterman from what I know of him. I've met him just a few times. Actually, I joke, I saw him a couple of different events in the last few months. Some reason this was before this last stretch, but, you know, earlier in 2024.

And I said, you know, I think I'm probably a little bit to your left now, but that's okay. We have a, the democratic party is a big tent, you know, he was already moving to the spending more time attacking the left. And we had a sort of jocular very brief exchange about this. So no, I have no jocular exchange. You didn't quote your repudies or anything. You just, you're just two bros. You know, I like to adjust my remarks to the no, but Federer

is a smart guy. Also, I mean, he's got that whole shtick, but it's not like he's not, you know, anyway, I don't have a problem. I look, I think he's a good politician. He won in but it's not like he's not a, you know. Anyway, I don't have a problem. Look, I think he's a good politician. He won in Pennsylvania. We were happy. I recall defending him quite a lot after that stroke incidentally when everyone was, oh my God, how could you support someone who's not, you know, in totally great shape?

And I remember we published articles in the Bullwork about how people recover from strokes and having a stroke's very different from being, you know, 80 years old and not being able to do things and so forth. And when you're middle aged and you can recover and so forth. So yes, we are not an anti, I don't, I really think JVL loved Federman, didn't he? Wasn't he pushing Federman for like president? Yeah, I like that. I'm hoping he can come on some time. We can hash some of this stuff out. I like it.

Yeah, we have been a pro-Federman publication. So we say all this from sorrow. Yeah, and I like heterodoxy. And I'm if he wants to to leave the party norms in certain ways I got a lot of elements of it. I like the smiley thumbs up pictures. Maybe we can stop that's I guess That's my number one. That's my number one issue the visits tomorrow I go let's chill out on those on the other side of the coin on the more Normie damn whatever you want to call it traditional damn side of the coin while we're doing what we're doing little nitpicks I do it we've cannot cover the DNC race at all so I'm I like your take cover the DNC race at all.

So I like your take on the DNC chairs race broadly, but I have to, in order to be fair here on the podcast, if you're going to criticize the heterodox suck up to Trump Dems, I also need to express my concerns about the more mainstream Dems and their strategies. The key players in this chairs race are Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota DFL, and Ben Wickler, the chair of the Wisconsin Dem Party. Martin O'Malley, former governor of Maryland, is also in the race. There's this guy, James Skoufis, who's been creating a stir. He's kind of a lefty populist, state senator from New York. There's some other people running, but those are the main players. Wickler, who I think is considered the favorite, he did this tweet over the weekend.

We unite our coalition by making sure everyone's at the table. As DNC chair, our leadership team will lift up our full coalition. Black, Latino, Native, AANHPI, LGBTQ, Youth, Interfaith, ethnic, rural, veteran, and disability representation. Nobody talks like this. Nobody talks like this. Okay? You can be for diversity and be for having voices at the table while just talking normal. Stop. Okay?

Stop. What is interfaith? Does anyone know what interfaith is? What is ethnic? A-A-N-H-P-I, I had to Google it. NH is Native Hawaiian. Do we really need Native Hawaiians at the table at the DNC decision-making process? And if there's a talented Native Hawaiian who happens to be a good strategist, sure, great.

But is that a key part of democratic outreach? Like invite the best people who know how to win, get perspectives. Sure. I'm all for this. Like say, Hey, if I'm at the DNC, we're going to get perspectives from, from people, you know, to make sure we aren't in our bubbles, like, right. Or have diversity when it comes to race, but also college attainment, you know, religion, you can say that in a way where you sound like a normal human.

Listing out interfaith, ethnic, I understand it's a little bit of a nitpick and this is kind of just like woke copy pasta, but it just has to stop. So anyway, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or the DNC chairman's race more broadly. I mean, I know Wickler a little and I- I like Wickler by the way. I'm picking on him with love. Good job. But it is, he must've thought he was having trouble on the left, you

know, with some of the DNC members. It's a, the DNC is a representative organization and if you know, and it's quite diverse and, and Hawaii has DNC members that are being discriminated against Hawaii's governor actually was here was talking to people about how he's a doctor from that mistaken was talking to people about how he's a doctor, if I'm not mistaken. He was talking about how dangerous Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be as secretary of HHS. So I like, I think his name is Governor Green. I don't know much about him, but he seems like an impressive guy.

Anyway, yeah. I mean, so why go through that whole ridiculous thing? It just kind of confirms one's impression of the DNC. I mean, whether the DNC matters, I don't know. Didn't you work in a previous life at the RNC for a year or two? I did. I did. You probably blocked that out. How was that?

Just one thing on your point about this. How was that? Yeah, here is a diversity that you could use. There's Bill Simmons, I think, used to, as a sports pod guy, he used to say coaches and NFL coaches need like a director of common sense on the sideline of like clock management. And I just like somebody who's played a lot of Madden looking back, don't do this. I like, it's like, I'm gonna have an 18 year old kid who's played a lot of Madden. It's like, don't do this coach.

Like I just know that this is a bad idea. The Democrats need that. They need like a 22 year old Twitch streamer to just sit next to whoever gets this job. And when they see a draft, just be like, no, I'm sorry. People talk like this. We don't know, I don't know what A-N-H-P-I-S, we're not gonna do that. A 24 year old Twitch streamer to just veto tweets,

I think might be a useful person to have at the table while you're adding people to the table. These committees aren't as important as people think, is I think the point of your question. And there are two different models that are useful. One is just raise a lot of money and put a ton of money into ground troops and data and door knocking. And it's just, this is behind the scenes, you know, and you know, you're just, I was about to say making the trains run on time, but that has kind of a negative connotation these days. So

you know what I mean? Just make sure the operationalizing of it is good. That's been most of the RNC chairs, frankly, going back to like Ken Melman, like all the way forward, Reince was, I think chosen under that rubric. Then he kind of, you know, started to enjoy the limelight a little bit, but you know, the new RNC chair, whose name I'm forgetting right now at the moment from North Carolina, Watley, Michael Watley just came to me. I think he is in that rubric, right? The other model is the more like,

I am on the chief communicator for the party while we're out of power. You know, Terry McAuliffe was maybe more in that role. Dean, I think might have seen himself as operationalizing but was more of a public facing. So either of those models are fine for me, right? None of the candidates there, Ken Martin, Ben Wickler, and Martin O'Malley, I don't think are going to be seen as the chief public face of the Democratic Party.

I don't think any of them fit that bill. So given that, really their job is just do no harm on the public facing stuff and make sure that the actual party is running well, behind the scenes is raising money. So that's it. If you cut away all the BS, that's it. It's not really about ideology or any of that. Not at all.

Wicker did a good job in Wisconsin. They got the governor re-elected. He wasn't the greatest candidate. They got a 10-evolvement get re-elected. They lost the center-race to Johnson, but it was pretty close and lost the state this time obviously, but close. So get closer, I think closest to the three Midwestern states, I think, Blue Hall states. So he has a perfectly good claim that I know how to do this kind of thing.

They wanted a judicial race too that was important. And he went after the Republicans and reduced their margins, I think, quite a lot in the legislature. The whole Democrats, just like take a second on this, there's a kind of fantasy world they're in now of like, we're going to redefine the party in this way, we're going to be centrist on immigration, but we're also going to be populist on this, which is all fine. And they should all try that out. And different people should say what they believe or say what they think works politically or both. But for now, it's about opposing Trump and stopping it from doing as much damage as possible

and establishing yourself what you believe, what you would do really by contrast with Trump. I mean, that's what a good opposition party does. So if his tax bill is all for rich people, you say, look at this tax bill, it's a disgrace, we should help the middle class or the poor. But the idea that they're going to sit around in sort of endless meetings about how they can really rebrand the party is childish. Now, they have a couple of elections this year. Good candidates, I think, Spanberger here in Virginia, Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey would be my preferred candidate for governor there.

Help those two people win governorships. You know what? That would actually really help. Help some younger members of Congress become spokespeople on different issues in a more organized way than they can do when they're just sitting in some committee on the minority. That would be a good idea. Do some stuff around the country with, you know, the Jason Crows and Jake Gawken classes and others. Or even AOC. This is why I like AOC. Yeah, so totally.

This is why we, both of us, were for AOC, taking taking that oversight chair role because the most important thing right now is defining Trump and the Trump administration negatively and she's good at that. And instead, they gave her a seat on energy and commerce. I'm like, I'm sorry, AOC going to bat against Trump and using her media power to do that is the highest and best use of her, not trying to argue for the Green New Deal or whatever while you're in the minority on the Energy and Commerce Committee, no matter what your view is of that as policy.

None of that is going to happen. There's not going to be, I mean, I say this, it's pretty macabre given what is happening in LA, but there's not going to be meaningful legislation on climate that the progressives like on the Energy and Commerce Committee this time. Like that, this is your point, right? You can have the ideological fights, but like the fight right now is an anti-Trump fight. Yeah, if they can adjust, if they can help us with legislation, that's fine. It's not mutually exclusive. Sure.

Chris Murphy, I've got to say, I think you had him on, didn't you have him on fairly recently? Yeah, I've had Murphy on, not that recently, but yeah. He's been good though. I mean, I've got, I don't have him on fairly recently? I can't remember. Yeah, I've had Murphy on, not that recently, but yeah. He's been good though. I mean, I don't know him much at all and I didn't really follow him very closely. Everybody's very outspoken on gun control issues, which was fine, good, and some other issues. But I've got to say, he seems to be one of the few people who's like internalized the

notion that, okay, what we need to do on campus, the way we define ourselves as something different, as something new and different is by opposing Trump and thinking of interesting ways to do so, then you're not just defending Biden's accomplishments from the last few years and or before defending whatever, you know, the Obama administration, you know, and you find your way into the positions you need to be in. And you never know ahead of time, incidentally, in my experience of this, what issues take off, right? And what fights take off and what nominees blow up and what departments turn out to have scandals. And suddenly you're making your name on something you didn't really expect to be. Murphy at least seems to me to have a feel for that in a way that most of these other members are busy sitting around.

Yeah. And the other thing Murphy's doing is making that and saying, we need to do this fight on behalf of working people getting back. You know, I think that's right. Like, thinking about how can we reframe this Trump fight or putting us on the side of regular people, working class people against entrenched powerful interests. That's a smart use of time.

You did a tweet, which you do sometimes, about bullies. And this is related to this. You wrote, as I've gotten older, I've had to acknowledge the sad fact that in this world of ours, bullies often prosper. But my loathing of bullies has also intensified over the years. And as bullies are ultimately weak, I do think the Putin's, Trump's, and Musk's, if resisted, can be defeated. This is the mindset, right?

No? Was that just, you don't actually believe that? No, I don't believe that. I'm sorry, what was I striking? No? Was that just, you don't actually believe in it? No, I don't believe that. I'm sorry, what was I striking? No, you just made an eyebrow. You made an eyebrow that was like, maybe I was over my skis on that.

Maybe they can be defeated. No, sometimes, eventually they can be defeated. Eventually they can be defeated. I find the bullying side of Manga, and at a mosque and the tech pros and stuff, particularly repulsive, I've got to say. They can have views that I really think are bad for the country and obviously I've argued with people for decades about such views in different foreign policy and in other areas,

but that's one thing to earnestly have such a view and advance it. It's the really repulsive bullying and the taking pride in being bullies and that other people taking pride in supporting them because they're bullies that I just find kind of personally so off-footing, I guess. Like Musk behavior is just a policy in these sorts of cases. Yeah. Sam Harris, who I had on recently, was doing an interview with Bill Maher, and he was like telling a story about how Musk had tweeted out a link that the Pizzagate guy tweeted out.

It was like a clip of Harris, and they used to be friends, a clip of Harris talking about immigration, but it was clipped in such a way that they totally got the point backwards that he was trying to make. And Sam emailed Elon, who had been his friend, and was like, hey, you got this wrong. And by the way, the guy that you're sharing this was the guy that thought that there was child abductions happening in the basement of a pizza parlor with no basement. And he said, Musgrappied, fuck off.

Right? And it's just like, that's it. It's like, I can do what I want. I can smear people. We can attack people. I can bully people. And if I'm challenged, I can just tell you to go pound sand. It's a particularly unappealing trait.

But I do think maybe like the glimmer of hope is that I don't think it's a trait that wears well. Maybe, right? Are you convinced about that? You seem unconvinced about your own take. So I don't think it wears well. That's why I wrote that. I'm usually pretty sincere when I write, you know. Sometimes you're doing thought experiments. Yeah, right, well you gotta do that too.

And once, I don't really look at the response, but you know, you see the responses sometimes. And someone had responded quite intelligently, something about how well, I think what Bill underestimates here is how much people like bullies and bullying. You know, that there's more support for it than you would like to think. I tend to agree with you that people don't like it

ultimately and that it wears thin and if one can organize in response to it in an effective ways, one could really fight back effectively actually. But I don't know, the MAG experience is a bit of a wake up call. The degree to which people like being part of the bullying crowd as opposed

to standing up to the bullying crowd. Even billionaires, even Mike Zuckerberg, and all that bullshit about this is, you can do this on some other show, but on the, what does he say? That he realizes now that Facebook, they need more of a culture of masculinity or something. What is he even talking about?

They need more of a culture of masculinity or something. What is he even talking about? I mean- They need more of a culture of masculinity. Yeah, this was on my notes, but I was like, I don't know if Bill Crystal's right. No, you should have someone better talk about that. But yes, I'm just teasing you. I'm like, yeah, we need more of a masculine energy that celebrates aggression more. Mark Zuckerberg, give me a break. Give me a break. These me a break. All these people are just so fucking

embarrassing. I have one burning question for you before I let you go because I've been having people message me about this. Is the old national greatness conservative inside you at all when it comes to Greenland? Is there anything firing inside Bill Kristol, you know, from 90s Bill Kristol that says, you know, Greenland? I don't know. I don't know. Trump, Trump, I don't like, but Manifest Destiny to Greenland, maybe a little appealing for

you? Yeah, I don't like Manifest Destiny. It's a historical matter. But I used to joke in the 90s, hey, you know, parts of Canada, if they want to join the US, that's fine. Obviously, they should want to join. We shouldn't be conquering them. But then they would have some issues how they would separate themselves from the rest of

Canada, but that's sort of between them. But I don't have a problem with if Denmark decides it's too much of a pain in the neck. I guess they pay quite a lot of money actually to support the people in Greenland who don't really have that much of an economy there, I guess. And if they decide it's too much of a burden for them, and if Greenland wants to become part of the US, that would be fine. And they would have to figure out how they should have votes, as should people from DC and Puerto Rico.

Yeah, maybe they'd be part of Alaska, some kind of coalition of the islands, I don't know, or something like that, or far-flung places. It has a little bit of resonance. So someone texted me, actually, when the Greenland thing started to see, which is, wow, the neoconservatives really have taken over the Trump administration.

And, um, but so, but on the other hand, just as someone who does, you know, if we could be semi-serious for 20 seconds, Denmark has been totally, as I understand it, I asked so far policy guy about this and said, I don't know anything about it. Are we having problems so I could do what we want to do in Greenland? Not at all. Denmark's perfectly as a NATO ally. They're perfectly happy. If we asked to send 10,000 do in Greenland? Not at all. Denmark's perfectly, it's a NATO ally. They're perfectly happy.

If we have to send 10,000 troops to Greenland tomorrow to guard it better or something like that, they'd be fine. And there are American troops there, incidentally, on and off, I gather. And if we want to exploit the minerals there, if Trump doesn't put tariffs on everything and destroy the world trading system,

we have very good relations, good trade relations with Denmark. We import stuff, we export stuff. So fine, so let's get the rare earth minerals So it is just such performative. I had thought before it was performative bullshit You know just it was just bullshit and the way of keeping people off his back as he sells out Ukraine and the important stuff Maybe he realizes that if you want to be on Mount Rushmore You probably it's not a bad idea to expand the size of the US and and maybe he's more serious about it

And Greenland looks big on a map. It's very good. This is Greenland looks big on a map And the people there look White or white whitish. I mean, so I don't know and that's good from the place is white in general It's very snowy, you know that Trump likes that He doesn't want one of those places with dark people and a lot of sunshine, you know None of the Caribbean islands are on the list, you know, for acquisition. Well, how about let's just give Puerto Rico's data that's an actual place with millions of Americans, you know?

All right. I just wanted to see if, you know, that light was still shining. I take it had a little, it had a little, a little. But not, incidentally, if you were saying, you know what, we need to really help Ukraine, we have a chance to topple Putin, look at the energy problems they're having, you read about this warning with Gazprom, and we really can double down on Ukraine. And incidentally, I'm not a, you know, Ukraine should join NATO, and if Denmark is, if Greenland's too much of a burden for Denmark, we could take that off their hands.

That's a consistent greatness position. But Trump is not for American greatness. Trump is for bullying a couple of little countries, mostly even symbolic bullying, I would say, taunting Canada, being idiotic about Mexico, honestly, which is a very important country that we need to be a good tourist with, and then not standing up to either Putin or Xi, or I predict Iran. He's going to be bad on all the big challenges that we bad from a hawkish point of view including the Trump hawks in the

administration you know I think on all those issues on all those things that actually requires like serious policy and and tough trade-offs at times right maybe maybe he'll realize that he won't be a successful president if we lose ground to Putin and to the Iranian theocrats. But I don't know. I'm not very worried about actually the Ukraine situation. But Bob Kagan had a good piece on that in The Atlantic last week. Very long piece.

You can read it at your leisure. We'll put it in the show notes, Bob Kagan. All right. Thanks, Bill. Chris, we also have our, we should say Jen Rubin has left the Washington Post and she's starting with your friend, Norm Eisen, an outlet called The Contrarian to fight the autocrats. So FYI, that's the people desiring to fight autocrats might be leaving some of the other more legacy news outlets.

A thousand flowers are blooming. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. No, welcome, welcome. Welcome in the anti-autocracy water. I was going to say, it's really, it's not really warm. It's freezing. It's freezing here in pro-democracy and anti-autocracy world, but welcome, welcome. Yeah, but if you want to do a polar bear plunge with us, we'll accept you.

Come on in. All right. Thanks for real crystal. We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of with us, we'll accept you. Come on in. All right, thanks for Bill Kristol. We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the Bulldog podcast. See you all then. Peace. Sometimes when I was a night in there, I'd forget you out of sight. Like living before you were gone. So I read up on the afterlife, I hope we're living Jesus Christ.

Just somewhere we can all belong. And we move slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly,

slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly I hope we live in Jesus Christ Just somewhere we can all be alone And faith moves slow I'm living in a state That hope, despair is ungrateful It grows, something's gotta change

I know And I'm stuck somewhere in between Your death and my lucid dream I'm no help, mainly I know But I'm tired of trying to prove my worth To be accepted on this earth Baby, I'm tired of trying to prove my worth To be accepted on this earth Baby, I'm already a gold And days move slow I'm living in the same

Black hole, this flower's only grey Echoes, something's gotta change I know