The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Exploit the Rifts

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

MAGA v DOGE, the Christmas gift that keeps on giving, is an early sign of the coming infighting that could diminish Trump's power—we're definitely not seeing signs of an iron fist amid all that golfing and DJ-ing at Mar-a-Lago. Meanwhile, the world he'll be dealing with is far less stable than it was in 2017. Plus, a Carter appreciation, love for Chalamet's Dylan portrayal, and anticipation of a wild January. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Tim's Bannon interview Tim's dispatch from America Fest & Kari Lake Part Deux Bill's conversation with Eric Edelman The Post on retribution advocate Ivan Raiklin (gifted) Sonny's review of Chalamet's "A Complete Unknown"

Hello and welcome to the Bullock Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We are back. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday or is still having a wonderful holiday. Much has happened since we talked last. We'll be getting to Timmy's Oscar-worthy Bob Dylan performance, of course, at the end. Jimmy Carter's passing, the coming debt limit and speakership showdowns here next week. 2025 foreign policy outlook, Musk versus MAGA.

But our guest has implored me that the place to start today is MAGA versus Miller. It is, of course, Bill Kristol. Bill, I hope you had a wonderful Hanukkah. I turned over to you. What were you curious for more info about my encounter with our old friend, Carrie Lake in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago? Good to be with you, Tim,

and happy new year, a little ahead of time. Yes, well, you wrote so well about your encounter with Carrie Lake and Laura Loomer playing the peacemaker at that insane Charlie Kirk event that you seem to like going to each year. Is that some kind of character defect there? But anyway, I feel like there must be more color that you can give on that. What exactly, you went to the like a party, you know, an after party invited by whom exactly, if I could ask?

Yeah, correct. So I had interviewed Steve Vann and we talked about that a little bit. Both articles were put in the show notes if folks were taking a break. This was, I guess, the Friday before Christmas. And I'd interviewed him about kind of the future of MAGA, but the newsy bit that he'd talked about was how, from his perspective, Cash Patel is going to follow up on his plans to target the people that were in his book on the so-called enemies list. I think that's particularly newsworthy because there are a lot of senators, even John Fetterman, a lot of Republican senators acting like that's not going to happen.

And so I think that could be an interesting data point given the close relationship between Cash and Steve for confirmation hearings. So anyway, after that interview, it's just one of those things where the MAGA takes over downtown Phoenix. And so we're in a hotel, we're doing this interview, I go downstairs to the hotel lobby and I just, I bump into people. Bill, I don't know, these people, they know me, they're from a past life or from like this current life.

Some of them really hate me as a MAGA provocateur, some of them are old colleagues that work for our campaigns. So I started chatting with some people in the lobby, including Matt Gates. I don't think, did I include the Gates bit in the article. I saw you see Gates in the lobby. He was definitely a little bit chastened, I would say. The last couple of times I've seen Matt, he's been very brash and shit talking. We're about the same age and he didn't support a Jeb initially.

So I know Matt decently well. I definitely think he was a little bit chastened and his wife was right next to him the whole time I saw him. He said to sneak off to do an OAN hit, his new job. He's a competitor now, I guess. I did tease him about that. I guess the only newsworthy thing he said was about how he wants the deportations to be able to start day one and how that impacted the importance of having an attorney general

in their day one. Again, could be BS and bluster, but interesting thing to say. During all these conversations, I get invited by somebody that I had known to James O'Keefe, who you might know from Project Veritas, they do the undercover stuff. He had an after party, so it's like they have all the speakers and the blah, blah, blah. Then at the end, all the college kids go to try to find, Just get some maga lovemaking on and they go to these after parties and this one was hosted by James O'Keefe he was gonna do a dance performance, but unfortunately I was unable to stay for that because of the Gary Lake confrontation started to get a little awkward in there

Um, so I don't have any video of the James O'Keefe dance number that he did I know I've seen some of it on the internet if people are very curious. And yeah, I go in there. Frankly, most people either don't know me or are like curious about my presence. And I was having a pleasant conversation with somebody as pleasant as it can be in that audience. I just, I think it's interesting to actually hear them off of social media, right? And like try to get, understand what they really think about things. And Carrie just kind of blindsides me. Like she sees me before I see her and she comes sprinting up to me. Like I'm, you know, I'm prey on the savanna and like immediately starts. At

first she had her arms wide and I thought she was going to hug me. Like, I don't know why. I just, I had a, I had this feeling like maybe she wants to bury the hatchet I was a it was an incorrect Malcolm Gladwell blink assessment of what was about to happen and instead of hugging me when I go to kind of touch her on her shoulder she immediately says don't fucking touch me and start screaming at me you're a piece of shit over like for like a minute and then turns around and then turns back around and comes back for more So it's calling me a piece of shit again says I'm an alcoholic. She points at my drink. There's only drink I'd had that night. She seemed a little I don't know in this new regime with the with The lawsuits going around. I don't know what she was, but she definitely her

I was definitely not looking square at me. I guess I'll say that. But she had a wandering eye and she was just looking up at me, attacked my outfit and said I didn't care about fentanyl mothers, said I was a piece of shit over and over again. And I was just trying to deescalate. I teased her a little bit about, I was like, you had this new great job as the director of Voice of America. Shouldn't you be happy? Why are you so mad at me? And yeah, out of nowhere, Laura Loomer emerges

and says to Kerry like, yeah, he is a piece of shit, but like, you know, let's chill out a little bit. So there you go, Laura Loomer, the racist conspiracist, deescalated the attack. Who then was in the news a lot later in the week with her fight with Elon Musk. And the two things that are amusing about this are you saying casually truthfully that you knew Matt Gaetz from the old days when he was a Jeff supporter I mean it just such a brings home so wonderfully

In a way what it was like ten years ago when these people were either Not who they are today or they were who they were today, but it's a different circumstance And so they manifest differently or whatever. Look, this is how societies work. I mean, there were elements inside of all of us, or elements inside of Matt Gaetz that he kept inside because he thought it would help him to advance his career to act more like Jeb Bush or his dad, Don Gaetz or whatever. And he has been unleashed for his worst impulses have now been unleashed.

But it is important for people to, I think, actually, Laura, could be quite as close to it, honestly, as we are, I mean, to understand that I've been very struck by this, too, the degree to which people once sort of knew they weren't entirely where one might want them to be as human beings, but they weren't obviously psychopaths, you know, sociopaths or racists or anything like that, at least not obviously, and they were in our circles, as it were, in different ways. And the degree to which that happens in a society and that 10 years that many people have written about this obviously in terms of

Europe in the 20s and 30s and all that 10 years later They're in it. They're just sailed off into a totally different place And anyway, it is just kind of interesting these people didn't come out and know I mean a lot of them were yes in that world That part I like that part. I like Laura little more being a peace breaker You're correct that that is true that there are are people who shape shifted or whose darker impulses were unleashed by the Trump era. I will say this though, that crowd though, it's like very mega, you know what I mean? There are select people, there's select people that have embraced it in various ways, including frankly Charlie

Kirk who runs the event, who is basically a Sean Hannity college Republican that was just a hack. There's some people like that, including Charlie. Look, I said this in an article, there's something to be said, Charlie gets some credit. It's hard to imagine a Democratic group that four days before Christmas has 20,000 people flying somewhere to go gather for something like this. Like it's a real grassroots enthusiasm,

but the types of people that are drawn to it, it is strange. Like I guess the other color that I didn't include in there is like one example is this guy that Washington Post did a big takeout on him. He was the deep state marauder, Ivan something. He was wearing a shirt called Retribution. He has this black book, I guess,

of people that should be targeted. I'd never heard of him and I'm pretty deep in this world. Mainstream media outlet like wrote a takeout on him about kind of how this is scary. Like there's this guy out there that has this list of people for the constitutional sheriffs and then come in administration to target and it is scary in a certain way. But then you meet him and it's like, this is an insane person. This is the person that that Steve Bannon wouldn't want to hang out with. I was just standing there in a group and he comes up and starts ranting about really wild-eyed, crazy stuff. And then he leaves and I was like, who was that? And he's like, oh, you don't know Ivan, the Deep State Marauder? I'm like, no, I don't.

How old is he? He was probably, he was probably 40. It's hard to tell. He didn't really look that great. Just like how you've said many times in the inverse, you can feel very comfortable at a freshman democratic orientation these days, even if we disagree on the specifics of regulation policy. It's usually like high achieving, high sociability, normal people. It was a motley crew to say the least. I mean, I sort of assumed that the young people who've never seen another world, if you're high sociability, normal people. It was a motley crew to say the least. I mean, I sort of assumed that the young people

who'd never seen another world, if you're 24 or five, you got into this world maybe when you were 17, you'd never been in a pre-Trump, Republican world, obviously, or even in a pre-Trump world, you know, politically, that you're all in, you're a true believer. I guess I've assumed the older people, and I want to come back in in particular, it's a good example of this, I think,

I'll come back to him in a sec, have to have some sense of distance or irony or something. They remember a past before this. But maybe I'm wrong about that or they don't have necessarily have distance or irony. Because after all, Carrie Lake of all the people, you mentioned that Gates being a Jeff supporter in 2015. If you went to Arizona to do an interview with a local anchor, the interviewer was probably Carrie Lake and she was totally normal, ambitious,

pretty anchor person, right, on a local TV station. So I think I'm wrong to think that only the young are fanatics, correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I've always thought, I knew Banner a little bit when he came to Washington in 2013-ish, and started various enterprises, and told me he's gonna compete with the Destroy the, Defeat the Weekly standard and all this.

He always felt a little different to me. I think he has a different attitude towards you too and towards us in a way. I'm sure he wants to crush us and won't blink for a minute when we're sent off to the camps. But on the other hand, I don't know. I feel like it's a little different. He has a little more sense of what he's up to and what he's doing and what we're up to and so forth. Am I wrong about that? Does that permeate a little different, he has a little more sense of what he's up to and what he's doing and what we're up to and so forth.

Am I wrong about that? And does that permeate a little bit beyond him personally if I'm right, or is that just him? Yeah, I think he's a pretty unique character. For people who do wanna Google this, Deep State Marauder, Ivan Raiklin, this is his last name, R-A-I-K-L-I-N. Bannon is savvy.

A lot of these people are stupid, is like really what it comes down to. A lot of these people are stupid, is like really what it comes down to. A lot of them are stupid. And so Bannon, I think in one way, you know, you can't get into a man's head or soul and kind of who cares and who would want to be. But there's a through line back to 2013. I think that he has a level of genuineness about certain aspects of the populism, right? About the economic populism, about the nativism, closing the borders, about going after the rich. I mean, see what you

want about Bannon? Bannon is like the only one out there at these events. Tucker, I guess now too. So maybe I'd throw him in the same category, who is like talking about we should tax the rich, we should go after the billionaires, we should go after the big bankers. Like their populism is a little bit more a full spectrum right-wing populism in a way that's kind of scary, right? But it's also authentic. It's not like the fake.

And so I do think that him, like there is this kind of puckish, you know, you know, trouble making nature of like, sure, I'm going to go along with the hunter Biden is a whatever Chinese agent or the voting machines. And so that's all very dangerous. I don't want to minimize it. But like, I do think that both are happening at the same time, right? Like there is, I will go along with this fake performative

populism in whatever I need to do to keep Trump happy. While also actually having a real populist agenda that I want to advance. And this really does take us to the Musk fight. Yes, very much. So, I mean, I'd say also a real, I don't use this term, but I mean, semi-fascist agenda. I mean, Bannon read all these wacko Italian fascists from 1920, that guy, Avola, I think I first heard of him

from something Bannon wrote or said or something. So there's a kind of worldview, it's a very dangerous view in my opinion, and it's deeply anti-liberal in the broad sense of liberalism, and therefore it can lead to people being sent to camps. It's not like he's a nicer guy or has better outcomes than the more simple-minded, rapid, 23-year-old MAGA types.

But it is somewhat different. Anyway, bad in a way, didn't it? So let's get to, well, I'm curious. So at your thing, this is pre-Elon Musk versus everyone, pre-MAGA versus Doge, that's the way I think of it, I guess. Did you, didn't see any indications of that at your... A little bit. I mean, so in two ways.

So we spoke about this during the Bannon interview, and he was very blunt just about like, he's been critical of Elon going back to 2018. I think there's a tweet going around about Elon's bragging about how like Bannon attacking him is the best PR he's gotten like six years ago. So this is longstanding, you know, like this was simmering, you know, it was under the surface during the campaign. You know, they were allies of convenience, you know, during the campaign, Moscow's putting in 250 million or whatever he put in to the campaign, insane amount of money. You know, they weren't going to fight somebody that's paying you, like frankly, right? You know what I mean? Like, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. And frankly, right? You know what I mean?

Like you don't bite the hand that feeds you. And so this was always under the surface. So there was no tension at the convention. I will say this though, on stage I could sense, I think I kind of referenced this in the article, that like, this wasn't lasting. There was not a coherent worldview being presented from the stage besides Trump adoration, right? Like literally, it was going speaker back to back. It was like Ben Shapiro sounded like Paul Ryan 2012 if he thought that Donald Trump was a prophet as well. Like if he had those two views together. Then it was Bannon who was doing his nativist quasi-fascist

stuff. And then it was Ben Carson, who sounded like a Christian conservative. And then it was Tucker, who was even more insane than Bannon, sounded like a Marxist revolutionary. It was Don Jr. went up on stage after Bannon, and Bannon was attacking Mike Johnson for not passing the spending bill, but Don Jr. didn't understand Bannon's critique, and so he was attacking the 15 people who opposed Mike Johnson. There was no coherent message. And then there was some of the tech guys, Patrick, that David,

so he's not really a tech guy, but business guy. There were some of these other new MAGA people who spoke. I guess I didn't see Elon Teal or Andreessen or Sachs, who are kind of like the core of that group that I, when I think of them. But the fact that there are these disparities I Sensed that I wouldn't have expected, you know a week later. They would have been at each other's throat on Twitter And what do you make of the disparities? That is I think on the one point if you so appointed this that to be a Hanukkah gathering last night

We're chatting about the illness, you know, they were like million fights within Mussolini's camp and governments from 1922. I thought you were going to be like, there were a million fights in the Reagan GOP. That's what you're going to be saying. But no, not to Mussolini. No, but I'm just thinking of like, you can have a pretty nasty authoritarian regime that has a lot of inconsistencies and different types and some genuine arguments about should we be, in Mussolini's case, he was anti-clerical, that he's probably the church piece, you know, got the church on board, and so I'm not annoyed.

Some of his early supporters, they held power nonetheless. I guess, do you think it's a serious, you know, thing that they're going to have to resolve? Can they just live with the tension between, I guess one way to call it is MAGA versus Doge? I don't think that's a bad way of putting it, right? Mad Fientist- McLaughlin- Well, MAGA versus Tech Bro for people that don't really understand what Doge is, but Doge is a tech bro crypto coin.

That's the term they've kind of adopted for themselves. Yeah. I mean, I feel like obviously they're more humans in the MAGA camp, I think, and who voted for Trump than in Doge camp, but there's more money in Doge world and that matters to Trump too. I don't know. What do you think of it? Trump seemed to side with Elon.

So just really quick background for people who haven't paid as close of attention. decide with you on. kit for H1B visas and all these immigrant visas to bring workers, particularly to Silicon Valley, but also other industries. This exploded in this paroxysm of racism from the MAGA world, but also just people they were feeling betrayed. Why is Trump bringing these people in? Being against visas such as this so that American workers can get jobs is at the core of what MAGA is. Then, Elon and Vivek and all of them

started defending this appointment and saying you could reform H1B, but we need to value immigration. And Vivek did some weird analogies about like Save by the Bell, how Indians have a better culture in order to rationalize this. So anyway, so- Yeah, the Save by the Bell stuff spoke to your generation, right? It did. I was like, what are you talking about? I did not catch those. I did not catch those references personally. Well, Vivek clearly wasn't watching enough Save by the Bell stuff spoke to your generation. It did. I was like, what are you talking about? I did not catch those. I did not catch those references personally. Well, Vivek clearly wasn't watching enough Save by the Bell because he didn't really get the references exactly right. Zach had a better SAT score than Screech.

But anyway, so this fight, some of it, I could see how somebody might think, oh, this is just like the king's court fighting for attention in any regime. I do think that the immigration thing though If there is anything that is core to MAGA it is immigration and nativism and Elon went so hard to the map on this He sent a tweet that talking about how he will go to war Saying F you to somebody who had been attacking him over this there was this tweet by autism capital It's like a crypto thing where they were trying to summarize the fight and the two factions on the right.

And this guy writes that the tech right or the Doge right is saying that American workers are too retarded to do these jobs and you can't out train being retarded and Elon Musk replied to that guy saying that pretty much sums it up. This was eye opening. So like to me, again, you're not going to kick you on out because of the money, Musk replied to that guy saying that pretty much sums it up. This was eye-opening. To me, again, you're not going to kick Elon out because of the money, like I said earlier, but it does reveal a fundamental rift, right? That if these guys aren't willing to swallow the tech guys, their views on immigration,

then eventually I would think that they're going to lose out to the Stephen Miller wing internally. And I guess the last thing I'll say about this, I'm curious, your thought is that the immigration fight could be the first fight because Revote and those guys want a reconciliation bill in the first 30, 60 days. This goes back to what Gates told me about during the deportations day one. They want a reconciliation bill on immigration to fund the border, to fund the jackbooted thugs, to fund whatever else they've come up with ASAP so they can get moving on their deportation plans.

And so who knows, maybe they end up just kind of ignoring the legal immigration part of the fight and they can move forward, but it's not like this is something that's going to simmer and then they'll deal with it in 2026, you know, and it's coming soon. So anyway, what do you think? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I agree. It's unpredictable which of these fights, just as this one was totally unpredictable and was maybe needn't have happened. It wasn't like this was going to happen. People eventually, well, yeah, eventually, but it could have happened six months from now. They could have all been on, they had demagoguery to say the least about the Haitians in September and Elon and Vivek seemed to be perfectly comfortable with that and didn't either object to it or in Vivek's case, I believe joined in on it.

And that was from Trump advance. That was not like, gee, wacko, you know, you know, third tier mega people. Right. So they weren't exactly rallying to the defense of legal immigrants. They're dark skinned legal immigrants there in a certain way, this could be put off again. They could all agree on deporting criminals, not even deporting non-criminals. They're not H-1B holders. Obviously, the people that these are holding, they're deporting.

The money, I guess, in that ritual reconciliation could just be for border security and for funding all the deportation and the expenses of the administrative judges and so forth, not for... it might not address the legal issue, I guess is what I'm saying. I don't know. I think generally my view now is very hard to predict. When you have an administration like this with so many impulsive oddballs and Trump himself at the top and so many things they want to do or say they want to do, some of

them conflicting with others, who knows what rifts open when and how and what. I think it's very important for Democrats and for the opposition to be very flexible in that respect. It's important to take advantage of these risks. I do think that. And this is one. And if that weakens Trump a bit and knocks him a point office approval, that's all good. That's what has to be done.

I don't know if you agree with this. I was talking to someone about this last night too. The next few months is a matter of chipping at Trump and chipping at especially at the appointees who are weaker than Trump. Trump's the strongest person. Vivek is weaker than Trump. Musk is weaker than Trump. Cash Patel is weaker than Trump.

Pete Hex is chipping at all these different figures, nominees, policies where there are cross-cutting cleavages. That I think is probably the opposition agenda For the next few months at least you can't just Trump's won the election You can't stand up on January 21st and say he's not he shouldn't be president or I'm not normalizing his presidency Well, that's fine. I'm not for normalizing his presidency, but I mean he's president So I think that in this respect the willingness of them all to go fighting Trump's relative unwillingness to intervene pretty quickly to stop it does suggest there could be an

awful lot of this going on on a million issues. I mean, it could happen on Ukraine. It could happen on, well, they're obviously just on tax policy. I mean, what if that it actually says we're going to happen on tax policy. It sort of does get to the fact that Congress still exists. If they want to pass legislation, they have a narrow majority, especially only a very narrow majority in the House, not that big one in the Senate. I know they all got to capitulate to Trump, mostly, but maybe not forever and not on everything.

I think there are more vulnerabilities there than one might have thought in the aftermath of Trump's victory and Republican control of everything and we're doomed. I think he looks way weaker than he did the week after the election. I don't think that there's... Is that right? That's interesting. I think so. I mean, I would have expected people to be much more in line and maybe that changes to January 20th. A month from now he looks stronger than he does now and he's just been focused on golfing and being the DJ at Mar-a-Lago and who knows? I don't know, maybe he gets in there and you see Iron Fist Trump appear. Though I kind of don't expect that at this point, but I think it's certainly possible.

On the just immigration rift as an example, I do think that like the vulnerability is kind of a public stuff, you know, so there might be a temptation to be like, oh, well, this is all who cares, like, let's not focus on their little petty fights, but to me, I think that is where, you know, you can create fissures and divide them is over this public stuff, because the nativists are going to win the private fight, right? Like, Elon already showed that he doesn't know what he's doing, like on this government shutdown thing. And Elon doesn't even know, like, the committee process, was he even sure that there are two different chambers of Congress a month ago?

I'm not 100% sure he was. And so I think that Elon is not going to win the internal fight. Now, Trump, I think, sided with them on this H1B thing in an interview with the New York Post. So at the kind of top level, Elon is winning and access to Trump is winning. But who's going to be writing the immigration bill? Stephen Miller. You know, who's going to be writing the rules that DHS puts in place as far as dealing with, you know, asylees or dealing with dreamers or whatever it is, Stephen Miller, right? It's not going to be

Elon and his buddies. And so that tension is going to bubble up on the public-facing stuff at some point. So, and it's just really quick on the tax thing. They're only going to lose two votes in the House. They're going to end up having disagreements on the tax thing that are in the details, devils in the details on this stuff that's not about these big thematic things. It's going to be about whether you know, like whether they can extend the salt deduction, like the New York and California Republicans might decide to be hassle on that, right? And Trump's not in there writing this bill, you know, so they're not going to feel like they're opposing Trump if they're opposing certain elements of the tax bill. They're

going to have to figure out how to make it work, you know, to pass the reconciliation rules. It's just like very challenging. Again, there's been stuff that vote and Miller can do, like separate from all this fighting that's going to be very alarming and dangerous. I'm not saying this is a clown show that will end up doing nothing, but like the big legislative fights I think are going to be a lot messier than I had maybe anticipated a couple of weeks ago. And I think the notion that they could do two reconciliation bills, I think that's kind of nuts.

I mean, they're going to have to jam it all into one and just exert maximum pressure to get to 218 on that one bill. The idea that they can do that twice within the year, maybe if Trump gets stronger. But it is very shocking. Six months ago, I remember saying, one of these meetings of, what are we going to do if Trump wins?

You know, we gamed out some of the stuff, which was actually kind of useful. People were much too complacent, I'd say, about what could happen. But people were too complacent in the meeting where you were planning. Yes, it was all like an eye and they were all like, I'm worried that the IRS could come after some of the 501c3 organizations. I think I said some version of, I don't know, why don't you think that's why what DOJ just launched criminal investigations of all us?

Or why won't musk fund? You know a million civil defamation suits. Oh, no, I think the IRS I mean people were not alarmed You know having said that I made sort of obvious point I thought was that the transition was important that if Trump if you won the election 51% of vote I'll say 50% and enters office at 55 or 57 He's in very strong shape an elected president who has a honeymoon. If he enters office with 45, he's in weak shape. But if he enters office with the same 50 he had in the election, he doesn't have much momentum. I

think that's where we are now. I did look up just kind of his approval. There isn't that much polling, and it's a little meaningless until he's president, I suppose. But he's around where he was in the vote, actually, his approved, disapproved was like 51-49 or something like that. So Trump has not built momentum. I very much agree with you. I don't know how much weaker he is, but I think somewhat weaker.

Some of these cabinet picks, there's enough resistance to Kennedy and Patel and Gabbard that I don't think that's going to be a smooth show over the two or three weeks after the new Congress gets sworn in this Friday. And so I agree that he has various problems coming conceivably in this Friday. And so I agree that, that he has various problems coming conceivably in these areas and the Congress, yeah, they still, there still is a Senate and there still is a narrowly divided house. And they're going to want to give Trump certain things to start with, but yeah, it's a good question.

How many of those things and every defeat, every, every obstacle in my view, though, helps anything that slows the momentum. The one thing I would say about Vaughn and Miller, though, is they do understand this better. And it was interesting. So Musk intervened against the continuing resolution, the CR they'd worked out. Trump changed the topic to the death ceiling,

the debt limit, remember? I don't know if that was Trump having studied deeply the death ceiling deadlines. That was Vaughn, presumably, from OMB, kind of knowing this stuff and saying, Mr. President-elect, we need to, if we can push this back, that'll help us a lot. This is kind of not what we want to deal with in our first six months. Trump's refocused on that with the tweet that you caught my attention to. I actually missed it last night.

Let me just read that really quick because you mentioned the new Congress constitutes Friday. They're going to have to elect a speaker. And so there are two fights coming even before he gets in, in addition to the confirmations, which will start before the inauguration as well. And boy, will we have wall to wall coverage for you of the Pete Hagseth confirmation. I've got big plans for that. Here we go.

This was Trump on the debt ceiling. The extension of the debt ceiling by a previous speaker of the house, he's talking about Kevin McCarthy, a good man and a friend of mine from this past September of the Biden administration to June of the Trump administration will go down as one of the dumbest political decisions made in years. Kevin just can't catch a break. Sarah's crushing him on panels. Matt Gaetz is owning him. Trump is just calling him a good friend with them saying, you made the dumbest

political decision in years. Anyway, Trump writes, there's no reason to do it. Nothing was gained, all caps, and we got nothing for it. A big major reason that McCarthy's speakership was lost. The Democrats must be forced to take a vote on this treacherous issue. Now during the Biden administration and not in June, they should be blamed for this potential disaster, not the Republicans. It's interesting that Trump sets the debt ceiling timeline in this bleat as June. Some experts have said that the debt ceiling would hit quite a bit before that, early here

in 2025. Regardless, yeah, I'm curious your big picture thoughts on, I mean, are the Republicans going to be able to extend the debt ceiling? Will the Democrats want to help them? Can Mike Johnson navigate this and stay speaker? Again, it's like much more challenging than I think it might have seen from the perch of November 5th. Yeah, I think it's very interesting.

There's I, I can see why Trump wants to get it out of his hair, so to speak, before he has to take over, take office. I'm not sure he's right that it's such a huge problem for them in May or June. And they'll resolve it the way they've resolved that silence in the past. But anyway, he's decided this is someone told him, not sure he's right that it's such a huge problem for them in May or June. They'll resolve it the way they've resolved debt stillings in the past. But anyway, he's decided this is someone told him and maybe he's right that this is the last thing he needs to be dealing with at the same time that he's dealing with all the other stuff we've been talking about. So let's do it. And let's sort of semi blame Biden. It's a piece of legislation. Biden would have to sign it. Trump wouldn't be in the embarrassing position

of signing a huge expansion or delay, you know, or extension of debt. Does he care about that though? Who cares? He's the king of debt. That's what I don't quite understand, but they've told him that could screw up his... I think it's the House guys. I think they're worried about Chip Roy and them, that there are enough House guys who are just out there on this that they can't do it. And he would have trouble getting Democratic votes without making real concessions on the

tax pack or trying immigration or something. So that's fair enough. And so therefore, get it done now. So I think it's not a crazy idea of Trump's because let me just back up. I think they will bring it to the floor next week. And as people have sort of forgotten that Congress gets constituted, Mike Johnson and the new Majority Leader, John Thune in the Senate can do stuff in the next two weeks, just

because Biden's still president. Now, normally, you don't when there's a change of office in the presidency, because normally, you're not passing, you're passing your legislation, not the Biden administration's. And so why would you do that until your guy takes over and consign it? Right? So normally the new legislation goes on January 21st, you know, but it doesn't have, of course, these legally constituted bodies, the Senate and the House. And I do think Johnson now sort of almost has to bring to the floor or try to bring

to the floor a debt ceiling extension. He can't get enough Republican votes to pass it because of the chipwires to the world. Now maybe they think though this puts Democrats in a tough place and maybe they're right. I mean, do Democrats all vote against it? It is kind of a, I mean, they've Democrats are on record a million times saying this is stupid. We should get rid of the debt ceiling. I have a Democrat that is a listener that has been texting me saying that he thinks that is a win for the Democrats.

To be like, let's extend it, let's get rid of the debt ceiling forever, let's just do it now. Yeah, and I can make a case that fighting it looks petty and actually ultimately self-defeating. They're not really going to, Democrats are not going to really destroy the US economy because of some fight they're having with Trump on immigration or tax policies. So it's not a good thing for Congress. Never really wins these debt ceiling fights in the end, I think. So maybe they should give it to Trump on the end. If they give it to Trump, some Democrats will complain.

Are you kidding me? The first thing before he's even president, we're making Biden sign a debt ceiling extension to take political pressure off of Trump. That's not what an opposition party should do. And part of me sympathizes with that incidentally. That's the side I'm on. And people will scream about that. On the other hand, the other option isn't so bad.

And that could be like actual legislation that's on the floor of the house on January 7th or 8th. So the next two weeks are gonna be pretty wild between the nominations. And I heard from someone else this morning, who seems to know what he's talking about, I'm not sure, that there are other things they wanna bring to the floor now.

Some of them they'll pass and I guess they can hold them, you know, and not send them to till this 20th if they, you know, they have a week or something to hold them at the desk or it takes a week to get through both houses. But they're not going to not legislate for these two weeks and they want some of this stuff to pass so Trump can sign it on the 21st and so forth. So, but in this case they weren't about to make Biden sign it. I've been very focused on the nominations,

but actually there could be a lot of activity in the next two weeks. And some of it could strengthen Trump and some of it could weaken him, right? Yeah. As somebody who still has some of my vestigial Republican positions, I think the government is too big. I don't know. I think that having a debt ceiling is not actually that bad of a thing. And so you're not really going to win me over on the argument that the Democrats should

grab this great opportunity to get rid of the debt ceiling forever. I think that the debt is going to be a problem coming here in the next few years or decade. So I'm not for that. My strategic Republican brain is on here, which is make Trump and Chip Roy work this out. All right? This is their problem now, not the Democrats' problem. They shouldn't bail them out of this problem.

But I do think that there will be Democrats who have earnest views that the debt limit is a problem and that we should take this opportunity to get rid of something that is stupid and potentially harmful and damaging to the country. I understand that perspective that I don't share. No, and I tend not to share it too, but why do it now? You can just tell Johnson, we're open to voting for this in two months when we have a normal process going and we can talk about how to package it with something. We're not going to give you this just in the first two weeks.

I think that's a defensible position. But the Roe Connors of the world are busy telling everyone that, you know, we got to work with Trump where it's appropriate. We can't, we got to not just be an opposition party. And if Doge has a good idea, we need to be for this good idea. And a lot of these guys, I don't know, they might be tempted to sort of let's look like we're Want to cooperate with Trump at first. I there are many cross currents in this including within the Democratic Party Not just within the Republican Party. So yes, I guess it'll fail. Well, I don't know

I don't know that'd be very interesting question for actually for hacking Jeffries and those guys Can they hold their members together on it? What are the Democrats suddenly splinter and half the stories next week or Democrats in disarray not just Republicans, you know Democrats have been together and say this about the Democrats suddenly splinter and half the stories next week are Democrats in disarray, not just Republicans, you know? Democrats have been together. Say this about the Democrats. Maybe too much agreeableness, frankly, has been part of the reason it's got them here. But the Democrats were lockstep on the fight before the holiday over the government funding. So I expect that they'll continue to be a lockstep.

Jimmy Carter died yesterday after a long time in hospice. I feel like so long that I feel like we've already done a Bill and Tim tribute to Jimmy Carter at one point. He wanted to stay alive to vote for Kamala. Unfortunately, that did not yield a positive result in Georgia. But that was something that he I think it said to his son. So I'm just wondering if you have any I didn't get to meet Jimmy Carter. I assume you did, working for Quail. Good to talk to Jimmy Carter a few times.

I did. Well, you probably weren't even alive during the Jimmy Carter presidency, right? I was not. Was it? You're right. So I voted for Ford against Carter. I voted for Scoop Jackson in the primary against Carter, and I voted for Reagan against Carter. So I was not a Carter supporter. I didn't hate him or anything like that. I just thought Ford would be a better president. But what was striking about Carter was just to go through that when I was, I guess,

was in college and grad school really in 74, five, six, his emergence. It was kind of crazy. One term governor of Georgia, not well known, even when he was a governor, not the most famous liberal Southern governor that, you know, at the time even kind of, and he just campaigned and it was gonna start at 1%, government as good as the people.

And post-Wardegate it hit and there were enough still kind of Christian conservatives in the Democratic party to give him support in the South, but he also campaigned, was a good government guy sort of, you know, northerners like, northern Democrats like Southern liberal Democrats who got elected, if only to one term, I think it was that a one term governorship in Georgia. He won the nomination somewhat amazingly, almost lost the election, Ford started 20 points behind and came within a point.

So I had friends who were for Carter. They thought he would save the Scoop Jackson, Hubert Humphrey, Cold War wing of the Democratic Party. That did not happen. I mean, historically for my generation, that was the moment that neoconservatives moved to the Republican Party. Some of it happened in the early 70s, 1970s with Nixon and in the 73, 45, but really it

was the failure of the Carter administration, the perceived failure, let me be fair, in both economic policy and in foreign policy that led to the sort of everyone being fine with Reagan by 1980. Whereas in 1976, you know, even in quite conservative, neoconservative circles, Reagan was like maybe a bridge too far. You know, the Panama Canal really is at the core of our foreign policy agenda and stuff. So apparently it's back. It's back. Trump remembers that.

Trump remembers those days. The Carter administration was an important moment. But more, I think, honestly, because it, and the degree to which the perception, somewhat similar to the Democrats today, he was not personally that left wing. He had been the more conservative candidate, but the party just seemed to be in disarray,

and the left was pulling the chains, and the teachers unions wanted an education department, so they got that. It was all stuff that is not really very important in the big scheme of things, probably, but it let a lot of people go to the Republicans and obviously the failures of both the economic economy and foreign policy in Iran especially in the hostages helped Rick get Reagan elected so who it changed America his presence he changed America not in the ways he

hoped honestly I think I met him a few times what he was in his post presidency when it was vice president Quayle's chief of staff, Carter was always going on these foreign trips, mostly contrary to what the Bush administration's foreign policy was. He was gonna bring peace to the Koreas. He was gonna go visit North Korea or some crazy thing. Well, I think he got a little involved

in the run up to the Gulf War. He was gonna make sure that war didn't happen and talk to Saddam or to people close to Saddam. I can't remember So of course he would come of course But he would come to the White House as a former president to get briefings on this ship and you know We would all the Bush administration would try to prevent it from doing too much diplomatic damage from our point of view But everyone was very polite. It's a different era George HW Bush

But he of course would see President Carter. But somehow, my main memory is, this may have just happened once or twice, I can't remember, since Quayle was vice president, that was a high enough level to deal with the former president. But also, Quayle was vice president and Bush could happily slide after his 20-minute meeting with Carter, could let Quayle and Quayle's office organize the briefings for the former president and the nice lunch at the residence residence with the assistant secretary of the state of whatever region, you know, Carter or some outside experts that Carter was going

to and stuff. So I have this vague memory of sort of as chief of staff, like handling in some weird way some of Jimmy Carter's visits to Washington and to the White House. And he was always personally courteous and pleasant to me I've got to say but in my very brief dealings here But that's my main memory was the sort of was his advice presence a lot to go to a lot of funerals abroad To deal with things that the president doesn't really want to deal with and Jim Baker the Secretary of State did not want to spend A lot of time, you know Discussing policies with Jimmy Carter and so there we and Quayle was such an unusual matchup with Carter in a funny way

I think I once joked with Carter that you know Quail was such an unusual matchup with Carter in a funny way I think I once joked with Carter that you know Quail had been elected the same year as Carter well they were elected in the same year in 76. Quail was knocked off an incumbent Democrat in Indiana in the same election in 76. Carter won the presidency and became a House member of the House at age 29 I think it was. I don't think Carter thought this was as amusing as I did though. I think what he knew about Qu? Is that Quail was this kid who got elected and opposed about every single thing he tried to do as president for four years. Yeah, right.

Anyway, different era. A good and decent man. This is a different time and I wish we could go back to having those kinds of disagreements. Carter, Carter's heterodox nature on social policy is something for the Democrats to think about. In the end, you say he gets bogged down by the laughter, the perceived elements of his policies being too far left. But to get elected as a Southern governor, he took a number of views on cultural issues that were moderate or more accommodating towards the conservative side. And that's maybe something that Democrats are going to have to learn from a little bit

going forward in addition to his personal decency. You tweeted, I do want to include this, from Ronald Reagan speaking to Jimmy Carter in 81, Mr. President, I want our fellow citizens to know how much you did to carry on this tradition. You've shown we are a united people pledge to maintaining a political system, which guarantees individual liberty to a greater degree than any other. Yeah. I praised Carter for the transition, but a pretty nasty, pretty tough campaign, Reagan versus Carter in 1980.

And certainly the liberals thought it was the end of the world when Reagan won. And even though they didn't love Carter, so that was, that was nice of Reagan. And we'll see if Trump, I guess Trump will say some version of that, maybe. He'll write some version, a sentence like that for him to say about Biden. I wonder, what do you think? No, I don't see it. I don't see it. You did a great interview with Eric Edelman.

If people don't know, we have a foreign policy podcast called Shield of the the Republic and Eric Edelman is one of the co-hosts. He was a part of this bipartisan commission analyzing the national defense strategy. You did an interview with him on Crystal Conversations. We'll put a link in the show notes that I just had a chance to list to yesterday. The interview is from, I guess, about a week and a half ago now, but it's very much forward-looking at all the different threats. I don't know, maybe if you have a one or two sentence take away from that, I know we can direct people to a longer conversation. I mean, Trump inherits a world with many challenges and crises, leaving aside

the merits of Trump's own views and appointments. And I think that's, we were talking earlier about what issues could flare up. You know, during the campaign, it was all while voters don't care about foreign policy much, even when some of us would say, well, can we talk about Ukraine for a minute? But in the real world as president, foreign policy does affect how presidents are thought of. Biden learned that, I think, with Afghanistan, but of course, Carter learned that with Iran.

We'll find many, many instances Bush with Iraq. And I don't know, some of these decisions Trump faces, even if he were running the kind of administration we would be much friendlier to, would be tough decisions and not easy ones to implement, even if he went in the right direction. But dealing with Putin, dealing with Xi, dealing with an Iranian threat where Iran is both – this is, I think, what was Eric's position, one of his position points. Iran is much weaker than it was a few months ago because of the damage Israel has done to Hezbollah and then the fall of Assad in Syria.

But that weakness could lead them to sprint towards nuclear weapons and there's some evidence they're doing that. And what is Trump going to do? What is Trump going to do if Bibi comes to him and says we need to attack? I mean, I think the degree to which we could have foreign policy headlines in the first two, three months of the Trump administration has been a little underestimated, I think. The nuclear weapon point was super interesting. And I'd just direct folks to listen to the whole conversation.

My additional takeaway was just for an unstable president, for a chaos president, he is coming into a much, much more chaotic world than he came into in 2017. And so, I just think that that is a little bit underappreciated in the conversation. There are a lot of tough decisions, there are a lot of interests to balance that, sure, there's always risks of things to prop up, but there was much more stability globally in 2017 than there is right now. Totally. Yeah.

Largest land war in Europe in 80 years. Major changes in the Middle East and who knows for better or worse or both, obviously. Xi Jinping, much more aggressive it looks like than he was seven or eight years ago and us having committed to be more confrontational, which was fine to me, with China. But then what does that really mean? And then Trump flip-flopping on that with TikTok and all. Incidentally, are any of those China hawks or we're all telling us how tough Trump was going to be on China? Have they been, I haven't seen their apologies there.

I haven't seen a lot of statements. I haven't seen a lot of statements on Trump's TikTok flip-flop. No, I haven't either. We'll keep an eye. I've got a little alert for Tom Cotton's press office. We'll see if anything comes out of there. All right, Bill, I do need to recommend to folks,

I assume you did not go see a complete unknown, Timmy Chalome as Bob Dylan? No, actually we had dinner with our daughter and her husband, Matt Contenetti, and they had just seen it actually, so. Well, what was their review? What was their review? Very positive.

Very positive. Okay, great. I wasn't worried that I was blinded. I love Timmy, long time Timmy fan, and so I was always gonna love it. Our in-house culture editor, Sonny Bunch, not I love Timmy, long time Timmy fan. I was always going to love it. Our in-house culture editor, Sonny Bunch, not big on Timmy. I was worried that I was going to be biased, have my own perspective. My straight guy buddies that like Bob Dylan were all positive on it, are all blown away.

Maybe generationally, maybe not. If you really knew Bob Dylan, I don't know. I guess I would say maybe your perspective might be different, but I thought he was just phenomenal and it was an Edward Norton as Pete Seeger was really great. I would highly recommend it. I had feelings at times during it and my main takeaway is I wish it was two hours longer. It's like, it stops in like 65. Like you don't even get to one on the tracks and some of the other later Dylan stuff.

So maybe we can get a sequel out of it. I don't know. So there you go. That's my holiday recommendation to people, a complete unknown. Okay. Maybe we'll go see it. We thought after talking to Animat that we might go see it. I mean, Dylan was, it's funny, Dylan was huge obviously when I was young, but he was already

in the past exactly. Other people were singing songs that I listened to in high school, so I would have what, 68, 69, 70. There were many Dylan songs, but they were at that point already being sung by other people, right? Because his voice was not considered that good. I still think- Richard D. Andriks most famously, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I still think listening to Dylan singing Dylan is kind of interesting and captivating in a certain way. And Timmy nails it.

It's so close. He's so close. His voice is so close. He gets close. It's not the same, but it's different enough, but it's in the ballpark. It's really good. I look forward to seeing it.

Yeah, Bill Crystal, everybody else. I will be back tomorrow. Our plans for this week, we got a pod tomorrow. We're bringing in all the faves this week. So you got a pod tomorrow. We'll have a pod Thursday. We're gonna take off New Year's Day, one more day, for you guys to enjoy your family or football

or hangover or whatever it is that you wanna do on New Year's Day. But other than that, we're gonna be back with probably more than a full schedule, probably double schedules, Bill points out. There's gonna be a shit ton happening in January. So we'll be here for you. Bill will be back next Monday.

Enjoy the last somewhat peaceful week and we'll be here for you. Bill will be back next Monday. Enjoy the last somewhat peaceful week and we'll be seeing you back here tomorrow. It was in another lifetime, one of toil and blood. When blackness was about you, the road was full of mud. I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form. Come in, she said, I'll give you shelter from the storm And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word

In a world of steel-eyed death and men who are fighting to be won Come in, she said, I'll give you shelter from the storm Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved Everything up to that point had been left unresolved try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm come in she said I'll give you shelter from the storm I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail. Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail. Hunted like a crocodile ravaged in the corn.

Come in, she said, I'll give you shelter from the storm. The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.