The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Fake Nicey-Nicey Sh**t

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

ABC News and George Stephanopoulos have joined the preemptive capitulation parade by settling Trump's defamation suit—and by conspicuously paying out protection money ahead of the inauguration. The potential chilling effect on a key First Amendment issue is breathtaking. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney backs off of his criticism of Trump and Vance. Plus, the anti-oligarchic, semi-populist grounds for challenging the incoming administration. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes: NYT piece Bill mentioned Bulwark debate on potentially ending Daylight Saving Time Bill's conversation with Jack Goldsmith

Hello and welcome to Bulldog Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday when you're listening to this. So we have Bill Kristol. It is Sunday and we're taping it. I'm hangry. I'm quite hangry actually. Haven't been able to eat all day.

Got to clean out my whole system because I have one of those middle-aged men procedures tomorrow. And so, you know, if JD Vance starts shooting at the drones or some other nominee is creeped on a woman for the cabinet and like that all gets announced Monday morning, you'll have to wait for my fresh take on Tuesday. So me and Bill, Bill and I are both working through ailments for you on a Monday. How are you doing, Bill? I'm doing fine. Thanks, Tim. Good luck with everything tomorrow. I'm going to be Monday. How are you doing, Bill? I'm doing fine, thanks Tim.

Good luck with everything tomorrow and we'll be fine. I'm going to be fine. It'll be fine. I'm going to be fine. We'll do our best here. I guess there was kind of enough to use to talk about you for short of whatever happens in the 12 hours until Monday morning. Hold down the fort.

There is enough news. The theme of the show today is going to be pre-capitulation and just, and people's just total unwillingness to buck up for the fight ahead of us. It begins with our friends at ABC News. The backstory on this for people who haven't watched it closely is, is I guess George Stephanopoulos talked about how Trump was found liable for rape and technically is was adjudicated as for sexual assault in a civil suit. And the judge in rendering the verdict on that did essentially say, I did say that like colloquially what we're talking about here is rape. The judge said that during the judge's

verdict, but it was not technically the case, you know, based on the actual verdict. So Trump sued ABC over this and ABC settled this defamation lawsuit for $15 million. And I just think this is going to have real ramifications. And I guess we'll just start there with your opening thoughts on that, Bill. It's really terrible. I mean, the knock on effects, the intimidation effects going forward. I mean, this was a very, I, the lawyers I've talked to, whatever it's worth, and I think this is the consensus. Trump has lost many lawsuits like this. You don't have to show that your every word you say on a television show or on a podcast is literally and absolutely correct. You have to

show that you were first, it's not clear that Trump was defamed. I was people have never heard this charge before. What are the damages to Trump? But leaving that aside, you would have to show what is it? Reckless disregard or, you know, that'd have to be sort of like Stephanopoulos was cautioned ten minutes before the show, don't say the word rape. But he said, if that's in the defecation documents, I doubt it is. Then maybe ABC was right to cave and pay $15 million to the Trump library, which doesn't exist yet, I guess, and $1 million of legal fees.

But this kind of, as you say, preemptive capitulation is just terrible. I mean, Disney has a very big legal department. They have access to extremely good law firms. If they felt they could defend this, I think every other, not just broadcast entity, but other places that have people who are discussing Trump on any medium, I'm thinking about university councils, the chilling effect will be very great, which is the whole point of these civil lawsuits. And it does remind one, I think some smart people said this a few weeks ago when we were

all crackly very upset about cash brutality at the FBI. It's not only the criminal things he could do from the FBI, it's the civil lawsuits that Trump and Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and everyone can fund to try to backwrap people, intimidate people. And they've already gone after our friend Olivia Troy, they've gone after others. And I don't know, I worry that now it's going to be just open the floodgates. I will also point out finally, it turns out that Suzy Wiles, the incumbent White House

Chief of Staff, had dinner with the head of ABC News Monday night at Mar-a-Lago. Yeah, it was Deborah O'Connell, the Disney executive, who directly oversees ABC News down to Susie Wiles in Palm Beach last Monday. To me, this is just, I mean, and we talked a little bit about this with Ann Applebaum on Friday, just another example of Friday. Just another example of these big, powerful corporations deciding that it's just not worth it to draw any additional attention onto ourselves. We know that Trump is capricious. We know that he's vengeful. So let's try to just survive the four years. We'll tuck our tail between our legs. We'll mind our P's and Q's. There's A, there's no evidence that this is going to work. And in a world where, you know, you have corporate control over some of these media institutions like this,

like as you said, like the chilling effect element of this is really staggering, like right now. You can't not assume that people in private conversations, you know, who go and speak about this stuff on the media and go and speak to Trump, especially people that aren't wealthy, that don't have the resources of Disney, you know, might be like, you know, it's just not worth, you know, leveling criticism if it's going to bankrupt me. I was in touch with a scholar of like, an Apple, but I'm a different person, but a scholar of European politics and of

Hungary. This Orban did a lot of this in Hungary. And it was Trump's tried to do it over the years. The American system isn't that friendly to defamation suits for public figures. And he's lost almost everyone, but Orban shut down plenty or gained control or certainly intimidated opposition media in Hungary. And when I've been saying, you've been saying, I think, well, US isn't Hungary. Let's not overdo this. It's not going to be that easy to intimidate everyone in the US and use the legal system

in the US the way Orban used it in Hungary. But here we are. And again, this isn't even a Trump appointed judge doing anything. This is the company, again, not just going into hiding a little bit, maybe dragging out the case and not making a robust defense of free speech. This is conspicuously and visibly paying up before the inauguration. I mean, this is paying protection money or whatever. And it just the message it sends to everyone else is not only do you have to not offend

Trump, you need to pony up. And indeed, aren't they ponying up for the inaugural committee now, all these billionaires? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Several have committed a million Zuckerberg, others of Benioff. Do you say like the protection racket element of this, right? And it just ties all together like, Disney was gonna win this case, right? And so to do it so ostentatiously, right? Like, oh we're gonna contribute to your presidential library, sir. Like, let us go down on our notice, kiss the ring, and can we contribute

an additional wing to your palace, you know, that honors you? Can we put a statue? I like the whole thing is preposterous. And just back to the original point, just cause I want to get it exactly right on what judge Kaplan said about the rape. He said this, the finding that Ms. Carol failed to prove that she was raped within the meaning of New York penal law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump raped her as many people commonly understand the word rape.

So again, like Stephanopoulos, I think runs afoul of this by using adjudicated, but it's a very fine line and the standard, as you mentioned, for these public figures to defame it in America, it's very different in Britain and other places, but like in America, the standard of defamation is so high, it's like really hard to imagine that they would have lost this. And so like the manner in which they're doing it is just really horrible.

Incidentally, if they had lost, they would have lost. What would the damages have been? Would not have been much more than $15 million. I mean, how much does this damage to this interview with Nancy May's due to Donald Trump's reputation given that he lost the civil case against DG and Carol? You don't have to make a big deal. Disney doesn't have to go to Soapbox.

ABC doesn't have to go to Soapbox. They just say, look, we're going to let this go to the judge. We're going to take depositions. We want this to, we hope it works out quickly and we're not trying to make a point here, but we defend our people when they say something in good faith. They didn't have to grandstand on behalf of free speech. But again, this is a whole different world from just quietly litigating the case and maybe giving a million dollars to the Trump inaugural fund, right?

This is a very conspicuous, unnecessary preemptive collapse on a core first amendment issue. Yeah, very conspicuous. As the Republicans against Trump Twitter feed that posted, I prefer to live in a country where the government fears the free press, not where the press fears the government. I thought that was really well put. Yeah.

The first part of that is also an important category now, that is another downstream effect of this Trump win, is that Republicans, and frankly not just Republicans, you've seen this from Eric Adams, and I'm sure you'll start to see this from some Democrats. Now, because of the world in which we live and because of the fragmentation of the media environment, the essential view of politicians now, I think going forward is going to be just ride out the storm.

Who cares about this? Like how much could it hurt me for the media to write about this? I think we're seeing this right now with with Hegseth as a prime example of the cabin officials. Any kind of media firestorm of this nature previously would have would have led to just the quiet stepping down of the of the nominee and replacement with somebody else. It is I think dangerous to you kind of the the short medium term of our body politic if you are in a place where both of those things are true.

The politicians have stopped being worried that they're going to be held accountable and the press, who ostensibly exists to hold accountable, is now panicked that they'll be targeted and so they're not even going to do their job. For me personally, just reading about it last night, I felt the worst I've felt since November 5th. I felt the most ominous fire bell in the night or whatever term you want since November 5th. Obviously the appointments of the nominations of Patel and other things are pretty bad and ominous and other things Trump and his people have said.

But I felt like this was really a moment. It's not just that they're going to try to do things in the government they shouldn't do. It's that the whole, what's not the government, corporate America, civil society, if you want to use a fancy term, is preemptively capitulating. You can have a government that's bad, and that's bad, obviously. But if everyone else is kind of not going along with their attempts to intimidate, there's probably certainly some ways limited damage they could do, and other ways they could do

great damage versus the government of the United States. But still, this really I think just takes it to another level in terms of civic or social damage. Yeah. And the bad news came right on the heels of the announcement that they want to make standard time permanent. So it was really ominous 24 hours. Where are you on that?

I don't know. Oh, permanent daylight saving. It's my number one issue. Okay. This is, I just- Could you lose or for you? We did a whole YouTube video on this, which you can watch. But since then, I saw a graphic and it's like in June now with permanent standard time, the sun will be coming up at 4 15 a.m. This is insane. Nobody wants this. We like our evening sun. Okay. I'm going to move forward. While I'm angry, while I'm upset about daylight saving and ABC and Deborah O'Connell, Mitt Romney was on State of the Union this morning. God love him.

I just kind of want to strangle him. I mean, I want to strangle him like you want to strangle a loved one, though, you know, just like, why? Let's just listen. Let's listen to Mitt and Jake Tapper. You said in an interview a few months ago that, quote, there's a good chance that the Republican Party is going to be, is going to need to be rebuilt or reoriented and that you want to have a voice in the post Trump Republican Party.

Do you think that there's still, do you still think there's going to be a post Trump Republican Party or is MAGA now the Republican Party? Oh, MAGA is the Republican Party and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today. And if you were to ask me who the nominee will be in 2028, I think it'll be JD Vance, all right? He's smart, well-spoken, part of the MAGA movement. You said something pretty harsh about him a few months ago, though. You could not have less respect for somebody

than the figure. Long ago. I'm not going to rehash history. And we've worked together in the Senate since then. But that is what the Republican Party is. OK. So this is obviously enraging because it was the premise of him not endorsing during the campaign was that he wanted to have an impact on the Republican Party

going forward. Now he's already conceded that that's over because Donald Trump won. I don't really know that, given what we know about the election at this point, that Mets endorsement would have mattered one way or the other. That said, couldn't have hurt. And the thing that bugs me the most about this though, is just going back to this capitulation. It's like, okay, well, it is what it is.

I'm backing off my comments about how disgusted and horrified I am about Donald Trump and JD Vance. And even though I'm leaving the Senate now, I'm gonna make nice and we're gonna, you know, hopefully, you know, these are smart guys that are gonna be able to figure out, like what purpose is served by this? What is the point of this?

God forbid he actually announced that he's going to try to do something, maybe not within the Republican Party, because I share his pessimism about that, but in other areas to build up a non-maga agenda for the country, a central, you know, liberal centrist agenda or recruit young candidates to, I mean, something, right? I mean, he's just going to, if he wants to retire, I guess that's fine. But again, why doesn't he retire and just stand by his previous comments? Does he really have to say, well, I've

worked with JD Vance since then and stuff. Really? What have they been working on there in the Senate? I don't know. There's just this false hope, right? Like on the one hand, the false hope annoys me. Like this idea that, oh, we're gonna be able to work with these guys and who knows? It's better not to ruffle feathers. So let's just kind of see how it plays out. Like that part is annoying to me in particular,

because I don't think that's gonna be true. But more more it completely I kind of invalidates all the arguments against Trump and Vance that he made. Like he made these deep moral and ethical arguments about Donald Trump the man, about the way that JD Vance has humiliated himself, about how the illiberalness of their ideology is wrong. And to just turn around then and be like, well, they won, so we'll see how it goes. It makes people wonder, were you genuine before about when you made those arguments? Because how does A meet B?

When you say what you want about Liz Janie, when you see her doing interviews now, she's not backing off anything that she said before. And you can throw in a sentence at the end that's like, I hope to be wrong. I hope to be wrong. Whatever. Great. I hope to be wrong.

We're not wrong, though. And we've already been proven right once. We're going to be proven right again. And so why? It almost plays into their hands by saying, see, these guys didn't even believe it. It was just rhetoric. It was just political rhetoric. You sent me a couple of quotes from Romney. I hadn't watched anything this morning and

hadn't even known he was on these shows. And the other one I think was that you have to admit that Trump has brought in the middle class and the working class to the Republican Party, something like that. And I read that just as I had finished reading a New York Times article, big New York Times article which is online, I assume in today's print times. Eli Zaslow, the reporter, I think was from Georgia, very moving about a guy who's been here since he was five years old, family, hard worker, churchgoer, wonderful person, undocumented.

His mother came across the border to work in Georgia. She also seems to have been, maybe both parents, I can't remember, were hard workers. He married a girl from Rome, has a father-in-law who voted for Trump. And it's caused some strains because he's very worried, they're very worried about him being deported and they're spending money on lawyers. They don't have that much extra, any extra money and it's causing, you know, just terrible psychological distress on them and their little kids. The father-in-law is sort of, well, you're not the kind of person that wanted to deport. So according to the article, the 40-year-old or so DACA recipient, Dreamer Type, says,

well, I don't know. He says he wants to deport us and I have to prepare for that in case it were to happen. But what do I do? I can't get a lawyer, but it takes out the immigration system so terrible. He's like the father-in-law is this big Trump supporter, is there a belligerent, they're not going to deport you. They're going to have to come through me, which I found particularly, I've got to say, I don't mean to, you know, these are individuals, and I don't know, maybe the quote was out of context. I found particularly infuriating, I must say.

You know what? They don't have to come through him. And if they, if, if ICE wants to deport him, unfortunately, he's not going to, I mean, he's a kind of a prepper, he's got guns and all this kind of stuff. So I don't know, maybe he will get a shootout with some ICE agents, God forbid. But I mean, it's just the whole thing. But anyways, a very moving piece about this, about this one DACA recipient, there are 10 million of them. So I'd read that and look, how did this guy, the father-in-law, come to vote for Trump? And so he describes why he did.

It's all MAGA lies, MAGA conspiracy theories, wild exaggerations, playing on anxieties that a lot of immigrants have come into that part of Georgia. They work in chicken processing plants and so forth. It's caused some tensions and problems. But again, sort of like the Ohio thing, wild exaggeration of the problems. He seems in his own life to be doing okay, so far as what I can tell. And he's got a Senate law who is actually a DACA recipient. Mitt Romney sort of admires Trump, you can sort of tell from that clip, you know, for

bringing in the working class and the middle class. But a ruffle lot of those people he brought in, he brought in not because he explained that his policies would really help them economically. He brought them in by appealing to, worse than appealing to, by magnifying and capitalizing on and amplifying whatever xenophobia and bigotry was there already. I was angry after reading it. You should be angry. And the admirers is a good word because you sensed this in the run the interview that there is like a you got to hand it to him kind of thing. Right? Like I ran for president. They rejected me. Like Trump must be doing something that I wish I could have done.

And like, that is the thing that is the most dispiriting about all of it. And a little enraging. It's like if good old fashioned Mormon church going milk drinking, follow the rules, Mitt Romney cannot just internalize that sometimes people are rewarded for doing things that are wrong, which is the basic moral of every children's book. I'm sure plenty of Mormon texts. Plenty of adult books. Yeah, plenty of adult books.

Like, and you gotta hand it to him now and just say, all right, well, Trump got this one right because he more successfully preyed on people's grievances and bigotries than I did. It makes me upset. Also just one last thing, the kind of, the looking up to Trump, which is very common, look what he did. Now he, it's impressive, three times nominee, twice winning. Make Romney got 47, a little more, maybe percent of the vote against Barack

Obama finishing his first term, pretty coming brought the country back from the depths of a terrible recession. Donald Trump got 49.8 or something percent of the vote against Kamala Harris succeeding Joe Biden. I'm going to just stipulate that Barack Obama was a stronger candidate than Kamala Harris having only only 100 days to run after Biden pulled out. Why does Romney even feel defensive?

He ran as good a race as Trump. I mean, just empirically, you know, he got 2% less, 2.5% less. It's not like, you know, he was humiliated, lost the football game 52 to 0, right? I mean, he did a little bit less well than Trump. I don't know. I just saw the whole kind of semi-apparition and semi almost awe for Trump is very, that is, it helps Trump though. Great, a great deal. Here's one more. Joe Biden posted this over the weekend. I have no idea why.

He wrote this, I pray to God that the president-elect throws away project 2025. I think it would be an economic disaster. I believe the only way for a president to lead America is to lead all of America. Like, again, like what is this? What is this? Why are we doing this? Like, why are you doing a smiling picture with Donald Trump? Why are you doing a post about how you hope that he will throw away project 2025? He's appointed all the people that did Project 2025 to the administration. And then you're singling out the economic part of it.

What are you even talking about? It's just this fake, nicey, nicey shit with Trump is endemic. It is like from the Disney people, to the sitting president, to Romney. They're all doing this. Yeah, totally. I like fake, nicey, nicey shit.

That should be the title of this podcast. We denounce fake, nicey, nicey shit. That should be the title of this podcast. We denounce fake, nicey, nicey shit. Oh, we pray. Maybe Donald Trump will turn the corner. Year nine. He'll throw away project. What are you talking about? He is president. He's sort of still head of the Democratic Party, not really, but he could in fact say some things that would remind people of how dangerous, he knows the executive branch better than anyone else. Well, not really, but he could in fact say some things that would remind people of how dangerous he's been. He knows the executive branch better than anyone else. I'm well, sort of, or at least once did, and still know some of it.

He could say a few things that would make Trump's life more difficult, I should think, going forward and show. I mean, I don't know. I tweeted after reading that New York Times piece, I was so, I tweeted, I X'd and blue skied after reading that Times piece because I was so just furious really and moved by the piece, very well reported. I said, I don't know, can Biden not pardon all the DACA recipients? I suppose he can't. I mean, I don't quite know.

Being undocumented isn't really a crime, so it's not like pardoning someone for a crime. On the other hand, I've done zero research on this. I'm just making all this up. Carter did pardon or amnesty, didn't he, all the draft avoiders who had gone to Canada and so forth. Why is it that different to pardon people here and to say, cheat them as if they've been documented? Anyway, I don't know. Couldn't they be thinking of things they could do to help doing a little more

than they're doing to cushion the country from the damage Trump wants to do? It does feel that way. You talked on the conversations with Bill Kristol with Jack Goldsmith, who is over at Lawfare and a Harvard professor who knows this stuff. You talked on the conversations with Bill Kristol, with Jack Goldsmith, who is over at Lawfare and a Harvard professor who knows this stuff well. I'm just going to cop to the fact that I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. It's on my list while I'm in between trips to the bathroom tonight. But did Jack have any insight on that?

So, I mean, Jack is very cautious and judicious. I mean, honestly so. And speaking as a kind of balanced law professor, not everything needs to go as badly as it might. But I would say, given that he, I don't know, is obviously a touch more conservative than we are, but I think he believes strongly in executive power. But anyway, he knows executive branch extremely well,

both justice and DOD. And yeah, it's alarming. I think if you know who Jack Goldsmith is, if you know how careful he's been, if I can put it in a simple and crude way, not to sound like us quite over the last few years. And I don't mean this, Jack is a serious guy. It's not like he's sitting around thinking, I don't want to sound like Tim and Bill. It's just that this is who he is. But if you know who he is and you watch that,

you see that even someone who kind of wants to see whether there might be a case to be made for some of these reforms and civil service stuff and executive authority, and after all the president is elected and people report to him, he is pretty alarmed. I say especially interesting. You're talking about the Schedule F?

We didn't get into that quite as much. The thing he seemed personally most alarmed about was national security Interestingly fair matter out there a little law stuff from DOJ But really the national security implications of having a patellar at FBI and then having a DOD this dysfunctional He said I think he's always been someone concerned about national security his work in 2002 2003 was kind of post 9-11 work It was also Rolled back and gotten a lot of big fights with the Bush White House, rolling back the John Do You Torture memo.

So he's not some kind of mindless hawk, do as much as you can. But he's seriously concerned about national security. And he's very worried about just what four years of these guys being totally silly and demonstrative and just ran, I don't like the FBIs who are getting rid of the counterintelligence division. How much real damage that could do to our national security. Excited to listen to that. We'll put a link in the show notes.

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prove all of your enemies right. Here's Bernie this morning on on the morning shows. It's not talked about enough. We are moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of society. Never before in American history have so few billionaires, so few people, had so much wealth and so much power. Never before has there been so much concentration of ownership, sector after sector, power of Wall Street. And never before in American history, and we better talk about this, have the people on top had so much political power. We can't go around the world saying, oh, well, you know, in Russia, Putin has an oligarchy.

Well, we got an oligarchy here too. And in this last election, in both parties, billionaires spent huge amounts of money to elect their candidates. Huge. Sometimes I just, you know, I was watching the clip and I was like, you got to hand it to Bernie.

I don't know. I want to hear what Bill Kristol thinks about that. It's hard to argue with that right now. I mean, he's been reading, he's been reading warning shots, obviously, and also my ex and Blue Sky feeds. And I've made this point, I don't think it's quite the same for both parties. And I think honestly, it's the political power side of it that's most scary. I mean, it could be bad to have so much inequality of wealth, and it could be more progressive

taxes, and maybe we need more anti-trust to break up companies. In this respect, there's not much similarity between Biden and Trump. I mean, the just totally shameless Elon Musk and Trump and the dealing as we've seen, the courting favor and appointing, I mean, the meshing, that is more like Orban or, I would say, the aspects of Putin and is super dangerous. So I'm glad Bernie's come around to the Bulwark point of view on this, you know. I wonder if Bernie ever used, I wonder if he used to use the word oligarchy a lot. That was, that's sort of a old-fashioned word. I don't know if the Marxists really use it that much. Millionaires and the billionaires.

I mean, yeah, I don't know. We'd have to go back to the, to the transcripts from his 16 speeches. I don't know. It's a good question. I guess why I really wanted to play it was, um, uh, in order besides getting you and Bernie on the record as being on the same, same side on this one was. I'm sympathetic to the fact that this is actually a more fruitful ground for Democrats and all of us that are trying to

challenge this incoming administration than some of this other stuff. The brazenness in which they're doing this, just tying this back to the whole Romney thing about the middle class and the guy you're talking about, it didn't stick with Trump in the first term in any way that he had all these Goldman Sachs people around him. But I feel like it's just so much more brazen this time that it feels like something that eventually people are going to be like, this is, this is out of control.

You know, the Democrats, I think, and I'm no expert on this at all, but need to go back and really look at FDR. I mean, they all want to go back to Clinton or they want to go back to Obama, which is understandable. That's modern. They were in modern America. FDR was awful long time ago by now. But he combined, I mean, I think of him, I was admired, grew up admiring him, not knowing

that much, but you know, he won the war, obviously, and got us out of the depression and safe capitalism. That was kind of the standard semi-conservative defense of FDR that unlike, you know, he protected by strengthening guard rails, limiting the abuses and so forth, he actually ended up saving capitalism. And I think FDR said this himself or certainly his defenders did at the time. But FDR also used a lot of what would today be called the class warfare rhetoric and denouncing the malefactors of great wealth and had policies that were in some cases pretty radical. So I think there's a way to combine a kind of healthy anti-oligarchic semi-populism with

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get 20% off is to go to join deleteme.com slash bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout. That is joindeleteme.com slash bulwark code bulwark. AOC on the younger end of the spectrum. There's a lot of discussion right now about how she is trying to get a spot on the oversight committee and that there should be democratic turnover. And the other congressman that wants that gavel is Jerry Connolly, more of an old line, Democrat type. Do you have any grand thoughts on whether the Democrats should be turning over gavels to AOC

and be more mindful of generational change on the Hill? All my moderate friends, of course, are for, you know, think, oh my God, AOC is the face of the party. I've got to say, when I've seen her, if you're going to oppose Trump, why not AOC? You know, I don't want her to run the country. I'm not sure I want her to chair some actual important committee if the Democrats ever win Congress back.

This is oversight, so it's entirely a oversight of the executive branch. It's a, let's call it, adversarial investigative committee. She's not going to be making policy in most areas. My instinct, I'll turn to Connolly, incidentally the congressman for right around here, so I'm going to hear from his staff and stuff, but my instinct is to think, why not do AOC? People are freaking out on the center about, oh my God, can you imagine AOC? So what if she said of oversight for two years at the end of the world? And she's pretty good at making these arguments I think. What do you think? Don't you have more? I have a little more faith

that AOC will go after the worst things the Trump administration does than Jerry Connolly. Yeah, I'm of mixed views. On the one hand, I strongly believe that the Democrats on the Hill have been too timid over the last eight or nine years, and that they should be much more aggressive in oversight and tactics. And this is like the question that I ask every Democratic congressman that wants to come on this podcast is, you know, are you going to work with Mike Johnson and bail them out when they can't fund the government? Are you going to push investigations?

I just think that they've been too timid, in particular on the Hill during the Trump era. And so will AOC be more aggressive? Will she be better at getting attention for the corruption stuff that we've just been talking about? Absolutely. She also is, she lets loose, which I like, but sometimes she lets a little too loose, you know, and if you follow her social media feeds, I mean, there's stuff

that she does that I just don't think that gets that much attention now that I think would get a lot of attention if she was, you know, running this committee or running for president as far as, you know, as really eye-rolly type identity politics type stuff that she does. Some of her messaging around the Luigi UnitedHealthcare thing was a little, makes me cringe a little bit. That's the kind of balance, right? Maybe you have to take the good with the bad and something like this. But I do think that particularly for the oversight thing, I'm not as, I'm like you, I'm not as hostile to it as one might think. I agree with the way you put it. Yeah, so just give AOC oversight and then we'll all support

Richie Torres against AOC in the 2028 Democratic primary. It's gonna be a good primary, right? Two young members of Congress, very, you know. Is that a Democratic primary for what? Office? Presidency? Presidency, yeah, we're skipping a few generations here. Maybe you have, didn't you get that memo? We're going down, we're going down soon. Yeah, I've got some issues about that head to head, but we can do a 2028 hot stove another time.

All right, well, do you have any thoughts on the drones? People are concerned. People are seeing stars. Larry Hogan saw Ryan's belt and thought it was a drone. He hasn't quite recovered from his stupid... Twitter that saw lots of lights over the Capitol is very concerned. It was just those planes landing at Reagan. So I don't know. Do you have any worries? Do you have any friends

on the inside that can provide any state secrets to our listeners? I have no secrets and no thoughts, except to say two people randomly over the last 24 hours have been just texting with them or chatting with them actually about other things. I mean, social, personal, family stuff kind of have both said, I don't know, it seems like it can't just be, there seems to be something there. And they're not thinking it's like, you know, some deep state whatever, but it's- Aliens. Yeah, aliens, right. So I don't know.

I don't know. I haven't followed it enough. It feels like there's maybe enough that isn't literally just airplanes landing at New York and at LaGuardia, or maybe it is literally just airplanes and FedEx drones or Amazon drones delivering stuff. Maybe it is literally that. I have no idea. I think it's literally that. But I'm open to aliens. It's been a weird month. So let's

mix things up. I don't know. We might welcome them as liberators. We'll see. Bill Crystal, thank you so much for doing this on Sunday afternoon for me. We will wait. I won't see you next week. We'll be on a holiday next week. We'll see you in two weeks for the Borg podcast. enjoy the holidays everybody else we'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the board podcast I hope Pain is a porn-powder, painted by play shit It's faded, it's more foul, the famous is toxin Hollywood off the bus park, tender little destruct talk In a waist with a gold face, be the greedy with dum-dum You and me in a butane, super lame and he puff-puff

Little dragons of fad rap, cruisin' in face to fuck up Walk in the zone again, that's waking up for a fight Now you eat with a sifter, sell trash, sleep with an orphan, tell hash Pardon me son, I'm sold out, pulled out, no doubt home is Blowed out, sold out, without extra man bonus The, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out I can feel the blood gushing, I can feel the blood gushing I can feel the blood gushing, I can feel the blood gushing The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katy Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.