The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Fight on All Fronts

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

Not a lot of people predicted that Trump would fold and let Congress vote on the release of the Epstein files. But his retreat shows that Democrats have more leverage than conventional wisdom has suggested, and they should not rule out long shots in the fight against Trump’s authoritarian project. Meanwhile, MAGA looks to be fracturing in real time and Trump looks more and more vulnerable—on his ballroom, falling asleep in meetings, and his constant reminders that he’s only out for himself. Plus, MTG’s possible Saul to Damascus moment, Border Patrol’s invasion of Charlotte, bombing Venezuela would not be America First, and the Epstein emails are a reminder of how gross and nauseating the elites can be. Go away, Larry Summers. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes  Chris Geidner on Greg Bovino's appalling misuse of E.B. White's legacy and "Charlotte's Web" Bill's "Bulwark on Sunday" with Mark Hertling on Venezuela Tim's book, "Why We Did It" TAKE THE SURVEY Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made!  Go to https://trymiracle.com/THEBULWARK and use the code THEBULWARK to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF Go to https://zbiotics.com/THEBULWARK and use THEBULWARK at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. So we're back with Bill Crystal. Bill, I think we should probably start by talking about Jeffrey Epstein. What about you? I think it's kind of the lead story of the day, wouldn't you say? I was getting ready to write my morning shots, the newsletter, like yesterday afternoon. and I thought I'd gotten a limb and predict that Trump would actually have to fold, which has been contrary, I guess, to conventional wisdom in a way. And even I wasn't sure he would at all. But then Trump folded at 9.15 p.m. So I had to recast my newsletter a little bit, you know.

The burdens of newsletter writing. Exactly. The burdens of newsletter, I'm happy it's your problem, not mine. Well, let's talk about that fold. Here's what Trump wrote, which is an extremely long bleat. I'll just read the key parts here. He starts this way. As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the fake news media,

House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files. I don't remember that exactly. I don't have that on tape. I'd like to see the tape on that. Maybe that was the fake news media had not decided to report on that very big breaking news item that he says that he did on Friday. Anyway, he goes on. We have nothing to hide, and it's time to move on from this Democrat hoax.

The House oversight committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to. maybe a little bit of a, maybe a little bit of an interesting carve out there, then all caps, I don't care. All I do care about is that Republicans get back on point. So there you go. The Trump fold, he's ready for the Democrats to release the files. And there's going to be a lot of particulars about what that actually looks like. But to me, I think the most important element of the fold is the implications for the Senate. This thing might actually happen. As recently as a month ago, I was kind of the view that it was important and good with Rokana and Thomas Massey were doing, draw attention to this, you know, that you can get the discharge petition signed.

But even so, even if you get it out of the House, then it would die in the Senate. But now if you have Trump basically saying we got nothing to hide, that to me feels like it gives a release to the senators to do this as well. Oh, totally. I think in the original draft to the aforementioned newsletter, and I think I wrote the House will pass this overwhelmingly. tonight or tomorrow, I think, in the Senate, I think we'll do what I said. As early as later this week, our prudent editor, Sam Stein's changed will to, is likely to, because he actually believes it like more fact-based reporting for some reason instead of just... That's good. That's why he brought Sam in.

Yeah, that's good. And then, but then I changed likely to very likely. No, I think I do think, what's your rationale as a senator for not being for it now if Trump's forward? So I think Trump has to sign it, don't you think? I mean, this is actual legislation. They may be able to find many ways around it, to minimize it, to keep back documents they shouldn't keep back. God knows if they've destroyed some of these things, et cetera, et cetera. Still, I do think we could be, you know, within a week or two of Trump signing this legislation, which is pretty well written, I think, pretty strict in terms of specifying what has to be released. Sure. There's a lot of reasons to have lack of trust in the administration and how they execute laws that are passed by Congress.

They haven't shown exactly to be meticulous on that front. And, you know, I mean, who the hell knows what shenanigans Bondi could be up to as far as the review process of documents. And like I said, they have that caveat about what they are legally entitled to. So there are definitely caveats here. This is not as if this thing's going to get signed this week and we're going to know every secret about the Jeffrey Epstein story by next week. But is a political lesson, I mean, maybe I'm wrong about this and I just haven't seen it. But I didn't see a ton of people who thought that,

the House discharge petition was going to lead to the Senate going along with this as well, John Thune bringing it up, and then Donald Trump being forced to sign it. That was not an outcome that I don't think a lot of people predicted. I think there's some important political lessons from that that you read about a little bit in the newsletter as well, about like the shotgun method to opposing Trump of its being, it's important to try a lot of things because you don't, you don't know what's going to land. The whole Democratic conference signed the discharge petition in the conventionalism at first was the delegate for Republicans, then they miraculously got four Republicans, not the moderate, quote, moderate, responsible, established for Republicans

that everyone's been obsessing about for eight and nine months. When are they going to come around? Don Bacon, surely he's more responsible. And some of these other veteran, you know, senior members, institutionalists, Don Bacon came around Sunday after it was clear that the thing was, you know, had 218 signatures. He never was, he wasn't one of the 218. Four sort of oddball, Maga, well, a couple of cases, Maga true believers or just, anyway, whatever, members,

not the ones you would pick necessarily to be part of the anti-Trump coalition, did what they thought was right. And for me, the lesson is partly, you've got to fight. You've got to fight on all fronts, and you don't rule out, you know, long shots sometimes come home

and you don't rule it out ahead of time. Second lesson, the Democrats have more leverage than the conventional wisdom has been, you and I've had so many conversations with democratic strategists, which often have begun over especially the first six months or so of the Trump second term. It's very important that Democrats explain to voters that there's very limited things they can do because otherwise voters will have excessive expectations and blah, blah, blah, that won't be blamed.

It's like, I don't know, maybe they should spend less time explaining to voters what they can't do and looking at every possible lever of power they have. And getting within four signatures on a discharge petition is a kind of power. And then you get four to sign on and suddenly you're off to the races. And they also, to their credit, I didn't put this in the newsletter, I thought her it afterwards. I mean, remember how they originally got some of those emails and all that? That was that kind of fluky thing. I remember when I think Representative Garcia, who was new to the committee or new to being ranking on the committee back in July.

The New Rack of America has kindly died, yeah. Yeah, and he sort of brought up this thing suddenly and it passed, and that's when Johnson had to send in the house home early. So, again, I think being aggressive, letting backbenchers take the lead for O'Connor deserves credit here on the discharge petition. And don't be driven entirely by leadership, having long meetings with consultants and posters and discovering that actually Medicaid is really much more important than all this distraction of Epstein, you know. And also finally, fracturing MAGA, maybe a better, or at least as good a strategy as winning over moderates in terms of damaging Trump's momentum and wounding his efforts to be victorious in his authoritarian project.

You've said that, I think, before. Don't you think that's? Yeah, and I want to get into that just a little bit. just really quick one more on the House, on the congressional strategy, and then I want to do the fracturing MAGA part because, like, the fact that the House was out for two months is also kind of a win, right? Like, I just, like, Trump, if there's one thing you can learn from Trump strategically, that stalling and kicking the can and, like, you know, gumming up the works and buying yourself time can pay off, by the way. And, like, the less that these guys are doing,

the more time they're spent fighting about Epstein, the better. The more time they're spent delaying, doing stuff, the better. And so I think that, like, that is another, like, the substance of the Epstein material is important, obviously to the victims. It's politically important to the extent that we are learning more about Donald Trump's relationship with Epstein. And it's as important as part of the fracturing of Maga. But, like, it also means, you go back to the last line, Trump's bleat.

It's like, all I care about is the Republicans get back on point. Like, they're off point. And part of that is their own making, of course. But part of that is like the value of them doing this rather than whatever. It's not like the house was going to be doing something good if they were in. Like maybe they would have been doing nothing. I don't know. But they weren't going to be doing anything good if they had been in session.

And they weren't between the combination of the fight over the shutdown and then also trying to stall having this petition good side. So to me, I just think that there are a lot of like tactical tactical. tactical lessons we learned here, and their tactical going forth next year, as far as oversight is concerned, this comes out of the House Oversight Committee. I always go back to the lesson that, like, the first little, there's a meme that goes around where it's like somebody's like putting up a bunch of blocks, you know, and it's like something very small, at least just something big. It was like the Benghazi hearing, like the 13th Benghazi hearing was the first block that led

to Jim Comey doing the press conference about Hillary Clinton a week before the election, right? Like, you don't know where this stuff can also lead, and it's important to actually put effort into it. I mean, the Democrats have been pretty suddenly, maybe got kind of aggressive the last two months, right? The shutdown, that was not 100 percent certain that they were going to think that was wise to do on September 30th. They went with it, the Democratic senators, and they stuck to their guns for longer than a lot of people thought through the elections on November 4th, where they also did very well, better than people expected. In the middle of that was no Kings, which also went very well, 7 million people, no violence, et cetera, patriotic. demonstrations. So they've had a pretty good run for a couple of months, but I'd say that run is partly by willing to take a few risks and not say, oh my God, if we have these No King's

demonstrations, you know, something somewhere will look left wing and we can't do that, right? Or we can't fight ice too hard because immigration was a very bad issue for Joe Biden. I mean, the degree to which I believe they have sort of internally, maybe without even thinking it through, stepped up a little bit more on a kind of variety of fronts, one of them being Epstein is striking and it's paid off. here we go there's going to be more happy talk coming very uncharacteristically bill and tim i know you come here for rain cloud this will be the second straight podcast where i'm offering a positive view about our trajectory so just enjoy it with me if you want or uh you know complain in the

comments whatever you prefer i mean god knows what will happen tonight or tomorrow if we're having this conversation here yeah sure between now and when the podcast actually comes out i don't know about you you ever wake up feeling sweaty the temperature in the bedroom can or break a good night's sleep. And that's why we're turning to Miracle-made sheets. They're inspired by NASA technology and use silver-infused temperature-regulating

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gift. And with a 30 day money back guarantee, there's no risk. That's It's try miracle.com slash the bulwark, code the bulwark at checkout. Thanks to Miracle Made for sponsoring this episode. On the fracturing of MAGA, I've come back several times to this kind of comedian podcaster named Tim Dillon, who is, it's like MAGA adjacent. He's not like going in the front row at Trump rallies. I don't think he's ever spoken to a Trump rally, but he was supportive of Trump. He had dinner with J.D. Vance.

He was kind of as a populist right affect. He's on the head, Marjorie Taylor Green, who are to get to in a second on his podcast. to discuss her 2028 ambitions at the beginning of her independent shift away from Donald Trump. And so I want to play what Tim Dillon said on his podcast over the weekend. And I do think, unfortunately, this kind of is the end of, and I say unfortunately, not because I care, truly, but I say unfortunately because it seems to not be doing anything good for anyone. This is the end of the Trump administration. This is the beginning of the lame duck presidency.

It's obvious to everyone. Even his most ardent, ardent supporters show up to the White House, like Laura Ingram, which is kind of shock on what the hell is going on. Now we'll start, you know, three years of talking about the ballroom. He will trail off. He will get older. He's going to, he's adorned the White House in gold. Epstein's going to suck the oxygen out of a lot of this.

It's obvious. Tim Dylan, that this is the end of the Trump presidency. And it's always that's an overstated statement, but like, this is kind of how I felt the last week. You know, I don't want to get over excited. Obviously, Trump could do an insane amount of damage over the next three years. And, like, who knows what he will try to pull between now and, you know, when he is term limited from his role as president. But in a way that is different from anything since really January 6th, It does feel as if, like, you can see how this thing crashes and burns and how it crashes and burns because, in large part, people within the MAGA coalition look at it and decide

that this is not serving them anymore. And that, as Tim Dillon said, that this is not doing anything good for anybody. No, I kind of agree that it feels like, I don't know what crashes and burns, but at least fizzles and sputters. And now, I mean, the degree to which they could intensify the authoritarian private. at home and abroad as both have a certain sense of desperation, a sense that they can't afford to lose the White House in 2028. I mean, I think no one should relax for a second about what Trump's trying to do.

But I do feel, yeah, that there's some chunk of the Trump coalition, both the sort of normy Republicans out there who just look around, what is all this from the ballroom and the gold at the White House that he's old, and he's falling asleep, and he just, it's all about him. He's not watching out for us, some of this is tariffs, et cetera, some combination of that and Epstein and other issues where yeah there seems to be more vulnerability and you know empirically he's down what eight points or so since over eight nine months 10 months I guess it is now so you know that I remember saying somewhere a couple weeks ago and that could

continue and someone said no no no I mean look maybe it'll level off and maybe he won't go back off that'll be good but you can't seriously expecting to go down from 42 to I don't know 38 or 37 I don't know maybe he could right the midterms look bad for the Republicans of Trump's at 38 you know now the midterms themselves don't solve everything or anything much they create some oversight possibilities but the administration will will will not obey a subpoenas and etc but yeah i feel like there's a real moment i mean that they cannot democrats cannot decide suddenly there however to say oh let's just play it safe as we have a little wind in our back you know so no press the advantage no to your point about why i think it was rational by the way to

think, you know, to look at history and look at our last decade and think, okay, sure, Trump's had a bad run, but he's not going to get down below 38. He's got a cult. We're so divided as a country, you know, the right-wing media ecosystem. But, you know, how did Bush get down below that number? It was because of a mutiny from within his coalition, right? It was Republicans that got very mad at him over a combination of things, whether it be Harriet Myers or the Iraq War. And that has not happened with Trump. He orchestrated and encouraged a riot at the Capitol to where police were assaulted. And he did not lose a single supporter.

And so, you know, he lost a single supporter, but he didn't lose any meaningful percentage of his base. And so, like, why would you think that he would do so now? Like, I think that was a rational thing to think. But as you mentioned, this kind of combination of things of people now feeling like he's, He's betraying America First Principles, plus Epstein, plus the economy just being shittier than it was back then and people struggling in their lives has led to a part where I do think it's feasible to think that he gets down below. I just want to read one other person while we're getting high on our own supply of Trump demise.

Here's Andrew Sullivan. Now, Sullivan has always been anti-Trump, but has kind of looked to scantz at the bulwark and been like, I'm not anti-Trump like those guys. Those guys have Trump derangement syndrome. And, you know, he was pro DeSantis during the primary and his very anti-left. So it's just a different wing of the type of folks that have been to varying degrees, like assessing this thing differently than we have. And he writes this sounds just like Tim Dillon.

Trump's overall disapproval rating took a sharp tick upward as he wantonly demolished the east wing of the White House in favor of a massive ballroom in the style of a Guild of Age brothel. America is opposed at two to one. Last night after calling Republicans demanding the Epstein file stupid, he invited the heads of Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock to a private dinner. The visuals are more and more Marie Antoinette, not William Jennings, Brian. Political gravity, maybe you're turning in a future beyond this authoritarian madness foreseeable. Once again, I haven't written this a lot lately, but I feel myself slightly emboldened this week. I just think that's kind of hard

to argue with at this point. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned January 6th, and that for me is always the moment of like, oh, my God, but he recovered from that and got himself like the president again, almost four years later. So that's a caution. But that he turned into, of course, a liberal versus Naga issue and managed to amazingly do so with some success. I think the advantage politically of the Epstein files

is it's not that, as you were saying, it's an interim. I mean, remember the coverage of the Epstein thing six months ago was all, this is causing trouble for Trump because some of his base doesn't like it. Now, I think that was both correct and too simple because, of course, it turns out the whole country

is repulsed and revolted by what Epstein did as they are right to be. And Trump's cover up just looked increasingly like a cover up to 80% of the public, not just to the, you know, people who were obsessing about Epstein five, six, seven years ago, they turned out to be right, certainly to be obsessing about it. But, you know, led to some crazy places, too. But a lot of people were right to say this is an outrage and a bipartisan is an outrage and so forth. So, you know, in that respect, you mentioned Bush in 2005, in a way, isn't Epstein a little more like Katrina? I mean, it's not an ideal, you know, in a way, Iraq caused big problems for Bush, don't know Iran, but it's

Still, you could sort of fight that fight. It was Carrie, you know, it was the Dulles versus the Hawks. It was the war and terror. I mean, Katrina was just incompetence and fecklessness. It seemed that way. You're doing a good job, Brownie and all that. It was really Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Nagin's fault. But, okay, we can rehash.

We can rehash, we can rehash. Were you at the RNC then doing those talking points? I was not. I was in college. Very effective. Yeah. I was still in college. So please, get out, don't play that one on me.

I take your point. You're in New Orleans. You know more about it. But you know what I mean in the sense that it was a, it was an out of the blue kind of Epstein's not quite out of the blue, but it was orthogonal to the normal political fights. And those things can sometimes hurt you, hurt you even more. And then if they fit into a narrative. So Katrina fit into, I remember this vividly, this is a word of Iraq of the war.

I mean, if Katrina fit into the notion that he's also incompetently fighting this war, whatever you think of it and the bad information to get us going on it, you know, this is not being managed well. Look what he's did with Katrina. And I do think also with Epstein, there's a little, that overlaps that way. You know, it's all about him. He's only watching out for himself. He said he would watch out for us.

Part of that was exposing these things that were covered up, but he's not willing to do that. And also he's spending all this time on the East Wing, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, I think it fits in pretty well to a general sense that he's only out for himself. I think, don't you think that's an important part of it? I do. Maybe we should just have a full secret podcast with you and maybe what we do like 1998 to 2006, because maybe it's more Kikilowinsky.

I don't know. I kind of object to your claim that it was contrary. I think that Myers had a bigger impact on the base than Katrina. Well, no, that's a good point, but that was also out of the blue. There's a Supreme Court. There's a death, and suddenly there's another Supreme Court vacancy. He nominates his White House counsel and no one's ever heard of, basically. I mean, so that's also, you're right.

I think it's a good instance, and it did fracture. I mean, I was involved in, it did fracture the base. Self-correction. I was in my first job after college during Katrina, but it was not for the Bush administration. I was not in comms yet. I was begging my way into the comms department, so I hold no culpability. I withdraw. I retract my unfair implication. I haven't studied your CV in detail recently. I really apologize. Bonus content for people, which is me and Bill relive 2005 together and try to determine what the real downfall of Bush was.

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at checkout for 15% off. You know, let's just do this. I was going to save this for the end for dessert, but while we're feeling our outs, let's just keep on rolling. Let's talk about Marjorie Taylor Green for a second. She was on CNN with Dana Bash this weekend. This is a longer clip than I usually play, but I want to play at all.

because I think that there is potentially much jump hack here. She's discussing Trump called her Marjorie Trader Brown. Dude is losing his fastball in the nicknames. I got to tell you, after Brown in parentheses, he writes, you know, when grass rots, the green turns to brown. That kind of feels like it. And if you're explaining the joke, it's not a good joke type of situation here. So I don't know.

It feels like Grandpa's lost his fastball in the nicknames. But Greene was saying, Marjor Tio Green was saying that these sorts of attacks were yielding real threats to her in real life. And she had hoax calls to her house. And Danabesh asked her about whether that gives her a change of heart about past rhetoric. And let's listen. We have seen these kinds of attacks or criticism from the president at other people. It's not new. And with respect, I haven't heard you speak out about it until it was directed.

at you. Dana, I think that's fair criticism. And I would like to say humbly, I'm sorry for taking part in the toxic politics. It's very bad for our country. And it's been something I've thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated, is that we, I'm only responsible for myself and my own words and actions. And I am committed, and I've been working on this a lot lately to put down the knives and politics. I really just want to see people be kind to one another.

And we need to figure out a new path forward that is focused on the American people because as Americans, no matter what side of the aisle we're on, we have far more in common than we have differences. Boy, that's like Saul to Damascus moment from Marjorie Taylor Green, maybe, or maybe it's fake. I don't know. Does that matter, I wonder? What do you make of it? There are a couple of things I want to weigh in on, but I'm wondering what you think about the new Marjorie Taylor Green. Yeah, I'm so stuck. I had actually heard of it, but I hadn't heard it.

It's even more sort of kind of amazing to actually hear it and her voice and everything. I see a lot of people talking about this. And I see more on the Internet people saying things like, let's not whitewash her. Let's not like platformer. Let's not be fooled by her. And I see more of that than I see people actually whitewashing her. And to me, I look at this and it's like, isn't this what we want?

I mean, maybe she's faking it. Maybe she will turn back in three weeks and be the crazy lady, like, chasing down the high school kids. that were, you know, at a school that got shot up and calling them crisis actors or doing whatever the most noxious thing you ever think she's ever did. Maybe she'll start doing that again in three weeks. And I don't think anyone would be surprised by that. We'd rightly criticize it. But, you know, I don't know. There's something to be said for the fact that like when people break away from Trump on one thing, they start to see a lot of other things much more clearly

because, you know, to kind of be inside the cult, you can't break on anything, right? Or anything of import, right? And so you rationalize everything. And then once you stop rationalize like one thing, it becomes a little harder to rationalize all the other stuff. And that de-radicalization process is good and important. And we're going to need that from people. And like, I fundamentally think people are redeemable. And we want to try to encourage that and create a positive incentive structure for that. Like right now in our world, there's just so much positive incentive structure for people to be as insane and nasty and conspiratorial as possible just look at the top podcast rankings and so creating an incentive

structure for people going the other direction would be nice and so i'm for it i'm great on mtg and it was the area maybe of my biggest disagreement with from on friday show we were talking about zoron not to compare mtg and soren but like comparing the trajectory where he was he was really dug in on like what zoron was rapping about dues in 2019 which seems not great to me um but i was trying to say well like isn't it a good thing that he Like that when there was an anti-Semitic attack recently, he felt like he had to do a tweet condemning it and that he's like changed his rhetoric around.

Like, isn't that what we want? Like, we want people. So we can have a watchful eye that they backslide, right? But we want people to do this. I don't know. I think that Marjorie Togne is a much better messenger for our desired outcome than like me or some establishment or Nikki Haley or some center-right Republican.

I think it would be much better for. Marjorie to say these things, and maybe it won't land. But I think she's a better chance of getting it heard than other folks. So I'm for it. Yeah, no, I'm very much where you are. I just also think analytically, I mean, this is, yes, you say, I think once you break once, you break a little more and one can hold her to her promise now to be more responsible. And then maybe she emboldened some others. I mean, it doesn't take that many. She doesn't have to have 20% of the MAGA coalition follower, right? Five percent, eight percent. But I, and I do think people need to, to start thinking that way. I very much agree with what you're saying. I was at some meeting

recently, and someone was talking about raising some money among kind of moderate donors, trying to, he was trying to do this, to help Bill Cassidy in his primary challenge down there in Louisiana. I guess he's got some bag of person running against him. Cassidy did vote for impeachment, and so he deserves help. But someone else pointed out, you know, he also voted to confirm every single one of Trump's horrible nominees and has not voted a single, I don't believe in a single instance against Trump since he voted for impeachment, basically. And so why exactly are we going out of our way to say Bill Cassidy, as opposed to being replaced by a more maggish Republican who would vote exactly the same way? It's nice that he voted for impeachment, and he deserves some

praise for that. And I kind of agree. I mean, in a way, you know, bolstering what Marjorie Chale Green is doing is probably more important. I'm just actually more important. Leave aside almost the morality of it or the what's right, you know, though I think there's some case theory that's also the right thing to do, but I just think it's practically an important thing. So you should have her on. You should have her on. It'd be great. We've invited her on. I've invited her on the pod. I'd love to have her on. Didn't someone say, oh, she sounds like she'll be a bulwark person soon or something like that. Yeah, there was this smart ass. The rights for the free press or at that said that, I tweeted that. I was like, great. I mean, wouldn't that be great? I don't, I don't understand.

If I, if the reputation of the bulwark is that anybody that has decided to see Donald Trump clearly would want to be in league with us, then I wear that reputation with pride. You know, again, I would not do some like hagiography of Marjorie Taylor Green or I have her on and talk about how great she is. But like, but it's interesting to see what was the breaking point from her. Is there something we can learn? And to your point, like, she has been from the vote on impeachment through now, like, Marjorie Taylor Green has been much more constructive than Bill Cassidy. It doesn't mean that she's a good person or that she's without applause. I bet, like, Bill Cassie's done nothing concerned. So just because they, like,

have a more moderate manner, you know, and, like, sound a little bit more rational. That doesn't do any good. You're not serving any purpose by being a mag of stooge, but just sounding nicer about it. That actually is harmful. That actually is more harmful. I read this over the weekend I Kimmer who it was, some student of authoritarianism, a historian type. It's actually very interesting on this. It was not quite in the context of Cassidy and Marshall, the Greeter's more general comment about the fact that these four Republicans were the ones who were causing all this grief for Trump. And I can't remember honestly this was, but he or she said, you know, this was a student of like Italy in the 20s and Germany in the 30s and all this, said, actually,

this is the pattern. Once the moderate establishment type sign on, they stay signed on. It's hard for them to split. What's their sudden reason for splitting? They were reluctant and had all these reasons why they didn't want to support him at first. Once you kind of decide you're going to go along with it, they're kind of more loyal than the true believers in a funny way. have their own issues, they believed in something, they realized maybe they were foolish to believe in something, or they were foolish to put trust in this guy to carry out the agenda they thought they were believing in. And this person at least claimed that historically those are the people who often do defect first or willing to do something difficult to defect.

As I look, you got to Lauren Boberg, who was a, you know, I don't know what she is exactly strikes me as kind of a load attack, but anyway, she was called into the White House, into the situation room and bludgeoned on Wednesday by Bondi. and Patel, with Trump sort of in the background, I guess. I don't know if he's, I don't think he was physically there, but obviously at his direction. And she just hung tough. I mean, I, and she could have said, I'm taking my name off the petition. Trump's promise me he's going to release more stuff, blah, blah, blah, right?

And I feel you've got to say that there's something there. I do think Epstein's a particular case, so I guess we slid over that a little. I mean, it is so repulsive. And a lot of stuff came out over the last several months that changed, that made people see more clearly just how both how, repulsive he was, his associates, how close Trump was to him, the birthday card and all that. So I, but again, that was the case where no one knew, we didn't know that was going to come out. People were demanding the files.

And then they also got the emails. Then they got pressure on the Houseover. So the Democrats released three emails. And the Republicans said, oh, we're going to really show you. We're going to release 20,000 emails that have all kinds of Democrats in them. But those 20,000 emails also included some bad stuff for Trump, like Epstein saying that Trump knew about the girls, right? I mean, life's full of ironies and bizarre things, right? That Epstein is going to be the thing that maybe really does a more lasting damage to Trump.

But you know what? If it helps weaken the path towards authoritarianism, that's good. I agree. And I will defer to the historian and their historical expertise. I would just say, as in more my wheelhouse, on the political considerations now, it would make sense that somebody with more of an actual authentic MAGA base would have the room to do. distance themselves from him. You know what I mean? Like the other guys are faking it, right? Like the people that were former establishment, John Thune and what like like John Thune is obviously faking it.

Everybody knows he's faking it. He has no base of support. Nobody has John Thune tattoos or signs or fan clubs. There's not one. You know, like he is an establishment creature that has survived to become a mega establishment creature. And so like if he distances from Trump on something like the bottom could fall out of his support, right? Like he could become Kevin McCarthy or one of these guys who are, who are, you know, home alone with no friends. I don't know. I think Marjorie Terry Green could survive this. Like, let's say Donald Trump endorses a primary opponent against her.

You know, if it was the inverse, if it was Brian Fitzpatrick or somebody, like, who became the locus of Trump's ire and they put a MAGA person up against him, I would say that person is probably going to win, right? Like, Trump would probably win with a MAGA person over an establishment person. Could Marjorie survive? Could she be the first person to actually survive separating from him? because nobody else really has, and with love to all of our friends

and Jeff Flake and Kinsinger and Cheney, right? Like, everybody, the distance ended up being out after, basically, except for the people that distanced and then went back and apologized, right? Like, nobody has, like, distanced and held their ground and survived. And a MAGA person could,

just as a practical matter. Now, that's a good political analysis. Complementing the historical analysis, I'd also make a psychological... You make this point in the book, I think, so you should ask you about this. I mean, psychologically, isn't it... Scott Jennings is going to be spend the entire next week attacking,

finding ways to minimize the importance of the Epstein files or pointing out the Democrats are mentioned in the, oh, you guys wanted this, and now you're going to get all these Democrats mentioned in a way that I think an actual Maga person who cared about the Epstein thing, and was maybe diluted in a lot of aspects of like Q&N and all this, God for God knows, you know, isn't going to rationalize. Yeah, no, I mean, the point is just like you're performing, right?

And it's always a performance, right? Because you didn't believe it. Like, it's fake. Like, Scott Jennings, it's fake. What he's doing is he's doing a show. Like, he's a WWE character. And so, like, okay, Marjor Taylor Green and Steve Bannon are both

WWE characters in a way as well, right? Like, they're faking at a times for everybody, all politicians are faking at a times for attention. But, like, their entire character isn't fake, right? Like, they have an authentic character with some authentic views about populist nationalism that they believe in. And then they, you know, various times do, you know, whatever, play games in order to stay in Trump's good graces.

If you're a free market, you know, Reaganite Republican who has gone full mega, your whole character is fake, right? And so why, like, how could you determine where to separate in ways that are sensible? Hey, y'all, we want to hear from you. What do you like of our offerings? I mean, besides me, of course. How do you watch or listen? Where are you tuning in from?

In the show notes, you'll find a link to an audience survey we're conducting to help us get a better sense of who you are and get your feedback on our shows. We're cooking up some great plans for 2026, and this feedback is going to be invaluable. So please grab the link in the show notes. Thanks, advance for your feedback. And it's okay if you like somebody better than me. You can tell us. Immigration. Operation Charlotte's Web started in Charlotte this weekend. I want to talk about Charlotte's Web in a second, but just the facts of what is happening on the ground there. So from the Charlotte Observer, this is doing a great live blog if people want to follow along. Two days of mass federal border patrol agents in the area led to more arrests at the time

I looked at 80 plus, but obviously that's continuing to go up. Community concern around the region, no indication of when this will end. North Carolina, Governor Josh Stein said we've seen masked, heavily armed agents and paramilitary garb, driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling and picking up random people in parking lots and off of our sidewalks, going after landscapers, simply decorating a Christmas tree in someone's front yard

and entering churches and stores to grab people. That's a governor, Democratic governor of North Carolina. On social media, I saw a couple of videos, one of a U.S. citizen who looked Hispanic, getting his truck windows bashed in after, like it was like one group of agents had already checked his ID, and then he got back to the car,

and a separate group of agents came up. And even after he'd already been demonstrated as a citizen, they still bashed his truck window in. And then there's another video going around of this manhunt through the woods because there was somebody selling flowers on the side of the street to cars and agents pulled up. And then the flower salesman started running. And so they're like chasing them through the woods. Crazy. Insane. Who was calling for this?

Nobody in Charlotte, not the governor, not the mayor. And obviously it's similar to what we've seen in other. cities, but it is a notable escalation. Yeah, that's the one thing where in a normal political calculation you think Trump might be thinking this mass deportation stuff. I mean, some of it is okay for people. The percentages of criminals are now like in the 2% range that they're actually taking and people are really correctly, you know, it's grotesque what's happening. I think people just think it's wrong and not right and not America and so forth. And then let's just go to another city and provide more video of us, of our Border Patrol agents doing it.

And incidentally, it's not on the border, of course, as I think you pointed out on Twitter. It's not even with 100 miles of the, I don't think of the Atlantic, which is the sort of fake way they justify using the Border Patrol agents in coastal cities on the west of East Coast. You know, Charlotte's more inland than you realize. It's a good three and a half hour drive to the beach from Charlotte. Yeah, it's like 150 miles inland, I think I read. So, yeah, so, I mean, anyway, but they somehow just decided to send the Border Patrol guys there along with ICE and everyone else. No, it's really, you've watched, you almost can't believe it, honestly. Well, you do believe it now, unfortunately.

But again, this is a case where I think it's hurting Trump, but he seems to really have given himself to double down on this. It's kind of funny when you think about it. They're pot committed, I think, to this crush a poker metaphor to death. But, like, they have all this funding, you know, that they jammed through in the bill for ICE. It is central to Trump's brand. It's Stephen Miller is a true believer in this.

I think Christy Nome, Sarah made this point at the next level, I think last week or two weeks ago, I hadn't really considered that Christy Nome, to the extent that she thinks she is a future as a vice presidential or presidential candidate does not want to be seen as like the weak link on the deportation campaign. Where is the person that is in there that's going to stop it? Susie Wiles. Like, who nobody, she doesn't have any, like who would slow it down? Frankly, they haven't even been able to like deploy the funding that they have yet, right? So to me, it seems much more likely that it escalates and de-escalates. And if we are right about his precarious political position, like it seems to be likely that they would think that escalating it would be better, you know, than backing down.

Yeah. I mean, he's surrounded by people. He's, I don't know what he thinks about this stuff. I guess he doesn't. I mean, he seems happy to reside over. And he's obviously morally and politically accountable for all this behavior. But he also has people obviously in there, that creep who's running the border patrol and others. who, I mean, Tom Holman is, who actually is very bad, in my opinion, but is a little more like a guy who's been in that business for 25 years and a little more professional.

Even he's like, what is going on, you get the impression, right? I mean, but Miller and these guys are way, and the white nationalist stuff and the ads and the recruitment ads for ICE, I mean, that is part of this mega coalition that is much bigger than people realized and much more radicalized than people realized and has continued to radicalize over the course of the last nine, ten months. It's bad for the country, very bad for the country, and bad for those people who are being treated horribly, obviously. I do think it hurts this political coalition, though. That is one where some of the Norma Republicans think the business types and all. But also, to be fair, some of the MAGA Republicans who I don't like and agree with, who are America First, who are anti-Israel, who are all kinds of anti-Ukraine,

who have all kinds of views, and I think are pretty bad. But they didn't quite sign on for this, I don't think, right? Right, yeah. And a lot of the non-political, just kind of culturally, right, you know, kind of brother that didn't like woke and they didn't like the COVID masks and stuff that went on with them. And they're like, what? We're chasing a guy selling flowers on the street through the woods. Like, this is like it's, you know, like we're in the Sopranos. Like, what, why? What, what, who is this survey? And they're busting into, it sounds like into churches. Am I right about that?

Or at least onto the lawns of churches where they were. Yeah, it seems like they're going near churches that are, you know, whatever, have Spanish speaking masses, et cetera. I, I did, and And then Charlotte Live Blog, I should just say that the Catholic Archdiocese of Charlotte or whatever the region is, said that they've not seen it at their churches yet. But the governor said it, and that at least there's some examples of it. And the other thing that they're apparently doing, obviously, it's a category difference to go in or around a church. I mean, like, if anywhere it should be a sanctuary, it should be a church. But they're also going to, like, grocery stores that serve ethnic foods, right? like that sort of thing, and just like going into the stores where they sell whatever,

Latin food or Asian food. And it's like, this is crazy. Like, what? There's not probable cause. Like, purchasing, you know, the right spices that you need, you know, to serve, you know, a dish from your home country is not reasonable suspicion to being harassed by a masked agent in a free country. Sorry. The E.B. White of it, I just wanted to mention because I thought this was very powerful.

Chris Geidner, his friend of mine, wrote about this. He covers legal issues. You can go check out his substack. We'll put a link in here. But he's a big E.B. White fan. And he's like, to call this Charlotte's Web, like, they think it's cute and funny. And, like, the little midget guy that runs a CPV, Bovino, like, tweeted a quote from the book when they announced going to Charlotte. There's this great essay I think folks should read.

It was written by E.B. White in 1940, titled Freedom. And it was about the growing affinity he was seeing for European fascists when they were kind of on the march. there's just one little paragraph I'm going to read the least a man can do at such a time is to declare himself and tell where he stands I believe in freedom with the same burning delight the same faith the same intense abandon which attended its birth on this continent more than a century and a half ago I'm in love with freedom and that is an affair of longstanding and that is a fine state to be in and that I am deeply suspicious of people who are beginning to adjust to fascism and dictators merely because they are succeeding from such adaptable natures a smell rises I pinch my nose. I thought folks would enjoy that. I enjoyed reading it. And among the, affronts from this administration, I guess, sullying E.B. White's legacy is maybe not at the top, but still sucks and is worth reminding folks what he actually advocated for. Yeah, totally. I mean, such a classic American liberal. I think he was. I mean, his own politics were kind of Roosevelt New Deal. And then in 1940, he writes, yeah, I also somewhat called my attention to

that, to what Chris Gardner's name. Yeah, the law dork, I think, is his substack or whatever. Yeah, yeah, it was great that he caught that. I'd seen that maybe years ago, actually quoted somewhere. But they can't resist being queued and trying to appropriate something that they think, I guess they don't know anything, right? They think it's clever to have Charlotte, to quote Charlotte's Webb and that no one's going to call them on it.

But I don't know. I don't think people who like Charlotte's Webb, which was a charming story, as I vaguely remember it, are really like going around and seizing people. who were decorating Christmas trees and trying to deport them, you know, separate them from their families and deport them. Yeah, it doesn't really seem to be in the spirit of the book now. You had Hurtling, who's now officially a member of the Bullwark family, by the way, officially a military analyst for us, which is so happy to have him, and he'll be back on the pod soon. You had him on the Sunday live stream that you're doing on Substack.

A Treel should check out, sign up for the Bullark on Substack. And he was just discussing what was happening with Venezuela. People should listen to the whole thing. I'm just wondering if you have any, any, you know, reactions to that conversation and what you think the state of play is. I mean, he's pretty alarmed that we, if we do use military force, we don't, we haven't thought it through, and that we may well use military force at the instance, you know, once you get this, and in fact, we did it live, but then it's obviously on YouTube at

live at noon yesterday. And after that last night, I guess, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, your friend, announced that he was designated a new Venezuelan foreign terrorist organization, continuing to try which he says Maduro's in charge of. So he's trying to lay the groundwork for that connection, justifying, blowing up the boats, but also doing stuff inland in Venezuela. And the USS Ford, I think our largest aircraft carrier,

most modern one at least, is now in the Caribbean Sea. So it's quite possible there'll be military action. I've got to think of, to the degree, Trump's getting beaten up on not, you know, wag the dog is used too often as a kind of always wagging the deal. But having said that, this could be a case where they, I wouldn't put it past them. And I mean, but again, we're going to bomb Venezuela with no,

congressional authorization, but not even any public debate, discussion, explanation, rationale, what it's, you know, I mean, it's all plan, plan, yeah. This is a case where there is parts of the mega coalition, not the parts that I, you and I agree particularly, I think, are kind of genuinely isolationist, genuinely America First. America First is not about bombing Venezuela. Whatever you think of America First, it's about, like, keep it defending our borders. Maybe it's about a little bit of targeted stuff to keep stuff away from our borders. And once you start these bombing campaigns, too,

it's not like you control how things play out and suddenly maybe you do have to send troops in or there are other threats. I mean, I think, yes, this is, I mean, it's bad for the country, believe me, that he's doing this and any sense of having allies in Central Latin America, which is sort of a good thing to have,

generally speaking, in your atmosphere. That's going to go out the window for quite a while. The bullying only goes so far, you know, so it's very bad for the country. I don't know. Does this help Trump politically, this kind of thing? I think it hurts them more. Yeah, I think it's a total misreed.

if they think that that could be a successful distraction for the point you lay out. I think kind of the softest underbelly of his coalition are people that were late to MAGA that are not meaningfully like cultural, they're not evangelical conservatives. They were attracted to the idea that they're not for the wars. And I just, I don't know that any of them are going to want to be doing spin for an attack on Venezuela, though Majora didn't really help his cause singing John Lennon's imagine. I saw that video going around, kind of a poor rendition and off-key and both elements. You got a problem with John Lennon.

Now you're going to attack boomers next. I mean, come on, you know. That was deeply moving for some of us. Okay. It wasn't, it wasn't actually. It wasn't actually. It was just cloying. But I'm willing to believe it was moving for some people, though.

For some people. Yeah, deeply cloying, I would say. Final, Bill Wisdom. And this is like the third topic I've said this about. we can do a full hour on at a later date, but I didn't want to mention it because you're writing various lessons from what we learned about from the Epstein files in the newsletter, and most of them were about, you know, the thing that we focus the most on, which is how it can be used for the acute problem of dealing with the current president who is taking us on an authoritarian trajectory.

But there's something else to be seen in these Epstein emails, which is just how gross, like the elite. And I hate, like, even using this phrase, the ruling class. I'm not a populist fighter. This just does not come naturally to me, but I don't know what else to call it. Like, you know, in these elite circles, the emails back and forth of these, I talked about this last week there, Alex Wagner, but like these sad old men asking Epstein for advice about things and scratching backs. I mean, like, the one that just jumps to mind right now, there was an email where like Larry

Summers was running Harvard and he was asking Epstein. for advice on a relationship and then like Epstein writes back to say that the child of I don't want to get the family wrong but it was like the Rockefellers or like one of these big families famous rich families

blue blood families like wants to have a tour of Harvard could you give that to them the whole thing is just gross and you can understand why people are grossed out by it was a Times article talking about how this is, you know, like a time capsule to this other era. And yeah, and the time capsule is letting us know this other era was sick and depraved. And so you write in the newsletter. So for those of us

who prefer centrist policies, we need centrist candidates that are also credibly anti-elitist. There will be no market for a return to the good old days of the Clintons and their like, not when they can be found next to Trump in the Epstein Files canon. I think that is right. For like a variety of reasons. It's not just about Epstein. It's also related to like the issues of the Democratic Party brand. And as I said, this does not like come natural to me per se, but I just think as an objective analytical manner, like that is critical for if you care about advancing a more central left agenda within the Democratic Party, you need to figure out a way to do it that goes at these gross elites. Yeah, I mean, I think my only caveat would be if I might be should have added a

sent and saying obviously there were parts of the elite who aren't gross and they can certainly be the representative of objecting to this there are people who didn't consort with Epstein there's retired military generals who live very honorable lives and many many other people as well including business three years and stuff but but they would have to really just in my view of going forward for the democrats they would have to distinguish themselves from those other people and it can't just be a generalized good old days you know clintons et cetera and uh i mean If not only can't be that, they really need to be against that. And if the centrist don't step up and show that they're willing to take this on,

both in sort of personal moral ways almost, but also in terms of some policies, then it will be Mamdani and AOC. And you know what? I mean, who's going to blame people for voting for them at that point? When you look at the Epstein thing, you've got to, it's just so nauseating that, no, it's going to, I mean, some of the social democratic stuff is sensible, I think, actually, at this point. given wealth inequalities and all these other things. But a lot more of it that isn't very sensible will get dragged in

if there aren't centrist to seven. No, to be fair, I think there are people, Abigail Spanberger and Mike Sherrill are basically centrist Democrats. Because of their personal background, I think it's very hard to see them as being at Epstein World and they weren't. I mean, they were in the CIA and in the military, for one thing. They're women, honestly, which is not nothing, I think, going forward. My contrary point is that every Democrat I've talked to in the last,

says, well, the one that we're not going to do in 2028 is nominate a woman is, look what happened with Hillary and look what happened with Kamala. I don't know. I mean, the Epstein thing, I really wonder whether, you know, they shouldn't just nominate Spanberger and Cheryl and tweak, they should tweak their policy agenda to be a little more populist, honestly, in terms of economics, and they'll be great that win 40 states. Yeah. Or maybe a different type of, a woman with different type of candidate skills.

But that might be a conversation for another day. I want to leave it with a social Democrat bill for people. People love Bill Crystal, and they're really going to love Social Democratic Bill Crystal. Everybody else, we'll be back here with Bill next Monday. Who knows what positions I'll be taking that. Exactly. Letter to spin out. I'm against that.

We'll be back tomorrow. I don't want to be in one of these situations where it was like Nick Fuentes telling Tucker that he is a Stalin acolyte. And then Tucker being like, we'll get back around to that, actually, later. No, to be clear, no Stalin or Lennon Acolytes here. We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the podcast. It'll be a good one. We'll see you all then. Peace.

Vision Samar and Luther staring at me. Malcolm X put a hex on my future. Someone catch me. I'm falling victim to a revolutionary song. The Serengeti's cloned. Back to put you backstabbers back on your spinal bone. You slit your diss when I slit you my dish. You wanted to diss but jumped on my dick.

Grown. Man, never ship. bite their tongue unless you ain't pussy that smell like it's a sterile plum. I got my finger on the motherfucking pistol. Ain't in there that a pig, Charlotte's Webb is going to miss you. My issue isn't televised, and you ain't got to tell the wise how to sound beat because our life's an instrumental. This is physical and mental.

I won't sugar-coated. You'll die from diabetes if these other niggas wrote it. And everything on TV, just a figment of imagination. I don't want them fascination. Dread that like a Haitian. Why you motherfuckers waiting? I'll be off the slave. Ship building pyramids writing my own Harold Glipps

Just call it shit high power Knicker nothing less than high power Five star dishes food for thought bitches I mean this shit is Huey Newton going stupid you can't resist his High power Throw your hands up for high power Visions of Martin Luther staring at me

If I see it how he seen it That will make my parents happy Sorry mama I can't turn to her the cheek Turn her other cheek. They want to knock me off the edge like a fucking widow teak. And she always told me pray for the week on. Them demons got me. I ain't prayed in some weeks.

Oh. Dear Lord, come save me, the devil's working on. He probably clocking double shifts. So none of his jobs. The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.