The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: He's Not Hiding the Authoritarianism Anymore

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

Trump's authoritarianism has intensified—with his calls for using military force against political opponents, taking away broadcast licenses, and deporting even legal immigrants. Plus, the panic meter, Kamala should make appeals to the Cavuto crowd on tariffs, and it's time to speak your mind on a microphone, Gen. Mattis. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes: Bill's interview with Jason Furman

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At Dawn Valley North, Dawn Valley North for Lexus is the place. See website for details. Expect excellence. A proud member of Wayne's Auto Group. Landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't, and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash RentSafeTO. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Today, some Americans take a holiday to honor the worst episode of The Sopranos, but not us.

No sleep till inauguration. I'm here with editor-at-large Bill Kristol, as always, on Monday. Hey, Bill. Hey, Tim. Great to be with you. And your voice sounds pretty good for someone who spent, what, three and a half, four hours at the LSU game Saturday night? Well, many more than that if you count the tailgate. At least four hours. An overtime victory for the Tigers. A beautiful Saturday night in Louisiana. And my voice is actually a little bit sore also from the way out of the game because, you know, I'm sure a very well intentioned young fella from Ole Miss did call me the F-slur on the way out of the game. And it was kind of a mistake for him, I think, because I don't think he realized that he was attacking a professional podcaster. So I was able to turn back around and make him reflect a little bit on some of the thinking that led to that worldview

following a very devastating loss in Baton Rouge. So it was altogether just a joyous day. I hung out with Mondo Duplantis, another LSU man, best pole vaulter in history. Just a beautiful evening in Louisiana. Not as beautiful for the Mets, I've heard. Okay, now we've got the good news over with. Now we can get to the real news.

Yeah. Before we get to the real bit news and the darkness that was your morning newsletter, I feel like we need a little bit of frivolity. And there was a social media kerfuffle over the weekend that I feel like you might have a unique insight into. And I'll explain why in a second. But let's first just listen to the offending audio. This is Kamala Harris talking about John McCain at a country over party event over the weekend. I was in the United States Senate for about four years. And I worked with John McCain. And so I'll tell you, so there was this, we

were on a committee together and you know these committee rooms in the United States Senate, they're very grand and very impressive and John McCain was on one side of the dais, I was on the other horseshoe. And he's going after me he's going after me we're having some conversation I think was about one of the nominees this is during the President Trump's years he's going after me I'm going back after him I'm going back after him and that was it and this is what the public saw and then I step onto the floor of the well of the Senate later that day, we had votes. And I passed by John McCain. And he looks at me, he says, kid, come over here. You're gonna make a great senator.

True story. True story. Cute story. Cute story, right? Well, yeah, I think so. Cute story, just nice, friendly, not really any sort of ideological valence john mccain's daughter megan mccain didn't find it as cute uh she sent this now i know democrats want to reinvent history and turn my dad into any illusion you guys need him to be depending on the political moment you need to bastardize his memory for but please don't make me start sharing what i remember him actually saying about Kamala Harris. She sent a series of additional threats after that. And that made me wonder, I just, I guess

I don't have this, this experience, but you do, you have a famous father. And so I do wonder, like, you know, I don't know if JD Vance like told a story about how he met Irving Kristol after a, I don't know, after a lecture at Yale one time and how he was a very nice man. And he said, you're going to be an upstanding young man. Do you think that would turn you to an anger machine that lashes out about how you dare sully your father's memory by telling a cute story about how he was nice? I don't think so. I hope not. I hope I'd be happy to accept the compliments of my father and let it go with that, even if the person hadn't turned out quite the way I would have liked or maybe he would have liked, you know, years later. That sounds like a very John McCain, true to life John McCain story. I will add, I mean, that John McCain is perfectly capable of saying to someone, you know, to a younger senator, hey, you'll be a great senator, and then sort of half beating it. It doesn't quite prove that John McCain 100% thought, to be fair,

Kamala Harris would be a great senator. It proved that he was a gracious opponent in senatorial jousting. And I think there's no reason he wouldn't have had a reasonably high opinion. I suppose one could go back and look in 2017. That must be when that happened because McCain died in 2018, right? And he was not there the last few months. And what you know where they went back and forth a little bit in some senate armed services committee hearing i kind of thought that's what you were going to set up maybe they found that there is no such exchange or something you know terrible

fact checking but no no it seemed fine it's a nice story and uh yes john mccain is a human i can also vouch for this that he would occasionally say something nice and gracious in public and then make fun of somebody in private uh including his own staff including people that he has very good friends with he's sort of famous for this so i don't think it's quite the gotcha that megan thought it was even uh even if it were true that uh that he did that at times so um i don't know. It's a weird place that we're in, though. The Harris team also has an ad out from John Giles, a mayor in Mesa in Arizona,

a Republican endorsing her today. And you really just do have this affability imbalance where the Democrats aren't even really saying that John McCain was a great, that they liked his ideology, they're coming around. All they're doing is saying, these guys are nice.

They want to put country over party. I appreciate them. I had a good relationship. And that is, that is causing a lot of MAGAs to really, really lash out and be upset. And some, don't you think some lefties on Twitter lash out because how could you say something nice about Liz Cheney? What about Dick Cheney and Barack and, and Guantanamo and stuff? So it's probably a good place to be if you're getting attacked by MAGA crazies and a few left-wing diehards.

I hope it's a good place to be. We're going to get to that. We're going to get to our assessment of the race here. Three weeks out in a second. But beforehand, we got to take people down. You wrote this morning for the Morning Shots newsletter about Trump going full bore on authoritarianism. Trump's Midnight in America is the title. I was just at the beginning, it's funny, you referenced the two minutes hate, which was from 1984, I guess, which, you know, I read when I was, I don't know, 15 or something. And this is like one of those cultural references that just gets like implanted in your brain that I like I've been used, but I kind of didn't even remember where it was from.

So I was glad to get a little learning done this morning. But the the two minutes hate is, as you right now, the notable feature of Donald Trump's campaign. And I want to play the most sickening, jarring, disquieting piece of audio from the Two Minutes Hate this weekend. Here he is with Maria Bargaromo. I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country. By the way, totally destroying our country. The towns, the villages, they're being inundated. But I don't think they're the problem in terms of election day.

I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're the, and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by national guard or if really necessary by the military, because they can't let that happen. Bill? Yeah, I mean, threatening to call out the military against your domestic political opponents. He doesn't even use the word doing something illegal. I mean, even that would be problematic to use the military, obviously, but it's just his apparently people he considers lunatics, he gets to use the military against. It is almost just a classic definition of authoritarianism. I mean, it's one of many

cases where he's told us what he wants to do, and he's not hiding the authoritarianism anymore. I mean, it's one of many cases where he's told us what he wants to do, and he's not hiding the authoritarianism anymore. I guess that's what struck me about the last, really everything since the debate. Maybe the last couple of months, it's been going on forever, obviously, to some degree. But I feel, don't you think that the authoritarianism is intensified, the hatred, the real vicious demonizing of immigrants, the threat to just call out the military against people he doesn't like, the threat to take away broadcast licenses from news programs he doesn't like. I mean, it's just unabashed hatred at this point. And that's probably worth noticing. It is worth noticing. I also like the towns and the villages. His mind is cinematic,

you know? Like, he doesn't exist in the real world, really. And so, like, the whole thing, it's like kind of what he imagines a strong man would say. It's like people don't even really use that word about America anymore, like the villages. Like it is European, right? It's kind of like. Except for the villages in Florida, but I don't think. Except for the villages in Florida. Probably not what he's thinking about. Yeah, no, it is a knockoff of what a European authoritarian fascist would say.

And he's imitating it. And he's doing it on the stump. I think the noticeable element of it is the difference, I think, from 2016, which we're about in the period in 2016, the final three weeks, where he really kind of toned it down now it was still trump you know so it was toning down on the trump scale like his rhetoric still would have been appalling for any other politician of our lifetime but you know like they got him on the teleprompter you know he was focusing more on you know sort of just the broader themes of of the forgotten man you know that sort of that sort of stuff at the end of 2016 and they're not even really doing that this time like he

essentially has if you just listen to his stated message it's like a three-pronged message of we're going to deport all the immigrants we're not really going to care about what the laws are we're going to tariff all these foreign countries to pay for everything we want. And we're going to go after our foes. Like none of the other, you know, kind of cutting red tape, you know, like more anodyne Republican stuff isn't even in there anymore. And I do think that that's noteworthy. And yet it's hard for people to deal with.

I heard from a Democratic operative over the weekend who was pretty, like, I hate doing media criticism on here, but it's like, it was pretty astonished at, like, the lack of focus on that clip, you know, just because it sort of has all become part of, to be fair, the Harris campaign could put up an ad with it, right? So, and other outside groups could, and they're not doing what they could be doing, in my opinion, but other people could step forward. I mean, if ever John Kelly and Jim Mattis, former four-star generals, whose last job, however, were civilian jobs working for Donald Trump, so they're not, there's no reason they shouldn't speak up about Trump, and who've made it clear they don't think Trump should be president again. This is the moment this appeal to the military to intervene in American politics directly is the moment for them to say enough, no way you can't vote for Trump. And indeed, you need to vote for Harris. We'll see if they arrange to have a little press conference or do a video statement to the next in the next day or two. But they certainly passed on other opportunities before, but this would be an even better one. The reason I wrote the little piece this morning, I mean, there's no big insight in saying it's getting worse and worse and more authoritarian. Politico had a good piece on the, it's getting darker, all the anti-immigration stuff. But also, I was having a

conversation with the Democratic operative. Separately, he was saying, I did think Trump had probably gained a point in the last couple of weeks, and it was very, very, now it's just dead even, and Harris's momentum had stalled out. And we were talking about all various reasons, things she might have done, and other things, you know, locally happening in different states and so forth. And I sort of stepped back after the conversation in my own mind and thought, I mean, Trump is getting worse and worse, and he's not paying a price in the polls in fact he seems to be ticking up in the polls i mean in the very weeks in which he has said the most outrageous things i could go back to the haitians and springfield ohio and jd vance and the refusal to walk away from the big

lie in 2020 and the extension of it almost by vance which is justified because he didn't like the way the hunter biden laptop was dealt with and so forth. Everything getting worse and paying no price in the polls and maybe gaining a little bit. That's worrisome about the country. It is worrisome. I appreciated the segment from the Orwell essay, looking back on the Spanish War that you sent. If you don't mind, I'm going to read some of it back to you because I think it is just very appropriate for the moment, like almost two on the nose, frankly. He wrote, we in England underrate the danger of this kind of thing because our traditions and our past security have given us a sentimental belief that it all comes right in the end and that

the thing you most fear never really happens. Nourished for hundreds of years on a literature in which right invariably triumphs in the last chapter, we believe half instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run. That is just extremely on the nose for the mindset of some of the, call them former establishment Republican types who are, who, you know, I speak to privately about like why there's not more people doing what Liz is doing. Like that mindset, I think is endemic right now among the elite, but I think also among the voters. I think among a lot of voters that explains why Trump isn't paying a price, don't you? Yes, very much so. And I think among some Democrats, including maybe senior people in the Harris campaign who have run a

good campaign, and I think mostly doing a good job and certainly are doing, I think, are trying to be responsible and serious. There's a little bit of an assumption, well, if we just introduce her properly to the American public and take care of some of the problems that she created in 2019 and explain her health care proposals a little better and so forth, you know, she'll win. And that's kind of how the system has to work. Because at the end of the day, you know, evil can't, maybe evil can triumph in 2016 because of James Comey, and because Hillary Clinton was a particularly bad candidate, but we're not going to have Comey presumably this time. And Kamala Harris is a better candidate, so we'll be okay. I think in a certain way, the pick of Tim Walz, I mean, we think about it for a second, is in a way emblematic of that too. You know, we just need to be normal and the world will be okay. And I guess I do think that's too widespread, that view, among elites and certainly among

voters who just assume that everything will be fine and they don't have to take anything seriously. And I think it comes together in the sense, I was talking with someone the other day who said, well, the voters, that's all, there's no point in emphasizing any of this stuff. I was complaining a little that they're, the Harris people aren't making, making clear how high the stakes are and how serious. Voters know all that stuff. They don't, they're not going to learn anything new. Hey, I'm not quite so sure how true that is. Do they know that, how would they know that he said what he said yesterday about the military? I mean, it's not, you know, it's not getting huge

coverage, as you said. So, and same, if you go back, they have short memories and all this. So there's a lot that they could be reminded of. And I do think there's a way in which elites are telling themselves they don't have to talk about this stuff because the voters don't care about it. And voters don't care about it because they're not being forced to sort of remember things they do kind of prefer to forget yeah this does take us to the kelly and madison because i think that millie is a bit of a different category i put him in a different category because he never accepted a political role like they did that said you know the the woodward book now has the section from millie where i guess it seems like millie

chased him down at a dc party apparently to talk to him about how concerned he is about the trump authoritarian threat and that he's a fascist he's the biggest danger in the country and that's all well and good talking to woodward but again to your point like on my little note sheet here before the podcast uh you know when i have a topic i have a little bold that says audio if we want to play a clip on that topic we don't have that from Millie, right? You know, because like he isn't doing that. He just talked to Woodward. And so maybe it's not, it shouldn't be on him.

Maybe it should be on Mattis and Kelly. But even still, I do think that like, if this stuff is going to penetrate, you know, it needs to penetrate beyond, you know, people that are reading think pieces about this campaign, because those people already know who they're voting for. Yeah, absolutely. And I do think, you know, we, I mean, we, you know, wearing a different hat, Republican voters against Trump, I guess I'll just say Sarah Longwell, and I help out a little, they're spending $50 million trying to make the Republican case against Trump, which is great. But there are bigger super PACs out there spending much more. And I don't think they've really, I mean, they could publicize some of this, right? Even if Milley isn't going to say this to the camera, they could put the quote up on screen in a good 30-second ad.

I don't get the impression much of that's happening. Now, look, on the other hand, voters say they want to know more about Harris and they care about health care, they care about abortion rights, and they're entitled to care about those things. And if those work, those work. I'm not dogmatic about this at all. I mean, I was joking with someone over the weekend that if in 1932, advertising against Hitler and the National Socialist Party because of their bad tax ideas or tariffs or, you know, some other failure of, I don't know, whatever, you know, some issue like that, if that had worked to keep them out of power, that would have been fine. You know, you can't be, this isn't a matter of intellectual, like, I like this issue, so everyone should talk about this issue. I do worry, on the other hand, that

they're a little too much invested in the, not just Harris, but in a way, all the super PACs, as you say, all the elites, in not raising the stakes. Maybe they will over these last three weeks. Not raising the stakes, just accurately capturing the stakes. Maybe they will over these last three weeks. Not raising the stakes, just accurately capturing the stakes. Yeah, and I think that the stakes, Bill, answers another big question that is out there right now. A lot of people, my friend John Heilman from the circus, who's now at Puck,

has basically a to panic or not to panic newsletter out of Puck this morning. And in that, he quotes bob carrey uh forrest and herb kerry saying a certain amount of anxiety it turns out is actually good for you fear is a way of keeping you on your toes that's kind of my mindset about those last three weeks i i don't share the view that there is some value in like pretending as if like the polls are all biased against kamala and she's on she's about to handily, I think that a little bit of anxiety is probably helpful in nudging people either to vote or away from Trump. That said, I'm curious about your assessment of the state of affairs.

You look at the numbers and the Times had a big takeout this weekend about how she's lagging among black and Hispanic voters. And then CBS has a poll showing her right at where biden was among black and hispanic voters i feel like about the least suited to judge like whether she's losing ground with non-college black and hispanic voters as i am with any demographic it's just like you know you can like i can just look at the data and it seems like that maybe she's also altitude but altitude. But again, the CBS poll shows that she's not, and I think that's probably a pretty tough demo to get at. So I just wonder what your kind of assessment is on the panic meter. So two points. I like that Bob Carey line about being anxious doesn't hurt you much.

In fact, it helps sometimes. The little alarm is a good thing. And, you know, as someone who was accused, as someone who was in the bedwetting brigade, when we thought, gee, maybe Biden shouldn't run again for a second term, and, you know, Carville and I and others, and that was the term that I guess Messina or someone used. Yeah, no, it was Plouffe in 08, I think. Okay. But you know what? Bedwetting is, I mean, bedwetting isn't a good idea, probably, but being alarmed is not a bad idea. Yeah, the last thing, I mean, that wedding isn't a good idea probably, but being alarmed is not a bad idea. Yeah.

The last thing, I mean, the kind of, let's just reassure everyone that everything's fine. What's the point of that? I mean, it's not going to, I mean, there is an argument that people have used. Rove was a big believer in this. If it looks like, if you look like you're ahead, your people will be more motivated and will vote. And it's sort of a stampede or bandwagon effect. I guess there's some truth about that in psychology in general, but I'm not a big believer in that in elections. In 2000, Roe took Bush to California in the last

week to really build in that bandwagon effect. And Gore promptly gained like five points on Bush in the last week, you know, and ended up winning the popular vote. So anyway, so I'm on the alarmed side in terms of what how they should portray things. And I am on the I'm sort of on the neutral to alarm side and analytically, I mean, I think I talked to I'm sort of on the neutral to alarm side analytically. I mean, I think I talked to a bunch of people over the weekend to try to find out what people were seeing in private polls at the state level. And it's pretty much like that leaked Republican senatorial committee poll. I mean, I think it's-

For people that didn't see what the leaked Republican senatorial committee poll show, essentially, it was the one that had her tied in Arizona. Yeah, it was dead even, pretty much. It had pretty good news for Democrats in the Senate races, though Republicans closing in a couple of states and therefore with the possibility of picking up three or four seats. And some clearly little Republican momentum. I think that's – anyway, everyone I talk to thinks that,

especially it's a little state by state. Pennsylvania actually, Harris, seems a little stronger than people expected. Wisconsin seems to have gone from maybe the strongest of the three blue wall states to the weakest. It was the closest in 2020. I never understood necessarily why it would be the strongest this time. But anyway, that's such a little level of difference. You know, we're talking now about one percentage point, two percentage point margin of error

stuff. But clearly, I think Harris went up to about a three point national lead and maybe is down to more like a two-point national lead now. And so it's right on the coin part of the electorate. And they are overwhelmingly for Harris. Now, if they're less overwhelmingly for Harris, of course, that hurts her some. And if blacks go from, I don't know, 90-10 to 80-20, you're losing 10%, 12% of the electorate. So that's not nothing. On the other hand, there are a lot more white voters than there are of either of those. And I think there's a little bit of, I argued this Friday, a slightly quirky, I guess.

Yeah, the woke Bill Kristol newsletter from Friday. I received a lot of texts about woke Bill Kristol's finger wagging at whites. Did you? Well, I mean, it's white Americans who are going to elect Trump, if anyone does. But more importantly, this is sort of leaving aside my exasperation of my fellow white Americans, especially white male Americans. Analytically, if you're winning a group 60-40 and you thought you might win at 70-30, that's disappointing. Still, it's the case that having more of those voters vote is good for you, right? Because you're adding six for every four you're not losing. Now, unless the marginal one

is worse than 60-40, it gets a little complicated, but it's unlikely to be the case. And therefore, I do think, I hope the Harris team has the turnout operation they sort of have said they have had and that they have enough money to have in the key states for younger and minority voters. I do think that ends up being extremely important. But I don't think they should overthink this, that we're not going to turn them out because they won't quite be as high a margin as we hoped they would be. I mean, as long as they're above 52, 48, it's worth turning them out. And I think there's plenty of evidence they're way above that and very much the case of young voters.

But alarming the younger voters. I mean, I guess I come back to that. Young voters, if they think it's a complicated choice of tax policies and health care policies, they'll stay in their college dorm that morning, Tuesday, November 5th, or not vote ahead of time. If they think it's really about the future of the country that they're going to be living in, and that can be made concrete with abortion rights and some other issues, but also more broadly about liberal democracy, a tolerant country, a decent country, a country in which their friends who are dreamers, who don't get deported and so forth. I think moral alarm would help with those marginal voters.

Yeah, and this is where I kind of land on this is my final thought on the panic or not to panic topic. I mean, the campaign, I think, has been right to pivot to the issues that they pivoted to, you know, focusing on freedom, focusing on abortion, focusing on introducing Harris. Like, it moved her from down to up. That's just a fundamental fact that happened. Okay. But now we're here. And I think that it's

not it's not kamala harris's job to be hair on fire but i do think there's some value in the people around her having hair on fire and like the surrogates doing this and and this was always a harry reid job back in the day for democrats he did this maybe unfairly to mitt romney you know in 2012 but like people should be fucking scared, because it's scary, like the option. And I think that if you're thinking about the types of people you're trying to get to, if you're nudging people, either to vote who aren't, you know, who don't pay attention to all this stuff, or if you're trying to nudge people away from Trump that don't like him, really, but are like on the fence about whether to vote for him, focusing on

the worst case scenario, the downside dangers of a Trump term and whether they want to risk having four years of him and all of the chaos that goes around with it and all of the potential downsides from the, as you mentioned in the article today, like bringing back internment camps and we're going to have mass deportation forces and he's going to go after his foes with the military. And like, this is, it's madness to even consider this. It's madness that we're gonna have mass deportation forces and he's gonna go after his foes with the military and like this is it's madness to even consider this it's madness that we're here talking about this frankly in a 50 50 race and and i think that rattling people's cage a little bit from the outside effort outside the campaign is is probably a useful use of time over the last three weeks because and also and also it has the benefit of being true.

It's not like it's pushed granny over the cliff. No, I think it's really, it does have the benefit of being true. And that's well said. And my only footnote to that would be, I do think you're absolutely right to give them credit for what they had to do first, which was get her, remove the Biden problem, as it were, or begin again, and get it to be a Harris-Trump race with her getting her favorables up and the candidate of change. And that's a pretty big accomplishment. So I take nothing away from the campaign. But as you say, what worked to get her from minus three to plus

three may not work to hold her at plus three or get her to plus four or five. And the way I think about it, and I was thinking about it this weekend, talking to someone else about it, too many phone conversations this weekend probably got me too depressed. And it's sort of like now they're focused on the voters are giving her a B minus on policy proposals. And they're going to work really hard, or C plus, and they're going to work really hard to get her up to a B minus. It's like no one is voting on that anymore. She's gotten to the level she had to get to. She's not going to probably change it much in the next three weeks.

Maybe she deserves to be a little better thought of, but she's decently well thought of for a candidate who's never been on the ballot before and a ticket that's never been on the ballot before. They've gotten to where they had to get. Now they need to really remind people what's so disqualifying about Trump. Kinkar, if you're not reading between the lines here, if you're looking for a calm harbor in the storm over the next three weeks there's some other podcasts in the sea let's just put it that way let's talk about genes for a sec i recently got a pair from the perfect gene and they're basically the unicorn of genes in case you didn't know this is an ad and the perfect gene told me to say this but i would not lie about how awesome genes are. They're just too important to my identity. And so you can trust me.

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jeans? Now that I think about it, I'm not sure. Me and Bill Kristol went on a road trip in Texas the other week. And I came downstairs in short shorts and an old t-shirt to be nice and comfy. And he was dressed like he was going to be speaking at a panel at a university. And he had some khakis on and a dress jacket. But I bet that there's some environment. Maybe when he goes to the pumpkin patch, Bill Kristol wears jeans. Point is, if he were to wear jeans, the Perfect Jeans would be perfect for him. The Perfect Jeans doesn't just stop there, though. They've revolutionized t-shirts

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of audio from Donald Trump in my hometown. That's not exactly my hometown, but Aurora, Colorado, where I went to high school. He broke out a new policy proposal in the final three weeks, something that he wants to do in the next term. Let's take a listen to what that is going to be. I'm announcing today that upon taking office, we will have an Operation Aurora at the federal level. To expedite the removals of these savage gangs. And I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Think of that. 1798. This was put there 1798. That's a long time ago, right? To target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil. I mean, this is I guess this shows why the Harris not going back message does help when your opponent is going back to 1798 with the Alien Enemies Act. Part of the Alien and Sedition Act. You might have learned that in social studies class. Bill, what do you think about invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798?

I guess, I mean, Steve Miller must be a big fan of those acts. I would think he is. And he must have told Trump about it. It would be funny to ask, who was president when that act was signed? I mean, it's like, Trump so obviously has no idea, but it's such a cartoonish thing, right? They were tough back then. And my staff tells me there was something called with alien in the title. So that was aliens are bad. And so these acts, which are really viewed as discreditable and a real stain on the historical reputation of John Adams, and which have never been enforced, actually, Jefferson became president and said he wouldn't. Now he's reviving that. Some con law type told me it's not even relevant to what he wants to do with deportation,

which unfortunately you can do without invoking the Alien and Sedition Acts. But Trump is like, he's in favor of everything in American history that we were taught to think was a black mark on America, something we had finally gotten beyond, right? I mean, whether it's the Alien and Sedition Acts, the betrayal of Black Americans after Reconstruction, nativism, Japanese internment, America First, McCarthyism, conspiracism, there are, I'm sure, other things I haven't thought of, you know? I mean, just all these things that we think of as, look, we're a country like any other, we have flaws and are susceptible to weaknesses and prejudice and demagoguery, but mostly we've overcome these or moved towards overcoming these. And Trump just kind of, that's what making America great again

turns out to be. Let's sort of embrace every part of the authoritarian heritage we have, which luckily we've mostly rejected either at the time or later and have overcome, but that's kind of what he admires. I mean, America First, I guess, is the most stunning example of that, I think, just because he literally embraces this phrase that was justly so discredited. Yeah. And it almost certainly was Stephen Miller, because in that same rally, Miller was the opening act, which is just like, I mean, you have brown shirt Stephen Miller out there, like screaming about immigrants, migrants, and they like pictures of migrants. He's like, you want these guys to be your neighbor?

And like that is like a little nasally Nazi voice. Again, I think this ties back to your newsletter this morning. It's like they aren't hiding it. It isn't subtle. If you're trying to put a softer face on MAGA or Trumpism, Stephen Miller's not the face. But he was out there as Trump's opening act with the big pictures of Hispanics with face tattoos on the screen. That's the closing message from that. It is. No, and again, as I say, it would be nicer if one had some impression that voters were seeing that and thinking, oh no, that's a bridge too far, you know? That was used to keep our ancestors out, or that was used for Japanese internments, or that was used for, you know, massive discrimination against minority groups in the past, and that's not what we want to go back to. I agree, yeah. We're not going back. It was good. It was a good message from the start. It had a lot of energy and ride it through. We're

not going back to 1798. I do think also that TikTok influencers out there listening, I think that videos of Stephen Miller are good. I know it's probably not, you know, you're like, oh, well, who cares? Nobody cares who the advisor is. And he's just such a uniquely unappealing figure, like just in his visage and the way that he talks and his message and everything about him. And I just, I don't know, there's something about having him there that you look at Trump and Trump's like such a fool and affable in his own way, you know, with the, like with the jokes and the attempts at comedy. And it's like, no, this freak show is going to be the person in charge of the immigration regime in this country.

I think that might be an effective message to the aforementioned college kids that are trying to decide whether or not to get off the couch in Madison. Like, do you really want the worst person in your high school class to be in charge of the immigration regime? I think that's probably a pretty decently effective message. Last thing on the thing Kamala was pushing over the weekend it was something carville and i talked about last week just want to bring it up again i kind of like the pressuring trump to release his medical records trump lashed back out saying that she should take an iq test which is i don't know i think that's this is an okay exchange to to get into yeah or a little frivolous for you carville wanted to bring it up because he thinks that Trump has syphilis. Several doctors messaged me afterwards to say that, well, they appreciate Carville's theory. Whatever the thing we said about the skin was not exactly evidence of syphilis, but who knows? It's not crazy. He's 78 years old. Here's another issue. And Carville's also a fan of this one.

I think Carville has good political judgment. So the debates issue. You know, Harris has accepted the debate. Trump's not debating. I think she should taunt him on that. It'll get under his skin. And again, I think a certain type of voter, not an unreasonable voter, can say, look, I'm not sure what I think of these two, but one of them seems willing to debate.

The other one isn't. So again, if you can pick up a few votes that way, that's fine too. Concur. All right. Final topic. You had, you Jason Furman on the crystal conversations that if people haven't, don't listen to crystal conversations, you can go check them out on your podcast or YouTube feed of choice. And, uh, you know, a little bit more, a little bit more stately than the conversations we

have over here. But, uh, I love Jason Furman as a guest. And so I just wanted to kind of give you the floor to any big takeaways on state of economy and kind of how people are experiencing the economy as we head into voting time. I mean, he was Obama's head of Council of Economic Advisors, but a very moderate Democrat, actually. And he teaches the huge introductory economics course at Harvard, which, unlike most undergraduate classes at Harvard, they actually put a lot of thought and investment into making it a good course. I think they care. I think it may be the largest.

In my day, it was the largest course at Harvard. And probably second out of computer sciences. He's a very good teacher. And he lays out very clearly, and I think pretty unpolemically, what Harris's economic plan might produce and what Trump's might produce. And Harris, as he puts it, is what less of the same. It's sort of Biden, Biden without the dramatic stuff he did at the beginning because of the pandemic. And actually, Jason thinks a little more business friendly, perhaps than Biden. Harris doesn't have that kind of labor background that Biden has,

but basically a similar mainstream. Her brother-in-law is an Uber executive. This is why I'm always like, really? She's a Marxist. She came out of Silicon Valley. Yeah, she came out of San Francisco, but she also came out of Silicon Valley. She knows all these guys anyway. Right. Her husband is a corporate lawyer and stuff. So yeah. Anyway, so she's mainstream democratic for better or worse. Some people won't like that. It's too mainstream, but I think it's safe. Trump is risky for all kinds of reasons. Some of it is the budget busting tax cuts and just promising everything to everyone that you can probably survive. It's not great policy. But I think the best part of the conversation is on tariffs, which people's eyes kind of glaze over and the polling shows tariffs are mildly popular, actually. So I think the Harris campaign has been

a little shy of really attacking Trump. And again, maybe they're right, you chunk of what people are buying in stores. And so people would just lose that amount of money. They would spend more on things they're buying. And you could have reciprocal trade wars, obviously. And Smoot-Hawley, the last, you know, big across the board tariff hike in 1930, did contribute appreciably, people think, to the depression. People think, but real serious economists have studied this. And so that's really risky. And he didn't do a lot of what he said he would do in the first term. The Gary Cohns of the world were there checking him. But that gets to the issue of the second term not being like the first term, which ties

back to the earlier point about the alarm. You know, that's one reason that I think Americans aren't as alarmed as they could be, because they've seen it for four years, and it was kind of crazy, but it wasn't, didn't destroy the country. Second term will be, you know, Steve Miller, all Steve Miller and no Gary Cohn, no H.R. McMaster, no Jim Mattis, and people need to take the, so I think tariffs could do real damage. And I think at least, I don't know, I kind of feel like that could be more of an issue for business types and maybe for the Harris campaign itself to push against Trump. How risky Trump's economic policies are. He benefits from being viewed as a business guy. He won't do anything to endanger the economy. But the single core proposal that

he's talked about the most is the riskiest proposal that he has. And it really would endanger our economic well-being. Yeah. And I do think that's worthwhile. I mean, I understand the point of view that says, okay, tariffs are hard to explain. You don't need to educate people. You know, if Harris is running ads during the Michigan-Ohio State game or whatever, like if you're mass communicating, you know, arguing about tariffs, like it's probably not a winner. But this is a useful, I think, endeavor for surrogates and getting people into

the high income former Republican class. And that would be an issue for Mitt Romney if he decided to do the right thing and put out a statement. Trying to just get into the water at the Wall Street Journal, on Neil Cavuto's show. People go on the Neil Cavuto show on Fox and just be like, guys, maybe trying to talk some of these like remaining high income, high education, you know, business oriented Republican guys, just getting them off Trump. Right. It's like you guys do not like this is the thing that he is serious about. I think that is an important message. Like playing that clip of I don't need Congress.

I'm going to do it. It's going to be a thousand percent tariff. That audience, you're not educating them, they understand what tariffs are. And can you can you move them on the margin? I think that's a worthwhile message for the last three weeks, getting that to sink in that he's serious about this, and he's going to do it. All right, Bill, well, that's been wonderful. I'm glad it sounds like I gave you a little bit of joy over the weekend while you were calling people and listening to polls and getting and worrying about authoritarianism and reading old Orwell essays, you also took a break to watch a couple episodes of hacks and

get a few laughs. So I'm glad that I gave you that little bit of joy. You did we had this conversation was a couple weeks ago where I was pro slow horses, and you were pro hacks. And so Susan, I started watching hacks. And it's funny. Yeah, it's very funny. Not that I don't want to sound surprised that your taste would be good in such things but no i mean you know maybe it would have been a little bit offbeat for you you know are you getting are you getting all of the drag puns like probably not like there might be a couple jokes moving over your head yeah next time i watch i'll i'll text you in real time it's you know i need explanations of i didn't quite get that line there what's that what's that really what is poppers what's that really? What is poppers?

What are poppers? What's that really about? And then there's the Mets in the championship. And they, of course, had a huge victory last week, and that was exciting. And they've lulled the Dodgers to complacency by losing 9-0 last night. But they'll be fine. And so we'll get them at Mets in the World Series. That'll be great.

God willing. You need it. You need some Mets joy in your life. I got the Tigers. You need a little Mets joy in your life. All right. Thanks to the World Series. That'll be great. God willing. You need it. You need some Mets joy in your life. I got the Tigers. You need a little Mets joy in your life. All right. Thanks to Bill Kristol. We'll be back tomorrow.

We got a favorite of the pod and then a little bonus segment with somebody I got into a Twitter feud with. People love when Twitter feuds come to audio. So you'll get a double dip tomorrow. Hope you all enjoy it. Enjoy your holiday. If you're taking a holiday today and we'll see you back here on Tuesday.

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Put the body in the bayou Pull up the tracks on the road The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.