The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: It Always Comes Back to Trump/Russia

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

A Putin bestie who's involved with the kidnapping of Ukrainian children bankrolled Don Jr.'s island wedding for some mysterious reason. Kushner is calling on Ukraine to give in to Putin's territorial demands. And Trump himself is blaming Zelensky for the high cost of diesel even though prices shot up after Trump launched his war of choice. It's the whole Trump family that tends to remind us of their close ties to Russia, Russia, Russia. Meanwhile, POTUS is not troubled by China's involvement with the death of U.S. soldiers in the Mideast. Plus: Adam Hamilton in Kansas was on fire in his debate with Roger Marshall, the list of horrible Republican candidates keeps growing, and the fears about AI have broken wide open.Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes: ProPublica on the Russian oligarch bankrolling Don Jr.'s wedding The Bulwark's campaign to help the Haitian community of Springfield Tim's 'Take' on the debate between Mary Peltola and Dan Sullivan Bill in "Morning Shots" on AI fears The NYT on Roger Marshall suing patients for debts The Trio 'Take' on Brandon Herrera The Bulwark Store Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to www.joindeleteme.com/BULWARK and use promo code BULWARK at checkout. Bulwark LIVE: Benefit for SpringfieldSome moments require you to step up. Some require you to show up. That’s why The Bulwark is coming to Ohio.  Join Tim, Sarah, JVL, Sam and friends Friday, September 25 at the Dayton Masonic Center for an evening of politics and fellowship.

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. So, of course, we have, editor-at-large Bill Crystal. A couple of notes. Bill will be joining us in Dayton for the Springfield fundraiser we're doing. I think we now do have the direct link, if you can't make it, to Springfield to support the organizations there that are helping the Haitian community. We've had a huge response for tickets, which is great. We've added some new seats. So if you ended up on the wait list, there is going to be room. So go to the Bullwark.com. com slash events come hang out with us in Dayton September 25th. And if you're like, what do I do in Dayton for a weekend?

A ton of Dayton stands replied to that question last week in the comments. You can go read. There's so much shit to do in Dayton. Dayton's great, apparently. We'll see. I'll be able to report back. Also, we have merch. I'm right now in my capitalist wing of Antifa t-shirt, which I've been wanting for a while.

I did not get the early access to the woke bill crystal merch like JVL did. But I don't know. How did you feel about the design, Bill? It's very limited access, Tim. You know, only the most elite of the elite get that one, too. I stayed out of the whole process so I could have the liability. I think it's okay. I don't know what do I know.

As Susan said to me in her kind way, it's not going to be the bestseller among the merch, Bill. I don't know if that's true. You kind of look like a South American Cardio a little bit in the merch. I like it. I couldn't be happier. And I think people go get wokemill crystal merch. It's fun.

Halloween's coming up. I don't exactly know what the costume is, but you'll come up with something. News. Let's get the news. Just really, I mean, I guess in some ways a bombshell story and in other ways, a dog bites man story out of ProPublica this morning, which is the Trump family's close ties to the Russians and close financial ties to the Russians. We have a new data point on that.

Russian oligarch Umar. Kremlin, footed the bill for Donald Trump Jr.'s second wedding. Which is kind of crazy. I mean, like, they're robbing people with their crypto coin. You think they could pay for their own wedding. But no, a Russian oligarch paid for it. Six figures rented out a private island, paid for the fireworks show. Kroa was the head of the boxing organization there, a scandal-plug boxing organization.

He's also a close ally of Putin. Only 50 people showed up to the wedding. famously Donald Trump Sr. didn't. I don't know if there's anything related there. Eric wouldn't ask about this, said he has no clue who this person is and has never heard his name, which is pretty strange. Since there are only 50 people at the wedding,

you think Eric would have met all of them. Kushner was also there, also noteworthy. I'm Bill. This is like pretty astonishing, no? Yeah, well, as you say, it's both astonishing and routine in the era of Trump just yet another grift. Putin-associated, Russia-associated griff,

which is slightly more appalling than all a regular grift, but still, yeah. And this goes hand in hand, of course, with Trump chastising Zelensky for not being nicer to Russia, really. Yeah. And this guy, Kremlin, and this was kind of deep in the pro-public. A story. Shout out to those guys doing excellent reporting. I was like, whoa, this is an interesting thing to tuck in here. Kremlin 43 is also heavily involved in an organization called Healthy Fatherland, run by his 23-year-old wife's twin sister. The group, which promotes healthy eating and youth sports, is under Ukrainian sanction for its alleged role in a program of abducting Ukrainian children and relocating them under the guise of rehabilitation. I mean, and this is like one of those things that's both like horrifying and VEP, right?

And it's just like, it's like, oh, healthy, the healthy fatherland organization. We want kids to get involved in ice hockey and, you know, eat their vegetables. but it is like a cover organization for abducting Ukrainian kids. I hadn't gotten that far in the article. I guess I was so sick. I was so sickened by the whole thing, but that is very, as you say, interesting and reveal. I mean, it's all such a graft.

I guess sometimes it's inclined to say, okay, it's a graft. They're getting rich. They're creepy, corrupt people. But it's not like old-fashioned corruption where people got rich, right? It is all with, so much of it is with dictators and really horrific dictators

and with the horrific enterprises as horrific dictators, right? It's not sort of, let's call it, innocent corruption where you're just stealing some money from the taxpayers of your own city, state, or country, which is kind of what we're used to, right? I mean... Or even just kind of like the Trump's paling around

with these guys, which was bad enough. It's pretty horrifying, frankly, just for someone that's allegedly involved in the abducting of Ukrainian children to be one of the 50 people at Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding. I mean, like, that itself would be a scandal. He's paying for the wedding.

Yeah. You know, as somebody says in the article, it's like the Russians, when they pay for something, want something on the back end. This largest does not come out of the good of this man's heart to Don Trump Jr. It's just hard. It's hard to imagine this guy did some background reading on him. This guy grew up in rough background during like a biker gang in Russia. It's like, it's hard to imagine this guy looks at Donald Trump Jr. The pampered child of Donald Trump Sr. who is, you know, mentally not at the top of his game. I really just love this guy.

I just met this guy a couple years ago, and I just think we're going to be great friends. He's such a good, hey, it's like they want to get something. What do they want to get? Well, I don't know. We have some evidence, as you mentioned earlier, Bill. Jared Kushner, again, who is at the wedding, our chief negotiator in this war,

at the wedding funded by the Russian side. This weekend explains what he thinks the state of play is in the Russia-Ukraine war in an interview. Let's listen to that. Look, I think right now, from the Ukraine perspective, I mean, President Putin's laid out his line of what he wants to achieve. If Ukraine wanted to withdraw to that line, then obviously we have the rest of the deal set up and put together. Ukraine right now does not want to do that. And obviously, our job is the mediators to figure out how can we come up with a creative solution that doesn't violate their desires and that helps them achieve their objective and does in a way that we can get Russia to end the conflict in a way that hopefully.

hopefully, you know, allows both parties to move forward in a framework that where this doesn't happen again. If Ukraine would withdraw to the Russian lines, we have a deal ready. We have a great deal, you know, a win-win, kind of, as we say in the business role, as long as Ukraine would withdraw. Why is Ukraine to talk? They're kidnapping the kids. The kid kidnapper is funding Don Jr's wedding.

And Jared's like, well, you know, the Ukrainians are being a little demanding here by not just kind of giving Russia their territory. But withdrawing further, I guess, is what you're saying, right? The Russian would do better from the negotiation than they've done on the battlefield. No, it's all sickening. And that whole idiotic, as you say, sort of fake business negotiator mode of speaking and tone of voice. And, you know, we're just trying to help out both sides here as if they're equally guilty or innocent. I mean, it's really appalling.

It really is. I mean, every time I think, okay, look, they haven't done this much damage as they might have, which is that way true to Ukraine. because Ukraine has been so incredibly resourceful and tough, and the Europeans have stepped up some. Every time I think, okay, so maybe that part of the Trump administration isn't as reprehensible as I kind of expected it to be. It turns out they want to be that reprehensible. It's just that Zelensky and the Europeans haven't let them be, you know, and it's,

Kushner, he's not in government, right? He's got, God knows what business interests, as you said. The whole thing makes me wonder about, we've discussed this before, about the degree in which the Trump family is at the heart of the grift. And can they afford to just give this over to someone they don't fully trust? Do they trust Vance, Rubio, Hegseth, all these guys, to fully, fully be on board? I mean, there's a reason a lot of authoritarian dictatorships

become family enterprises, right? And this is JVL's point. You know, there's some element of it that could feel a little alarming. I mean, J.D. is pretty mobbed up with Trump family at this point. But, yeah, I don't. Jared there, just for people who are just on audio only, if I had to bet who in the world is most likely to be a lizard person, you would think that you would be at one of my top.

draft picks. He looks very uncomfortable. Like you're saying this whole tone is just like this. Oh, hey, we're doing this real estate deal. It's like that's not what this is. Like this is a different category. There's a different clip where he talks about how war can be a no sum. And we're trying to get to a win win. And it's like, I don't know. His skin looks inverted. The whole thing is very creepy. Trump also spoke out this weekend. Maybe this is all just a big one today. He does have a complaint about somebody in the conflict.

And as you mentioned, Bill, Zelensky. Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing, Trump said. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia. Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel because he's causing a shortage of diesel fuel. He's like a stem there. This isn't done by the Middle East. This is done by what's happening in Russia and Ukraine for the video. I just will just pull up this chart here.

People can look at the link if they want. the diesel price chart does go up after Russia invade Ukraine because it was Russia's fault, not Ukraine's fault for bombing the Russians. And then it goes up more again right after Trump starts war in Iran. Like that's what's happening here. But Trump is now trying to blame the exorbitantly high price of diesel that's really impacting a lot of people on Zelensky. Zilinski's fault for defending himself.

And all this sucking up to Putin is happening as Putin's intensifying the attacks on civilians in Ukraine. And it's a lot of reporting about how he's been helping Iran responsible for aiding Iran in various attacks even in terms of the missile capabilities and therefore some of the damage, some of the killing of American service members. So it's really, it's grotesque. It really, I mean, yeah, you're right. It's good that you did that. I had not picked sufficiently close attention to this latest outrage when discounts out, as you say, it's man by Doug Bites man. It's all outrageous. But this war that Trump is so proud of that he's, we're fighting. such a manly way in Iran, we're sucking up to Putin and to China.

If I might add. Yeah, let's get to China next. We're just really quick to put a button on this, right? Again, it was Trump's war of choice in Iran that has caused, like, the increase in energy prices. Like, that's what it is. And there are other factors. Of course, it's a complex global economy. Like, that's what happened.

Like, at least if you were going to lie to me, like, at least lie by being on the right side. Right? Like, to your point, you could, if you wanted, he could blame Russia and China. Right? You could say that like, you know, look, we had this thing would have been easy to resolve. We got rid of the Iatola day one. But it's like now the Russians and the Chinese have been helping them, you know, and it's like that's a it's a great power conflict. Right. I mean, like that would also have the benefit of really speak kind of true. I don't know. Like maybe, you know, you could say the Iranians would not be able to close the trade if it wasn't for the targeting help and the other resources being provided by Russia and China. Like you could do that. But that's not always true. He's thinking it's Zelensky's fault. It's sickening. It's total affront. But to your point about China, let's talk about that just for a second, because she's going to be here in what, two weeks, I think, something like that.

Yeah, two weeks. And Trump was asked about this also in the same kind of gaggle where he blamed Zelensky for diesel prices. And people are like, hey, we have evidence now, OK, Wall Street Journal report that China held with the targeting of an Iranian attack that killed three American service members. and what do you think about that? You know, she's, she's coming to the U.S. are you going to confront him about this? And Trump's basically like,

yeah, well, we both do it. They're doing the same thing we do. I don't think it's that big of a deal. Like, that's literally what he said. Like, their help in killing three American service members. No, it's unbelievable, really, isn't it? And he'll be second up to G in two weeks. He, of course, rolled out the right carpet for Putin.

What was that right year ago now already? And broke the embargo on him that had been held until then. And now he's inviting it to the G20. No, I mean, he likes the dictators. Obviously, he's a little bit in awe of them. And so he personally sort of loves the kind of man-to-man dealing with them. That's pretty clear. Oh, God.

Yeah, I mean, we're going to talk about AI stuff at the end. But I do think that the only coherent story, I guess, is the oligarchy and the corruption. Right? Because, again, it's like you can imagine a coherent anti-China story or China threat story that ties AI and why we need to do chip restrictions to China's involvement in this Iran war

and how it's important that we asserted ourselves in Iran as a way to weaken chat you can imagine that story like they're not he's not doing that at all like I mean this is his actions used to be China whether it be selling the chips whether it be not caring

that China's helping killing our own troops you know this is always kind of a silly exercise but like if this was Obama. I mean, Fox Red Scare stuff would be in full, full active mode. I would have some points, frankly, you know, I mean, if they're talking about how weak this is. And it's just, Trump is, is totally uninterested in challenging China at all. It's a total weakness. Yeah. China's also probably helping Iran in search of the straight and navigating through this, you know, so anyway, it's all, it is kind of unbelievable to see it in the middle of a war where

American service members are fighting and some, unfortunately, sadly, dying and an unnecessary war war he chose. And even then, as pro-Pooten as ever, as pro-GIS ever, when they are, they are helping Iran. There's not even a question mark, right? I mean, it's a question mark about exactly how far they're going on some of these missile issues and all this, but there's no question that they're on Iran's side diplomatically in many important ways. Have you been thinking that you should be doing something to protect yourself from stalk or scammers and hackers, but you're not sure what, particularly as we've been discussing all this advancement in AI. One thing that AI has advanced on quickly is their ability to try to scam

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Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan and you go to join Deleteme.com slash bulwark and use promo code bulwark at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to www. www.jointedleetme.com slash bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout. That's www. join delete me.com slash bulwark code bulwold. The other thing of the war that we've seen, which I have this a little bit on Friday, is continued expansion to the regional.

element of it with the hooties attacking Saudi Saudi has shut down at least for a little while the pipeline which is impacting gas prices further and you know I like the potential like level of risk there because the

hooties also potentially could shut down like the other waterway with which you know oil gets out of the Gulf I don't know whether you have thoughts on that but yeah no the remember heck said we that was one of our first little military engagements that HECSeth was pounding his chest about, we spent a couple of several billion dollars of extremely expensive weapons to fire at various, you know, hooty little, you know, speedboats or something. And we had demolished them. They were finished. They were done. This was just another wonderful exercise for American power. The degree to which, the degree to which Hacksets damaged the military and wasted resources that lied to us, of course. But I've been alarmed all along about, God knows, what Trump and Hakesh would do in foreign policy.

and national security policy, but to the military itself, I'm so curious. You follow these people in a war that I do. I don't have the summit for it. Are the Trump apologists, the acquiescers, the, you know, sort of, you know, sophisticated defenders of the foreign policy? They wouldn't do it quite this way, but he's intentionally going on the right road. Are they still pretending this war in Iran's kind of okay? And, you know, we just have to stick in there and tighten the screws some more?

I mean, there are basically two groups happening, right? I mean, there's one group that is now kind of talking about how the Iran war has maybe been the one misstep, but everything else is going great. And people need to just kind of get on board. And this was the vice president's literally stated case at the convention, quote unquote convention. The Tisans of the world, like what I'm seeing now a lot is kind of like, well, the conventional wisdom, you know, everybody is jumping on board of this is already lost. But, like, that's not really true. You know, like, the ball is still in the air here. And if we squeeze Iran more, you know, the momentum could change on this.

So it's not like chest thumping more, but it's kind of like the critique of the critics, right? And Trump's already laying the groundboard now. Like, after the midterms, maybe escalate to finish. And I think that's probably where Tison and those guys will be. I don't know if Trump will have the stomach for it. But I think that there'll be a big push after the midterms for him to try to escalate to get a better out. outcome. And need of to say, I'm not that optimistic about that. You brought up the signal gate. I just wanted to circle back to that because I had kind of forgotten that that was about the Hooties

bombing. You know, like the leaked signal chats to Jeffrey Goldberg, you know, with the emojis, fist pounding American flag, fire emoji. What's what they were sending around to each other, Secretary of War and the National Security Advisor at the time, just this kind of chest thumping, back patting. Meanwhile, it's like getting leaked to a mainstream journalist and achieved nothing. Like, achieved nothing. Now, here we are a year and a half later, and the hoodies are doing more damage, you know, at a time when we're, our military is, is more exposed.

I just think it is important to kind of pin that all together as, like, that's also a failed operation, actually. the whatever it was that they were trying to achieve in Yemen didn't work right so add it to the list the hootis who are an ally of Iran maybe really a proxy almost of Iran are stronger and Iran is stronger so really that's that's bad for the world bad for us but a great victory for Trump and heck Seth and those guys you know unreal well this is trickling down to the campaigns I do some Senate race updates over the weekend I did a video over in the board takes feed looking at Alaska and Texas, if you want to check that out. But I wanted to save the Kansas State Fair debate for you, in part because I was like,

Bill Crystal called me in like March, February. And it's like, are you monitoring the Kansas Center race? It's like, I have to admit I'm not. So you were ahead of me on the Kansas Senate race as potentially being in play. And so I know you've been monitoring it. And so I wanted to grab a couple of videos at the Kansas State Fair. So on the one hand, it's a state fair. So it's, you know, it's the masses in Kansas.

So you would think that that would be, you know, a decent representation. It was in Johnson County, which is a more of the blue part of the state. So that's noteworthy when you hear the crowd reaction here. But, you know, it's not the hoity-toity crowd out there at the state fair if you look at it. And there was a debate between Adam Hamilton and Roger Marshall and, boy, I mean, it was a thumping. And I want to play a couple of the clips. But the first one, I think that Hamilton has given what I've seen so far is the sharpest attacking his opponent over the war and its impacts. Let's watch some of that.

Eisenhower would have never supported this war, never supported this war. Ronald Reagan did not do this. Neither of the Bushes did this. If you love $6 a gallon diesel fuel, you can thank Roger Marshall. He supported this. us to tighten our belts because this was the cost of being safe in America. We were supposed to be out of this war after four weeks, maybe six weeks. We're six months in. We still can't figure out how to get out.

And the cost of everything has gone up as a result. Talk to farmers, phosphate, double in price. This is costing all of us at the grocery store. We should not be in the war. This man's support of the war. I want to get us out of the war. Pretty blunt. Well said.

Yeah. For a pastor, he's a pretty... He's willing to be a little bit aggressive. That was good. Yeah, he is. And I think, and there was a Paltola hit on this, obviously. In the Alaska race, she was focusing, she can bring everything back to fish. Sometimes I'm not even following.

It's like how the fishermen, their costs and that heating oil costs coming in Alaska. That's going to be more expensive as you get to the winter. But I don't know. I feel like the tide is turning a little bit. And I think because of the gas prices, sometimes Democrats, you, we did a retrospective to 94 last week. sometimes Democrats, I think, do get a little bit nervous about being seen as the anti-war, anti-military party, unless things are going really bad, right? Like, if you look back to what the year I did, which was 06, like, Democrats really, like,

struggled in 04 to make the case against the Iraq War, you know, there was just a little bit of wishy-washiness than by 06. It was kind of, it was, you know, more, more blunt. I kind of felt that way in a micro this summer, right? like where there's a little bit where the gas prices kind of came back down, and it was just like this was happening over there. And Democrats were critiquing it, but it was a little bit of, you know, oh, I want to, you know, I don't want to say anything that makes it seem like I'm undermining the military,

or I don't want to make funding for this, you know, the key fight of the fall we've talked about. And I do think that with this recent spike in gas prices, that the tide is turning on that. And we've seen some pretty aggressive messaging from the Democrats on this. And the reason the Democrats in 2004 were nervous about it is that they had voted for it. I mean, Kerry and Edwards had famously had been on what? I voted for it before I voted against it. It was I voted against it before I voted for it. And I can't remember.

I mean, he was not in a good position to really litigate this against Bush. And they took advantage of him really the other way, I'd say, Kerry's weak and indecisive and Bush's. Whereas here, this is the price they're paying for Trump going alone. No congressional authorization or support. And the Democrats, to their credit, did force those war power votes. I'm not even sure if a leader. leadership was really for that, but I think Murphy and some of the others just said, you know, we've got to do this, Warner, I think was good on this.

And Tim Kane, and they forced the vote, which allows Hamilton to say now when he's debating Marshall, you voted 10 times for this war. It's absolutely correct, you know. Absolutely correct. Okay. I think this is interesting also because we're in Kansas. You notice the beginning of that clip, Hamilton's doing his best, right, to try to like talk to Republicans. Even the Bushes didn't get into a war this stupid. You know, which is, okay, it's a good effort. But so this is one area where I think it shows you how low Trump's standing it is and why it's important where the Bush line is.

Because Hamilton and other parts of the debate really is working hard to kind of appeal to Republican voters. But here, I think you show how Trump is a little bit of an anchor. He talks about the manner in which Marshall has been treating Trump as senator. Let's listen to that. Here's the problem is senators are elected by the people to be their champion in Washington, D.C., not hired by the White House to be their spokesperson to the people in the state. Currently, our sitting senator has a very hard time speaking up to the president. It has a very difficult time saying, Mr. President, this is corrupt.

This is not okay. I didn't hear it after Wednesday. In fact, I think you were there for the speech. Didn't hear it that night. But we have got to have somebody who's willing to do what a senator is supposed to do, and that is speak up against power to be a check on executive power. Roger Marshall struggles to do that. It's an interesting line in Kansas.

I like the spokesperson for the president line. It kind of makes him weak. And it is also, like, correct, right? And it's like, even if you're a party guy, like, you're not supposed to be spinning for him. Yeah, no, I think it's really well said. I had this formulation. It's a rubber stamp Congress instead of being a Congress that checks the president. But that's, from my point, that's like a national message, you know, from my point of you.

But actually, it's much more effective, of course, to make it personal and say spokesman for the president to the people of Kansas as opposed to speaking for the people of Kansas. to the president. The only thing I say about just that race and the others, I mean, I do think the reason I got interested in it early on was someone in Kansas called me and said the tariffs, you just you guys back east don't understand what they're doing here. The other clip I was going to play with Marshall talked about tariffs. Let's just go right into that. Do you think the president's terror policies have worked and are you concerned about long-term ramifications to America's global standing in agriculture? Yeah, Dave. Thank you. And maybe someone can give us a case state update here in the second grade.

But look, look, you know, these tariffs were meant to bring manufacturing jobs home and they prove our exports. And guess what? It's working. Let me give you an example. Boo.

God is not happy. And he goes on to kind of a long example about, you know, some manufacturing plant that's been built in Kansas but it's like, you can hear in the response, like the tariffs it's kind of like, I used to talk about this with Biden on inflation, you know, when JVL was talking about why it wasn't, why it wasn't as big a deal. And I was like, it is. It's annoying to everybody. Right. Like the inflation, even, you know, if it wasn't mass unemployment recession, like,

everybody noticed it all the time. And I think that that is like happening, right? And the tariffs, particularly in, you know, place like you can't be where people are very in tune to commodity prices and things like this. Right. You see, like, it's an across the board either, minimum annoyance, or for some people at maximum, like real hardship. And then, you know, Marshall's saying, well, on the other side of this, like, you know, there were the 10 jobs and, you know, that got built at this plant that may or may not have anything to do with. But it's not a compelling counter, you know. Right. And also, I think the Chinese retaliation cost them in soybeans and all this. So now I suppose maybe Xi will do a favor for his buddy Trump

and give some fake, you know, concession in two weeks. And they'll, they'll tell that. This is why I do think those plains, the plains states. I think we're calling it the plains. I think Kansas, Nebraska, where Osborne lost by only eight points last time. I don't know. Can't you write eight points better than he did in the last time he ran for the Senate. I don't think it's as an independent. I don't even some of these other South Dakota. I really wonder what those states could be. Those states could be, those states could be, those states are a little different from the southern red states where they do. to fall short. They're not fully evangelical voters mostly. They're a fair number in Iowa, but not many. These are more your kind of old-fashioned, if I can say, conservative Republicans, you know, right, you know, economic. A lot of Methodists. You know, they don't like big government and they like, it's very, very smart of Hamilton. Don't you think to Peel's Eisenhower. Is there from Kansas? Am I making this up, isn't he? No, Eisenhower, no, Eisenhower, from Kansas? Yeah, I think so. Eisenhower,

Bush. I mean, I feel like that would resonate out there in a way that maybe not so much in, I don't know, Louisiana or Mississippi or South Carolina or in these southern states where Democrats are trying to, you know, to throw a Hail Mary. You've never been to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas. I thought I had that in my head. Yeah, I've never been. No, that is, I will look at. I have. It's one of the four places that you can stop between Denver and St. Louis on your drive, which I made that drive along I 70, a lot of times as a child. And so I think I've been to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library more than any other library. You're in touch with the spirit of Eisenhower, Tim. I think of all the bulwark people, I regard you as the Eisenhower representative, you know? I'll take that as high praise. I might be a little high on my own supply, and Hamilton I like a lot,

is doing all the right things, I think, as a candidate. I just think him and Peltoll have been the strongest candidates by kind of a wide margin, really, of the potential pickups. I mean, Cooper, I guess. I don't mean to impugn Roy Cooper and John Ossoff who are doing so well that they're not even spending money in those states anyway. Of the other pickups, I think that Hale has been so good. There's just something about that race that I wouldn't be surprised if he does better than Turk, actually.

I think that Kansas and Iowa, as you've mentioned a couple times, were darn close in the presidential number. It wasn't like there's this huge gap. People think about Iowa more of a swing state because Democrats have won there at the presidential level. But they were really close. and there's something psychological, I think, for Republicans where it's hard to go into the booth and vote for Sand and Turrick. And I did, it was whatever, it was just my focus group of five former Republican friends I have in Iowa when I was there for the Pete interview. And like I went around the table and it was like for sand one lane and then it was an inverse on the other one, right? They just, there's something, you know, there's something about a governor's race and sand is running even notably more moderate.

I think than Turek, and it's kind of an easier vote. And I'm not sure. I think that, like, that Iowa's gotten all the attention. But I think Kansas could certainly end up, the Democrats could do better there than some of these other states. So we will see. You know Marshall's in trouble when at the beginning of the answer, he's like, can we get an update on the K-State football game? I'm like, somebody save me. Can we, what's the score?

Anyway, Ohio is another race that we've given a little bit of short trip to you, so you wanted to talk about. Sherrod's running a good. campaign there too. I mean, frankly, the demarcruiting at the Senate level has been really good, which is funny, given all the consternation about a couple of candidates. But what were your thoughts about the Ohio Senate race? Just that the Republican candidate, Hustadt seems to have various scandals popping up. I thought it was just some obscure aid when I saw the headline. Aid of Hustad resigns the neo-Nazi, you know, revelations about his neo-Nazi activities online. And then it turns out he's his political director. He was not like, I thought he was like some, you know, kid who was

driving one of the staff around or something like that. And so, yeah, that's really wonderful that the Ohio Republican parties penetrated at the top by a bunch of people who dress up in Nazi regalia and, say, in post-antysemitic things online. Yeah. Yeah. There's a really good book about this. It's going to come to me about kind of the people that dress up in Confederate regalia

and, like, they go and reenact. There's like kind of these reenactments. I have to say, I'd never heard of the Nazi reenactment until this story where people get dressed up in the Nazi. uniforms and go around in a field somewhere and pretend like they're the Germans at World War II. And that's pretty unimaginable, really. It's very sick.

This guy that's doing that as a political director. I don't know what more information the, you know, whatever, Republican Jewish committee type folks need to start to get really alarmed here. You know, and for whatever, like some people have legitimate criticisms of Abdul, and his positions on Israel, et cetera. But, like, I does feel like there's this imbalance and focus on where the threat is coming from when you have the political director for Ohio Senate candidate, literally dressing up in Nazi regalia. Yeah.

So anyway, I think that race is, I mean, it's already in play. And I think Brown's actually ahead and more polls than not. But so I think that one's probably closer to the top of list, the conventional list of Democratic possible pickups. And Brown obviously is very experienced. and successful politician in Ohio. But yeah, I just feel like a lot of those states are breaking more or less. I mean, you and I discussed this last week.

There are these underlying factors. There's national waves. That's a very big deal in a wave of election. The wave lifts everyone up some. And then there are these state, these individualized things that happen in different states and in different campaigns, right? In 2006, we talked about the Foley scandal near the end and that had national effect. Most of these have a statewide effect, obviously Hamilton, you know, the fact that

Marshall's such a buffoon or the fact that, who, that has all these problems, that it's one of his main backers, is a big Epstein guy and all this kind of stuff. But it also can add up a little bit nationally, I think. Voters vaguely look up and sort of, well, what's up with us in that Republican Party anyway? It's like Trump's at 37%. And then these other guys who are supposed to be a little better than Trump, because that's why you're justifying voting for them.

They have all these. And then the Marshall's history is a doctor suing patients for whom it sounds like he did a crummy job. And then they come back. That is such a crazy story. They have to have a second surgery. I don't even like to get into it. It's some kind of stomach turning, but they have to have a second surgery,

and then he sues them to make them pay more for the second one. I mean, the corruption thing isn't, and the adjacency to fascism thing isn't limited to Trump, I guess is what I'm saying, or the Trump family, or people serving at high parts of the Trump administration. It seems to permeate through the party. Obviously, we have Max Miller,

our friend Max Miller there are at Ohio, and there's just a lot of that kind of stuff. There's someone else Mike Johnson was asked about this week. I can't even keep it. Yeah, he was asked about Brandon Herrera. I thought about playing it. But anyway, but he's another candidate. So just like the whole party is full.

We covered him on the trio. It's really more trio appropriated material. But let's just say, a Republican candidate said some very disgusting things about women when he was a podcaster. And Mike Johnson's asked about this by Jake Tapper on CNN. And he's just like, well, that was when he was a podcaster that he was doing this disgusting, misogynistic stuff like two minutes ago. Not like, oh, when he was a kid, it was this college podcast. but it was like, oh, yeah, he left the podcast to run. Like, that was his previous job.

Really disgusting stuff that we should get into it. And also, it's a district that, is a Republican district now? There's like an incumbent who left or something, or it's at least a competitive district. It's not like, sometimes you get these candidates who are total lunatics, obviously, and throwaway seats where you're down 30 and the party doesn't care,

and someone runs and gets 2,632 votes in a primary against someone else who gets 2,248 votes. And it just doesn't, you can't really make the part, that stick on the party. but this is a guy they're backing. Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House would not walk away, Mr. Christian, if I could just say, would not walk away from this guy with these repulsive statements that were like, what,

two years ago? I mean, they were not talking about, as you say, what he was 15 years old. No, this is the district. Tony Gonzalez was the one that had held the seat, and he had his scandal of his own, which was he had the affair with Stafford and killed herself. Well, this is one of those seats where the redistricting might end up being a dummymander. Like, they felt like it was going to be a safe seat, but it's a lot of, it's a big part the Hispanic community on the border.

Trump, the bottom, has fallen out among Trump's numbers there. Katie Padilla Stout is a Democratic candidate. She's an attorney in San Antonio. And so that's definitely a winnable race against Herrera. But yeah, no, they're staying behind all these guys. I don't want to move over the Roger Marshall story, like, where when he was a doctor, this is like rural health care. Like this is such a big issue.

And kids are like poor people don't have access, you know, that's not like they have the big hospital systems, you know, if you're out there. in Western Kansas, part of the Kansas, you know, that I'd have to drive across to get from Colorado to Beka or whatever, Kansas City. Like out in Western Kansas, you don't have access to the same type of care. So you have a local doctor like Roger Marshall who would do, you know, OBGYN. So he was doing, you know, C sections or hysterectomy, things of this nature. And if they couldn't pay, he would send like bounty hunters after them. Like the lawyers would send people for bills.

Like in some of these cases, the bills were like $100 or something. It was like $101. You know, there was another case where a woman said that she offered to pay on a payment plan, but they said no. And they sent these people to jail. They did debtors prison, you know. And it wasn't like, oh, they went to find them. And they also had a warrant out for their arrest for, you know, whatever meth dealing.

Like, that's not what it was. It was like they just didn't pay. They didn't show up to court for their debt. And so they put them in jail. And there was one story in the New York Times story where it was, It was an elderly couple, and it was like, it was Easter. They're having an Easter egg hunt. And the cops show up at their house over medical debt to Roger Marshall.

It kind of wants to be the senator. He is the senator. And it's just compared to a pastor, he's completely sick. I lost track of where we were that. We got really kind of just once we start rambling about all of the terrible Republican candidates, there's just, there's no ending to it. I remember what I was going to say, Confederates in the attic, Tony Horowitz. He's a good guy. It was a really fun book about them.

Confederate reenactments. I read that during COVID. AI. Well, more on this later this week. It really was the big story of the weekend, which is just kind of the fears about the worst case outcomes from AI really kind of broke narrative containment over the weekend because of a couple stories. There was Jacob Cox, and I think we mentioned this last week, as a 27-year-old researcher that worked for both Anthropic and Open Eye, Open Eye First and Anthropic. He said he quit. He was doing pre-training research on the AIs. He said both these companies are racing to self-improving super intelligence that gambles with our lives. So he quit and kind of tried to put up this warning flare. The head of Anthropic then Dario Amade put out a letter. We talked about pacing the frontier. All of these Silicon Valley terms make me roll my eyes. This is why I'm happy I moved out of the bay. But when he's talking about that, he's talking about kind of like the outer edge of AI. research and maybe we should slow that part down a little bit.

What he proposed a three-point proposal, independent watchdogs inside the AI labs, industry-wide speed limits and coordination with other countries, eventually China. Altman and Elon Musk agreed with his statement, which is kind of interesting, since they're both, well, at least Altman's position was more reckless and aggressive. Elon is erratic on this as he is on everything. Trump then gets asked about this. He's going full laissez-faire, nothing to worry. about I'm going to be dead by the time the killer robots come. So Trump doesn't care.

Trump just wants these guys to keep buildings. It's the only part of the economy that's going well besides private prisons. New York Times over the weekend talks about how Washington is slumbers as these tech companies talk about these fears. Like I said, later in the week we'll get into kind of more of the technical side about what the fears are. But one of your thoughts on kind of the politics of all of it. I also need to educate myself much more on the sort of actual substantive side, technical side, but it is. I mean, I've talked now personally even talk to enough people who are in and around

that world. It's real. I mean, it's a real these people are not being hysterical. Now, whatever the motives of Altman or Amadei in terms of trying to, you know, calm people down, and it's pretty vague what he wants to do. But I think it has escaped confinement, and I think

the politics of it, there's a poll out from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, I think this morning, that has approval, disapproval of Trump on AI. It's like 2357. On data centers, it's like unbelievably 70 to 20 or something like, do you want one built in your local community? And that's just the data centers. That was really an electricity bill, water supply, maybe jobs kind of issue. It wasn't this stuff, right? And Trump is indifferent to it. So I think Democrats will and should say this. We need serious responsible governance. Government

has to be part of the solution. Government regulates every other thing that's dangerous, lessen the dangers of all kinds of technologies, and the Trump administration is doing nothing, and then let Trump explain how complicated it all is and how difficult it is. I mean, when once said, the actual substance of it is going to be very difficult. You know, we do need China's doing it.

If we stop, China doesn't stop. I compare in the newsletter a little bit to nuclear weapons in 1945. From 45 to, I don't know, the early 60s, I guess I would say, we managed to both regulate nuclear weapons, regulate nuclear ways mostly, stop the spread of nuclear weapons, make it all a livable. People at the time thought, I mean, think of the movie Opin.

You know, it could be the end of the world. It could have been the end of the world. And we made it kind of a livable thing for the next decades, which is not nothing, incidentally, the achievement of that generation of Truman and Eisenhower, before mentioned Eisenhower and so forth. Pulling that office would be hard in the best of times. We do not have, obviously, an administration that's at all up to it.

And I, you know, I'm not sure we have a political system right now that's up to it. So it's a huge challenge. It really is a big challenge. Yeah. Even if they're wrong about the capabilities, right? It's kind of like, okay, well, there are plenty of other risks associated with AI. And these guys say it's 10%. When they're saying it's okay, well, it's a 10% chance that, you know, whatever, AI swarms, you know, get into biological weapons.

It's like, well, that's kind of how I always feel. It's hard sometimes to talk about these tail risks things, you know, because I saw this guy whose Twitter feed I hate talking about how, oh, why should I be alarmist about this? because you guys were all alarmist about democracy and alarmist about climate and alarmist. And I'm like, all these things are getting worse, for starters. And it's like, sure, like the point I kept making about Trump 2.0 is like the worst case scenario, it might only be 2% that he tries to become a dictator.

Like, that's too high. Or like, we never had a 2% risk that one of the two major party candidates wanted to become a dictator in our lifetimes until now. And so 10% is too high. My thing on the Democrats, on the politics of this, the thing that I worry about is, if Trump is going to go full laissez-faire, whatever, he's going to have a ton of money behind him.

R.D. does have a ton of money behind him. Like the VC guys, Andresens of the world and the David Ballsacks, like all these guys, like they have a ton of money on the line. And they're putting huge amounts on behalf of Republican candidates. We're already seeing this, right? So if the Democrats become critics, that could incentivize them to want to give more money. And so what I worry about is the Democrats get in the sour spot where they're like, they don't. take the political advantage of being hard critics, but they assume the political risk, you know, right? Where the insiders really know that the Democrats are going to be less friendly to them on regulation, that the public gets hard for them to, you know, to tell, like the difference

between the parties. And so I do think that if the Democrats, in this, I think the right political move, are going to go hard against AI and the AI tech oligarchs in particular, like, they should do it ostentatiously. I agree. I very much agree with that. I very much agree with that. Yeah. And I don't know enough to know exactly how they should formulate it because of course, a million things is not going anywhere. And it's a million things that they're talking about. And they're examples in Amadez 3,800 word essay that are horrifying, you know, possible making bio weapons basically. Stop, you know, the work on the stuff that is dangerous. I mean, I don't know how you have to put that in a more sophisticated way and in a more compelling way and so forth. But it has to be a pause or a stop. Don't you think it can't just be, you can't just be, you? we want a little more oversight of all this. It has stopped for now, stop for now, you know, doing this stuff.

And look, and then we can go just like a nuclear stuff, you can go back and look at it, but you've got to get a control of what's happening here. My eyebrows raised at one element of the Bernie plan, and he's like supporting a full pause, you know, I think that's complicated. There's one little element tucked in there, which was, I don't have it right in front of me,

but it was like a 20-year prison sentence for AI developers that do X, Y, line and see, right? And I kind of do like that, right? Which is like, these guys, like, you know, without getting into the details, like this kind of AI bot swarm I talked about, you know, a while ago on the show, like, if those were humans, like somebody would be arrested, right? You went into another company, obviously if it was a physical break in, there'd be an arrest, but even before, if it was, you know, digital, like, there are laws that govern all this. And just because it's not a human that broke the law, like, these companies need to be responsible for their

bots. And if you can't control them, then we're going to hold you responsible in criminal court, not just in civil court. And I don't know, there was something about that. That's just one idea that felt very tangible for people that, you know, even if they don't understand exactly what's happening with the swarms, it's like, okay, I like this, right? This is something that I can get. Like, if these guys get out of control, we're going to hold them accountable, kind of like the laws that hold the parents accountable for the 13-year-olds, you know? Well, companies are held responsible for their machines if they go crazy. I mean, it can be criminally, you know, the person who was in charge who was negligent.

Now, I think that's a very good idea. And I would say on the pause, which I think all sophisticated people are all, come on, that's not a real solution. And, you know, that's just a blunt instrument. I don't know. I don't know enough about this. So I'm going to hazard this opinion without the ability, asking for the right to modify my opinion a little bit later.

But I don't know. I would not vote against the pause for two or three or four months on all that kind of stuff. Now, how you define that that kind of stuff is a little, is on us. But just, it's trying to make such huge advances in three or four months that we won't be able to catch up. I kind of doubt it. So when you get this level of genuine fear, I think, from people who know a heck of a lot, you should stop it. As we would incidentally stop something else that was even something that was beneficial to us. If it was causing diseases, we would stop, you know, the production of it, right, for a while. So I'm sort of. Well, here's the other,

the China part. Here's the other thing. We weren't selling them chips. There were certain types of we weren't selling them until the Trump administration for the because of this reason. Right. There were unknown or known unknowns is what I would say. It was like this is too, the risk is too high. And so some of this was about the competition with China, but some of it was about the risk, right? That is another tangible thing that I think Democrats could offer, you know, in addition to the criminal penalties is saying like, no, I'm going to go back to what the rules were under Biden. And this is a good moment to do this with GE coming to visit.

It's like, again, we're going to put a ban on these exports. And if Navidia and, you know, Jensen and these guys want to complain, okay, like, you know, sorry, like, whatever. You know, you guys don't get like free laissez-faire economy on this stuff. And I think it's a good way also to highlight the correct kind of cowardice of Trump in the face of a G. So that's another tangible thing. I totally agree with you on that. They should make a fuss of this in the G visit.

This is mostly a 2028. kind of issue. I mean, this is something that there are only two months left in this campaign, and most of it's going to happen anyway, despite whatever the discourse is on AI. But yeah, I mean, I just think this thing is now big enough, though, that people will, the Democrats will look pathetic if they don't have anything to say. And so they need to quickly work out a few things like you were saying that are clear, defensible, sound policies. And yeah, and taking advantage of cheese visits, certainly would be one thing.

We've got listeners who know more about this stuff than me. So email, if there's anything that I said, that's stupid, email bulwark podcast of theblerc.com. I like hearing from small. listeners on topics or they know more than I do. Final topic. Mitch McConnell might be, who knows? Supposed there's pressure in the House oversight.

Jamie Comer has said, I want to see McConnell back today. I'm unclear what his purview is there, but a drama inside the tent. Have you heard anything? Are there any rumblings in McLean about whether Mitch McConnell is with us, whether there'll be a weekend Bernie's in the Senate? Do you have any expectations about Mitch McConnell?

I've picked up nothing here in McLean or. It's kind of crazy that we've heard nothing, right? That in itself is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. No kind of even, right, voice, so to speak, for over two months. No voice of Mitch, but no also just saying, hey, here's the latest. Right.

You know, I mean, he has a senator. He has people that he represents that the voter, they're like the people of Kentucky don't get to know. Like, is he mentally fine, but his voice, you know, is he in a coma? I don't know. Who the hell knows? Like, we haven't heard from him in months. Right. So who knows?

Today could be the day. We'll keep an eye on it. Yeah, yeah. Our Republican Senate at work, you know, it's either Roger Marshall types or sadly Mitch McConnell types who are not well, you know. I might send Brendan to camp outside

this house just kind of get any signs of life. All right, that's Bill Crystal. I appreciate him. We'll be back. We've got a duty for you tomorrow. So looking forward to that. Again, theborg.com slash events. Come hang out with us in Dayton or Columbia,

Charlotte and Atlanta. I hope to see you all there. Bill will be in Atlanta and Dayton. And everybody else will see you back here tomorrow. Peace. The Bullwark Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeChico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.