The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Kama-Momentum

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Recent polls are showing some pretty significant movement to Harris, and she hasn't even had to play defense yet—though at some point she's going to. Meanwhile, Trump and Vance have had a strategically disastrous three weeks. Plus, RFK, Jr and the poor dead bear cub, the stock market sell-off, and Peter Thiel's lack of appreciation for how he has benefited from liberalism. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes: Joe Weisenthal on the stock market sell-off The bear cub and RFK, Jr. 

Hello and welcome to the Buller podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. I'm here today with our editor emerita emeritus the cheerful pessimist Bill Crystal. If it's Monday it's Bill Crystal. What's up editor at large which sounds like I'm actually doing any work to editor emeritus which is just kind of this output out to pasture but that's's okay. I'm not offended. I'm just cheerfully chugging along. Nancy Pelosi is speaker-amerita, and she saved the country in the last month. I take the point. It was more of a Pelosi-Crystal comparison than an attempt to kick you off the side. I'm good with that. I'm good with that. We have serious business to discuss today. Much happened over the weekend,

but we need a little Monday morning amuse-bouche. And so I'd like to play for you a clip that, for some reason, RFK Jr. put out himself on his Twitter feed. Here he is in conversation with Roseanne Barr. I wasn't drinking, of course, but people were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea and i said i had an old bike in my car that somebody asked me to get rid of it i said let's go put the bear in central park and we'll make it look like he got hit by a bike that's uh that's about

20 seconds of a much longer video of rfk trying to preempt a new Yorker story about how he, I guess, put a dead bear cub in central park and tried to frame it as a bike accident. Thoughts on that bill. I mean, who hasn't stopped on the highway and put in four dead bear cub in the back of one's van and then had a bike there by accident and decided after a long day of falconing,

I think it was, and then going to Peter Luger, kind of the meat theme is very big in this RFK video. For a big steak dinner, it was too late for him to do whatever he intended to do with the bear cub, and he had to get to the airport. So he just see it as buddies, just did what you'd have to do in that circumstance,

which is drop it in Central Park with a bike to make it look like a bike accident. Yeah. A couple of extra fun facts i want to share with people he puts his finger in the bear cub's mouth according to one of the pictures so i think we might have found out where his brain worms came from though it kind of seems like he might have had the brain worm before this event so i'm not sure about that i'm not a medical doctor and uh the other thing worth noting is that this happened in 2014 he's like 60 years old when this happened this was not like oh i was 19 years old we're in college you know things got a little out of hand he's a seasoned man when he decided to frame a bear cub attack in central park you know 60 year olds can have fun

too tim you know i know it's hard for you to believe in your in your youth no i'm gonna be having fun when i'm 60 i just hopefully you know judgment fun with judgment i assumed is what happens at age 60 not uh not to be pedantic but i don't know are you allowed to just put bear cubs and bikes and race and incredible a lot of police resources and stuff but you know just it seems like that's sort of a problem right yeah you met later in the video to Roseanne that he got worried because the police said they were fingerprinting the bike. Things are not going well for the RFK Jr. campaign. He's down to like two or 3% in the polls.

And, you know, it was fun while it lasted. Do you think he gets out and endorses Trump? I kind of assume that's the case. I just don't know that it matters anymore. I think it'd help Harris in the tiniest of margins if he got out. If it ends up being a thing where 8,000 votes matter one way or the other, it could matter, right? Because, you know, the issue was always with RFK is are the double haters who are traditionally Democrats going to go to him, particularly the low info traditional Democrats? Are they going to go to him just as kind of like a F you to this race with these two old guys?

His numbers have totally dissipated now that Harris has come into into the race all those people nearly all of them have moved to harris already a few to trump and so if he's at three percent like it only really matters if it's a coin flip and it might be a coin flip so maybe it'll matter speaking of the polls you have an exclusive in morning chance this morning from the umass Amherst. The top line, I would say rational exuberance seeing the top line of this poll, but you have found some reasons underneath to be a little concerned. So tell us what you found in the latest UMass Amherst poll. So I'm cheerful about this poll. So they do polls every now and then. The UMass Amherst has a pretty sophisticated polling operation out of their political science department, I think.

And this one's going to be released momentarily, I guess, today. In this respect, they're not that different from everyone else. They had Trump about four points ahead of Biden in January, a little bit better news for Harris than maybe some of the other polls, which are more like plus one now, plus Harris, plus three nationally. And this is a sophisticated, serious poll. So I see no reason to think that that isn't basically in the ballpark. And it is consistent with other polls showing pretty significant movement to Harris. I mean, that is the bottom line. It's unbelievable. It was only two weeks ago that Biden got, two weeks plus one day ago that Biden got out. And the big question, we discussed it, was,

I have one thought she would get some bump, the relief of Biden being out, but would it dissipate? How big would it be? It would dissipate. And it turns out to be pretty substantial. I mean, she needs to carry it forward. But if she's really plus two or three, that's not nothing compared to where Biden was drifting down to what, minus five, I'm going to say, something like that. So that's a seven-point move in what had been a totally static race. I mean, that's almost totally static race. That's really something. And then can she sustain it? And we don't know know that but there's not much evidence of it ebbing at this point so that's all very good news and when you get into the polls questions about issues and characteristics the striking things are that trump is pretty predictable the harris wins on health care and reproductive rights and trump

wins on immigration and crime kind of but trump's margins on immigration and crime are something like 53-47. They're not what they need to be for Trump, I think, to really be clobbering Harris on the issues that are presumably his strongest. And on the personal qualities, Harris does well on being a nice person and a decent person, but also close to Trump on strength and experience, actually. Yeah, I have it right here. So, strength, 54-46 advantage for Trump, patriotism, 52-48. And then to the key point that you got to, which is on who voters perceive as more moderate, Harris had a 57-43 point advantage. I think that's very noteworthy. Yeah, and what we discussed a couple of weeks ago, we go against Texas,

they could said this, that the Trump people are going to really try. He was very worried the Trump people would really try and have some success in defining Harris as radical. It's extreme based on those clips of her in 2019. That doesn't seem to have particularly worked yet. Now, they have another two weeks and they have another two months to keep putting tens and hundreds of millions of dollars behind those clips. I think Harris's momentum is just kind of overwhelmed. It's not that she's been, but she's been pretty good on defense on some of these issues,

the border ad and stuff. Weirdly, she's had so much momentum. She almost hasn't had to play defense. Right. If I put on my gloomy little hat for a second, I sort of worry they shouldn't over, you know,

at some point they are going to have to really play aggressive defense. If I could put it that way on some of these issues and neutralize them, I don't think they're gone away just because they didn't work in the first two weeks but no no it's a good news poll no question about it yeah good counter punching is going to have to continue to come like they did in the immigration ad to me it just as it does tie to the serious part of the rfk thing you know the best case scenario for harris i think in the first two weeks which has come to pass is that she just gobbles up all of the young voters and these voters of color, the working class, black and brown voters who

have been traditionally Democrats that were unhappy. A vast majority of them have already coalesced back with Harris. And her number now with black voters is almost at where Biden 2020 was and heading straight back to that number. And so that's happened. Meanwhile, in the attributes, you had this kind of group of, can I say probably our people, a lot of the folks that were kind of whole, it wasn't, I wasn't holding my nose for Biden, but our people in the biggest sense, like the former Republicans, the Romney Biden voters that were holding their nose for Biden were not happy that he was running again. You see now that they're approving in a large part of the candidate, and you're seeing this in the numbers,

right? Like where her numbers are improving on things like the economy, that's because it's these types of college-educated voters that were probably going to vote for Biden anyway, now seem to fully have her backing as a preferable answer to Trump. So you go from there then into the persuasion, right? And I think that's where the big groups are going to be fought over. To me, that's just such a much easier task for Democrats now, when they don't have to worry so much about the activation side of things, right? If you can focus entirely on persuasion, that makes your job a lot easier than having to spend a lot of time making sure that people that are in your core groups are excited.

Like that part has already, I think, basically been solved. And I'm not sure there's anything that Harris could do to change that at this point. No, in that respect, having Harris as the nominee, as opposed to, you know, a competitive process that were an earlier Biden withdrawal that might have produced a more moderate nominee, whom I at one point would have, you know, a competitive process that were an earlier Biden withdrawal that might have produced a more moderate nominee whom I at one point would have, you know, might have preferred. In a way, it helps because it's easier for her to soak up all the, as you say, the kind of base voters and almost all of them. And then if she can, you know, sort of fix the problem since 2019 and be aggressively moderate, if I can put it that way, on some key issues, you know, maybe she gets the best of both worlds. Now, campaigns that should be persuading centrist voters, gettable centrist

voters don't always do that, right? And we have one instance here in real time, which is Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance, who seem to be cheerfully going further into the insanity of their base and not persuading, let's say, Georgians who might like Governor Kemp, which is a pretty large number of Georgians. So campaigns can do foolish things, but I hope very much O'Para stays on the path and goes for those voters. And for me, the Shapiro pick as vice president would be very important. I want to get to the Kemp thing. We have some audio from Trump's insane rally in Georgia. If people were enjoying their weekend and not watching that, like I was suffering through,

we'll play that for you here in a couple of minutes, but let's just do the Harris VP side of things. You as sort of a supplemental point to your newsletter about the good poll, sum things up pretty succinctly. We're not tired of winning. Pick Shapiro as I kind of the obvious choice here for the things that we just discussed, right? That if Harris has already coalesced the base, she's solved the enthusiasm problem. She's closed the enthusiasm gap between her and Trump. Now do the pick that will help shore up the middle. And you seem to think that it's clearly Shapiro.

Yeah, plus the Pennsylvania state-specific strength of Shapiro, the most important state. You rarely get sort of a pick that fits, what do we call it? Let's say ideologically. And it fits generationally. And it also really appreciably increases your chance to win by far the most important swing state. To have all those things at once, it just seems to be kind of crazy not to go ahead with that.

I obviously agree agree i have a newsletter that will be out by the time this podcast posts and it addresses the this question of shapiro and divisiveness i think that the most legitimate case against shapiro that i've heard i mean there's some people who just have legitimate ideological concerns and would rather the democratic party move to the left. That's a legitimate concern, but we're here talking politics right now, not ideology. So on the political side, the most legitimate criticism of Shapiro that I've heard is when the vibes are this good, when the energy is this high for Harris, why risk it?

Why mess with it by bringing something that's going to be divisive, that there are going to be elements of the left that don't like because of his position on vouchers or because of his comments about the pro-palestinian protesters on campus or some of his past views some of these are kind of ridiculous like people criticizing him for something he wrote in college but there might be this divisiveness that will arise based on kind of the is-Palestine issue and some of his other more moderate positions. And like, why do that? Why mess with a good thing? And why not just go with somebody that's not going to cause this internal divisiveness?

And my response to that in the newsletter is basically, I just don't believe that that's like going to happen. I think that it's a misunderstanding of what has united the Democrats around Harris. I think that Harris's performance has been a big part of it. Harris being a woman has been a big part of it, that there's something to kind of get excited about, a generational shift as well. And the top of the ticket is what matters for that. And the vast, vast majority of people who are not listening to this podcast or obsessing over politics on Twitter just are not gonna change whether or not they're excited about

this based on who the VP pick is. I don't really believe that. I think that, you know, that Beyonce gave Harris 4 million over the weekend, Charlie XCX, Kamala Bratt Summer, Megan Thee Stallion was performing in Georgia. Are any of those people gonna stop their outreach for harris because this is a vp picks college essay like no i just i think that it's too online and i think that the shapiro pick in the end if she has it has very little impact on the divide the side of things i think he helps with a small percentage of maybe pro-Israel or whatever, pro-strong on national defense, foreign policy, conservatives that want or looking for an excuse. That's not a ton of voters.

I don't want to pretend like it is, but it's some. He helps with some people in Pennsylvania who've come to judge him and know him and accept him as demonstrated by his poll numbers. They're 61% approval rating. And maybe he costs some voters in dearborn or on campus at ann arbor and like net net it's probably a help in pennsylvania maybe not in the other states and all the other candidates on the table are kind of net net neutral so after that long that long intro bill my main takeaway is like i just don't think this is as important as everybody thinks it

is i think the vibes are going to continue to be good. And I think that Shapiro is a small net advantage in a key state. And like, that's what it comes down to. The only thing I'd add, be a little stronger maybe is, I think he's just a more talented politician than the others. I mean, again, we don't have that much data, but we have his actual rating in Pennsylvania and his actual performance in 2022 compared to the others. The others are all good politicians. They've won races and won two cases in red states and in other cases in, you

know, more liberal states. But I think Buttigieg and Shapiro are just the best politicians, the most talented politicians of them. And that could matter. We don't know. It often doesn't matter. You know, you go through September, October, there's one VP debate. Maybe it's a neutral, it's a draw, and everyone forgets about them. I think that's the more likely outcome, but the talent could matter a little bit. I'll just, you know, tell you one brief autobiographical sort of moment on this. Before you were born in 1980, I was a young conservative and a Reagan supporter, but I really loved Jack Kemp. I came to Reagan kind of through Kemp as a lot of people, some people my age did, if you were sort of into politics, and Kemp was the forward-looking, optimistic Republican, et cetera, but also quite hawkish on foreign policy, pro-human rights, and democracy.

And there was talk in 1980 that Reagan could pick Kemp as his running mate, generational and other things. And instead, he took George H.W. Bush and beat him, defeated him in the primary and who was we all thought a boring establishment not a politician in his case unlike shapiro not a very successful politician in terms of elective office and there was some diminution of enthusiasm i mean not like for a week not for two months by october we were all back to we got it's got to be reagan we can't have carter you know and reagan the reagan revolution we got back into it i want to get to the bush thing just actually let's just pause right there for one second because this is this is basically a summation of what i wrote today which is yeah for a week or two there will be a handful of super engaged political nerds

who wish it was walls or or if it's the other way wish it was shapiro who are unhappy who send some tweets but like by the time we get to chic, or by the time Reagan got to the convention, were any of those people like, I'm not going because of George H.W. Bush is too squishy. Like, no, that's just not how this stuff works. Yeah, there were a couple of sort of freakish types who ended up not supporting Reagan as they were like for Howard Phillips, all these characters in the past who were, you know, who was Reagan was too nice on immigration. Anyway, so there wasn't much of that. But you know, and Reagan won big, and it wouldn't have mattered. Having said that, there was a moment there where John Anderson was running as a third party candidate. He was a respected modern Republican. I don't know, the dynamic could have been a little different if he had not picked Bush, I would say. If he had picked Camp and then

made a mistake, then Reagan launches his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, didn't he do that, which had been a site of terrible killing of the civil rights workers? And I don't know that he meant to do it there. And I think he got sort of a pass on that. But if he didn't have the kind of moderates okay with the campaign, I think you're right that it probably doesn't matter. But I think there's some risk of giving another opportunity, I'll put it this way, to the Trump campaign to say, look at this. He took this liberal governor of Minnesota, the state where all these riots happened in 2020, and where Kamala Harris had this bail plan.

I don't know what she really had, but she promoted this bail plan to let out various criminals. And I don't know, could that catch on? Probably. It doesn't make much difference. But could it stop her momentum some? Yes. Whereas I think Shapiro is just a win-win so i i do think it's maybe a little more important in the moment even though ultimately the election probably is what it is this one would be abundantly clear about what i'm what i'm arguing here which is not that the vvp could not matter at all like it could like a shirt and certainly shapiro could make a difference in pennsylvania certainly there could be some protests against him on campus in Michigan that create problems.

And if this election ends up being a coin flip, everything will matter. My point is just to dismiss the core argument that you hear from people online to try to be a wet blanket on Shapiro is that the Shapiro pick will create this divisiveness within the democratic party and that you know people will be unhappy and that the vibes will no longer be good and it's just like nah like that's just not it like the vibes in chicago are going to be immaculate no matter who she picks then there's some other considerations at play with the vp but that actual mainstream democratic voters the democratic celebrities the democratic influence on on TikTok, the people that are donating five bucks, like they're all going to be there. They're going to be there for whoever she picks because they're excited about her and the contrast with Donald Trump. Speaking of the vibes being bad, Donald Trump is in Georgia this weekend. And what a

split screen credit to the Harris campaign. I don't know if this was intentional, but they put out Republicans for Harris, that coalition with our friend Adam Kinzinger and Olivia Troy and Joe Walsh, a bunch of people who've been on this podcast, who officially endorsed Republicans for Harris. They put out this press release announcing it the day after Trump just loses his mind at a rally in Georgia on the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and his wife. And so I think that was a smart strategic move. But before I get your take on it, let's listen to Trump. He attacked Kemp four separate times during this rally. So here's just one of the clips. But I got him by doing massive rallies. I really worked hard. He's the most disloyal guy I think I've ever seen but think of the wife we could never repay you for what you've done sir

life we could have never won and now she said two weeks ago that I will not endorse him because he hasn't earned my into I haven't earned her endorsement I have nothing to do with her. Somewhere he went bad. And you know what? Your numbers in Georgia are very average. Your crime numbers, your economic numbers, all of your numbers, you're very average. You can do a lot better and you'll do a lot better with a better governor. Bill, I mean, he got reelected very easily in 2022 after Trump had lost the state in 2020 and caused them to lose both Senate races. And January 5th, 2021, he crushed the candidate Trump put up against him in the prime chamber.

What, 50 points or something like that? So that's among Republicans, right? That was not getting a lot of Democratic votes. So it's all kind of amazing. You go into a state you have to win or be very, very convenient for you to win with a popular Republican governor. And you attack the Republican governor and his wife just for, you know. And his wife kind of in a gross way with a gross tone. Just when you think about this sort of stuff, you think about the Republicans for Harris context. I don't know.

Does that nudge a couple of those Georgia people to just go ahead and sign up? I think that there's an electoral problem with this. I mean, just as a strategic point, how stupid is it? You're in Georgia. You have Marjorie Taylor Greene speaking. We're talking about how Harris is like, should you go for Shapiro or someone slightly more moderate like Bashir or, you know what I mean? You're having this VP context.

Trump is saying, no, the conservative governor who's popular is not welcome here. And his wife, I find disgusting, right? Like I'm going to personally attack the wife. Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the insane conspiracy theorist, is speaking at the event, like sending this complete message that you're not interested in the Georgia suburbs, red dog voters that are going to be so important in that state. You have the Lieutenant Governor Jeff Duncan that was already included on this Republicans for Harris rollout.

You know, there are a bunch of local georgia republicans who are in the duncan kemp mold there's like trump just being an asshole to marty kemp nudge a couple of them i don't think that's crazy to think no i think totally and i mean i was just thinking as you spoke and really focused on this so trump the assassination attempt was july 13th i think right right before the republican convention until that point july 13th of 2024 think, right? Right before the Republican convention. Until that point. July 13th of 2024? Was that just last three weeks ago? Less than a month ago.

Got it. Okay. So, I mean, until that point, the Trump campaign had done a very good job. And Trump had done a pretty good job of being disciplined. For Trump. On the massive Trump curve. Yeah. Not crazy.

He was running ahead of Biden. We didn't know about Harris at that point. So he was ahead in the race. If you think about the three weeks since then, you've got to think about Harris's extremely good two weeks. But think about it. But Trump also, Trump, the pick of Vance, the convention speech, the way in which he and Vance have both campaigned, sort of doubling down basically on the worst aspects of their own record and characters, I would say, for these three weeks. I mean, it's rare in politics that you get the combination, right? Trump fans doing as badly as they could do, I'm almost going to say, and Harris doing as well as

she could do in the same timeframe and in a timeframe when everyone's paying attention, because everything's been shaken up and you've had a assassination attempt a convention a withdrawal and a new candidate and now we're gonna have a vp tomorrow historians will look at these three or four weeks and say whoa that's very unusual moment of you know whatever for sure no a mega account that i follow like not one of our former crusty republican types like a pro-trump mag account that I follow posted this the other day. I thought it was very telling. And this was in a criticism of Trump strategists. Like,

so the motivation here is to go after a loss of Eden Wiles and say that they've messed this up. But as a picture of the Trump post assassination attempt, bloody ear fist in the air, and then a picture of the polls going inverted in the three weeks since then, with just the comment of like the last three weeks of campaign choices by the trump campaign has been the biggest self-owned

and potentially you know his political life i wouldn't say that because i would say you know january 6th many of his other bad but like just as a just looking at it from the mega perspective of we want to win just like a disastrous strategic three weeks for him now you know it's still a close race unfortunately but well that's yeah i mean harris should if jbl were here he would say harris should be ahead by 15 points and that's probably true but that's not the quite the country we live in so same event i got in some trouble this weekend on the internet bill i don't know if you saw this because i i criticized this comment from jd vance and the mega people are are really really pissed at me so let's listen to jd first and we'll we'll let you kind of be the judge of whether i was in the right here or whether libs of tiktok and and wokeness and donald trump jr

are in the right we'll let you kind of be the determining factor here. Let's listen to J.D. Vance. Remember, eight years ago, Donald Trump had everything. Fame, fortune, family, friends. He gave up the easy life so that we could get our country back. He traded everything he had for unjust persecution, for slander and scorn from the fake news, all for this country, for you and me. They couldn't beat him politically, so they tried to bankrupt him.

They failed at that, so they tried to impeach him. They failed at that, so they tried to put him in prison. They even tried to kill him. They even tried to kill him. They even tried to kill him. I sent out that this was a pernicious, disgusting lie and that J.D. Vance should stop saying that. They even tried to kill him. The Trump defenders then said that I'm like a conspiracy theorist or something and saying that that's true. They did try to kill him. What say you? Did they try to kill Donald Trump?

No, of course not. Didn't Vance say that that night? He was one of the first to get out there. And I think some of us, some people thought at the time, gee, that's so unbelievably irresponsible before you know anything to say that this is the left. He said the Biden campaign had helped cause this because of their overheated rhetoric against Trump. And we all said that's so responsible. Then for about 24 hours, everyone thought that's going to hurt him in the vice presidential

pick because, you know, why would Trump want to pick someone who said something so manifestly irresponsible and dangerous, I would almost say, really. Dangerous. Of course, Trump picked him. And now Vance has decided to just keep on saying it. Something I saw over the weekend, too, that Trump also has decided to try to play the assassination he didn't get enough benefit out of the assassination attempt that he's sort of playing the assassination card again did he wasn't am i making that up i think i saw something no no he's been he's kind of doing been doing starting to lean back into it

he said at the convention that this was going to be the last time that he talked about it and uh he's been bringing it back up in his speeches on Truth Social. The they, though, is like, it's extremely. They didn't. Thomas Croy. He. He tried to kill him. One troubled young man who, I guess, apparently looked to see where those events were for lots of different people. Who knows what is in this young man's mind.

But he, with an AR and with bullets that he was able to buy underage, tried to kill him. Like, that's what happened and jd is clearly like trying to rile up and radicalize the audience and making it seem like it was part of some plot that's just so irresponsible they is really just the classic device i think yeah of the totally irresponsible demagogue and conspiracy theorist, actually, right? If you push him, what's the they? Well, who knows? I mean, I've been sort of struck, you know, I don't quite follow these MAGA accounts as much as you do, but I occasionally stumble across one. I've been struck how much stuff there is about how it was kind of a plot and the secret can't be an accident that the Secret Service didn't see the guy on the roof. And there's

even something kind of totally crazy about cnn doesn't usually take trump rallies but they took this one because they want i mean i can't even follow it but and i don't think it's very followable because it's not reasonable or it's not true but but i'm sort of struck how why i'm struck at this date but the conspiracy theorizing goes very deep in trump circles and not just on the extremes. I think that's what Vance, I mean, Vance is the VP nominee and there he is, right? On stage. Yeah, no, it's the dangerous part of this.

It's just so important. It's like, even if, and I think it's more, but even if only 1%, even if only 0.1% of the people listening, like take that seriously. And they're like, no, they tried to kill him. And, you know, Trump's like like i am your retribution right it just doesn't take very far to imagine somebody that is unstable being radicalized by this type of rhetoric and responsible politicians in both parties for our entire lives would have tried to tamp down something like this and did you know in the case of reagan and ford and the kennedys i did try to tamp down this stuff. You did not see this type of rhetoric.

You know, Ted Kennedy, his whole career wasn't out there saying, the conservatives tried to kill my brother. You know, like, it was unthinkable. You know? It is. I was just thinking as you spoke, I mean, even Papi Catter,

who I did not like, do not like, fought against in the 90s, and et cetera, is a demagogue in my view, and has very dangerous views for the country and so forth but even he he wouldn't do that you know what i mean i mean he's a very bad in many ways in terms of his whipping up people against immigration and his

nativism and all that but he wouldn't do that kind of next step of they tried to do this i mean that's you have to go pretty far into conspiracy swamps to get to to that and you know that is kind of a john birch society level i would say and there's jd vance as you say from the stage i guess where they kind of prepared remarks it seemed like yeah that was his intro that was his intro to trump that was not just like him riffing that was because he did a long intro speech one of my other favorite lines from that was when he's talking about the days obama said that we cling to our guns and our religion hillary called us deplorables and i kind of want to intervene there and say no actually he didn't hillary didn't call us deplorable he's having trouble with his pronouns in this in these speeches she didn't call us deplorables she called

them deplorables jd was on hillary's side back in 2016 you weren't part of the deplorable you might be now but you weren't a deplorable then um but yeah no and so then he then he leaves the stage comes back out and does like that what we played that like 45 second intro you know to bring donald trump up onto the stage yeah no it's it is on the teleprompter was not a riff what other weird jd vancing what we're doing weird jd vancing's we've done some interviews with peter teal in the past i think that this is important to just not ignore how radicalized these folks are now that teal has his chosen vp candidate on the ticket now that trump has clearly pivoted that if he gets back in, it will be more towards the Thiel kind of worldview. Here's audio that people are sharing this weekend of Thiel in an

interview at George Mason recently. I don't think we're ever in a cyclical world, but there are certainly certain parallels in the US in the 2020s to Germany in the 1920s where you know um you know liberalism is exhausted one suspects that democracy whatever that means is exhausted and um and uh you know that that uh we have to ask some questions very far outside the overton window huh is peter thiel hitler what is happening it's like germany is in the 1920s. Democracy is exhausted. Whatever that means. I don't know what democracy means.

It's a complex term. And so we need to think about some things outside the box. It's just a very dark place that these guys have gotten. Yeah. I mean, well, we need to ask questions. It's sort of, isn't that, don't we always make fun of that? That's the classic dodge of people who don't want to quite take responsibility for what they're saying. I mean, yeah, but you're right.

It's not as if we're talking about a hypothetical situation where, let's just say, liberalism is maybe a little exhausted and democracy is stumbling and we don't quite know what we have to think more broadly about possible futures. That's one thing to say. And then you could be going to a possible future that maybe you and I wouldn't like, that is still within the bounds of decency and the rule of law and so so to speak we know what the future for germany was right so why do you bring that up as your example right usually brought up the other way is the example of how horrible everything can go when you walk away from liberal democracy right i knew peter i haven't seen him in a whole bunch of years i was actually reading groups with him and stuff he He's a very smart guy. And unfortunately, it's a good example that you can be very intelligent and very intellectual, and it doesn't save you from the temptation of very irresponsible extremism. Some of the greatest artists and thinkers in Europe in the 20s and 30s went down that path. And I don't know that Peter's quite like them, but he's a very intelligent guy. And unfortunately, the intelligence is now in the service of really a dark view of the world, I'm afraid.

Sometimes, yeah, you're too intelligent for your own good. You feel like you need to come up with some outside of the Overton window, outside of the box solution. When it's like, this is the thing that just flummoxes me about this whole thing like peter teal is living you know the top point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one percent most blessed life of anyone in the history of the world he can do whatever he wants he has he's married to a man he's been able to adopt kids and also have you know pool parties with shirtless young people that get to come over because he's rich and he has a fancy house he has houses houses on different continents. He's had a place in New Zealand. What are these guys talking about? That democracy is exhausted. The premise is also just

silly. He's living in a country which is personal. The fact that he's gay, I'll say this to you, you'll understand the spirit in which I say this this is just he's benefited from liberalism in the last 50 years right right he couldn't be having as happy a life if he had lived in the america of 50 years ago and he couldn't be having as happy a life i mean goes that saying if you lived in in the post weimar post decadent liberal democratic germany which was not friendly to people like peter thiel among many many other groups it wasn't it was horrible horribly unfriendly too so so what he just gets to assume that he gets a kind of fascism or dictatorship that's friendly to his particular minority you know characteristics i don't think that's very i mean obviously it's not prudent in a certain way it's almost not serious right i mean but it is not serious it's ridiculous like like a democracy if it wasn't for donald trump democracy is like working fine in america it's

not as if there's some huge i was saying with polis when we're in colorado i'm driving around with jared polis went to a couple events before our event and it's like the notion that democracy is is on the wane in colorado and like there's this huge crack up happening it's like insane if you're driving around the car with with jared polis like he's we're going to a gay pride event he's calling the republican legislators on the phone they're doing bipartisan work people in denver can go skiing can be happy can be married it like fine. It's not like Weimar Germany, like in this country right now, if you just have responsible people in charge. And Weimar Germany, it wasn't like Weimar Germany, if I can put it this way, I make it sort of a bum rap. I think the term Weimar Republic was

first used by Hitler. And speaking of Hitler in 29, I don't think that I mean, that was not what they call themselves, so to speak, in the 20s. Anyway, they had a great they were staggering along a stagnant unfair, they were doing their best to make democracy work in a country that hadn't been very friendly to it, and that had lost a terrible war, which they mostly initiated. But they had reparations, so they had huge burdens on them. Then there's the Great Depression, which they get clobbered by like everyone else does, but they don't have the resilience. The responsible attitude towards that is what could have been done to strengthen the democracy and what could we have done incidentally to help them there were things we didn't do in 1929 30 31 forgiving reparations payments that would have actually i'd have staved

off the horrible future they had for them but peter teal's attitude is to sort of relish the weaknesses or failures of german democracy in the 20s and early 30s even leaving aside sort of your other point, which is also correct that we're not like that. Sure. It wasn't like the way you have thinking your imagination too. That's a fair, it's a fair correction of what I was trying to say,

right? Like it wasn't, it wasn't even like Weimar Germany was like a, you know, apocalyptic hellscape either. Right. But the responsible thing to say is, well,

how do we strengthen democracies in certain ways? And he's not interested. And that's, what's most striking. He's just not interested in that. There are people who are not where we are, I'd say, who probably in good faith, sort of, are sort of, I'm for strengthening liberalism and democracy. And that's why I'm a little more open to some of what Trump is saying. I don't take that in good faith, usually, but I can sort of see how people got suckered a little

in that direction. Or at least they can be vaguely suckered in, let's say, DeSantis or Tim Scott or something direction, right? But that is not where Thiel is. And really, it's certainly not where J.D. Vance is. Trump doesn't have any really settled views, but he's certainly willing to more than go along with that to really encourage that kind of wild irresponsibility, not even like medium level irresponsibility. That's why I think it's important to talk about important to play these quotes for people because JD and Teal, it's just way out of step with folks. I think there's a category of person who's just not engaged with what is happening in as obsessive a way as some of us, it relates really to the VP conversation, like doesn't realize just how weird and extreme, that's why

the weird thing works, how weird and extreme these folks views are you know if you stopped into a random dinner party a random barbecue a random fish fry anywhere in this country and we're like hey here's what the vp candidate and his intellectuals are saying they think that we're on the cusp of nazi germ like most sane people would look at that and say okay i I think that everybody's got to take a breath. Concerns, though, about what could happen that could allow demagogues to work would be a market crash between now and the election. We've had a market sell-off over the past two days, on Friday and now today. Joe Weisenthal is good on this. I'll put a link to his thread in the show notes here. Ten thoughts on today's big market sell-off. He's really good on these topics. The main thing that he writes

that overlaps with the political world is that Powell was out of step with kind of where things are in the decision to kind of basically signal that there weren't going to be rate cuts this year during the last meeting. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on Powell or rate cuts

or the stock market sell-off and how that might intersect with what's happened in the election. I just have a couple of quick thoughts. I think he will cut rates now and maybe should do so more in a more urgent way. They never want to look panicked at the Fed, but maybe it's worth it if the markets are panicked to unpanic them by showing a little more flexibility and speed and moving to cut rates than he has shown. So that would, I think, be good. It's hard to tell if this is a big market sell-off, a little drama, and then it stabilizes again. It's still up a lot in the Biden years, obviously. But the other point I'd make is,

it does probably mean that Harris should focus a little more on her economic message, but not, I'd say, particularly defending the Biden years,, she has to do that as well. But Trump has proposed literally the economic program that would turn a stock market sell-off and maybe even a mild recession into possibly a much deeper recession or depression based, again, if we can go back to the 30s, on the actual economic policies then, which is tariffs, which would lead to retaliatory tariffs, which really would do damage to the economy. And Vance Cavalieri said the other day, it's not worth losing one manufacturing job just so a million people can buy cheaper knockoff toasters. Well, leave aside toasters for a minute. That's literally an insane statement.

I mean, Americans can save a lot of money on buying imported goods, keeps inflation down, incidentally, and we export a ton of goods. And that's good for the American economy. And I think making that point in a more general sense, but then really going after the tariffs, because that you can put a number on. If you have a 10% tariff on X, defer to the economists on this, but basically the price of these things is going to go up 10%. There are an awful lot of things Americans buy that are partly foreign labor, or some of them are just imported, and that will be damaging to the economy. So I think getting a more aggressive economic message focused on Trump's totally crazy

kind of protectionist message would be a good idea. All right, I want to close with this because it's cute and uplifting. You posted an old interview you did with Joe Lieberman before he passed, where he was reflecting on his VP choice and being a Jewish vice presidential nominee. Let's listen to your discussion with Lieberman.

I'll tell you a quick story. We had a lovely dinner, the Gore family and my family, and Al Gore said at that dinner, he said, I want you to know that I decided two weeks ago that I wanted you to be my running mate, but I really thought it would be irresponsible for me to try to talk to some other people about whether they thought America was ready for a Jewish vice president, the proverbial heartbeat away from the presidency. So I always wondered whether Al did a poll. I think if I were him, I would have done a poll, but he said he called a number of friends. And he said to me, I called a number of my Jewish friends, and I called a number of my Christian friends. And here was what I found.

Most of the Jews were extremely anxious and uncertain about the reaction to your nomination. He said, every Christian friend I called said there'd be no problem. So then with a little bit of gore humor, which people don't remember sometimes, he said, so since I know that there are so many millions more christians in america than jews i decided i could choose you bill i love this a because it's cute of joe lieberman but b because i've had this experience over the last three weeks where my aunt who's black was really worried about kamala you know and has now come around i got a text from her the other day it's like okay she's good she's good i was just nervous people are going to be doing you know my husband is nervous about

kamala picking pete because okay so very attuned to that several jewish people in my life very concerned about shabir it's like the lieberman the gore experience is very in line with kind of what uh what we're saying now there's something about human nature yeah and people should have i mean lieberman took the lesson from this, he says later in the interview. His faith in America, he felt, was justified. And his wife, Hadassah, spoke with this very movingly as a Holocaust survivor, child of Holocaust survivors, I should say. So I think we should have more faith in America sometimes.

And I probably should need to take that lesson myself, since I occasionally get slightly more worried than I should be about things, I suppose. Believe in America. That's a flashback from a campaign that lost but was well-intentioned to 2012. Let's believe in America. Bill Kristol, appreciate you. We'll be seeing you next Monday. We'll have a VP selection by then. I'll be back tomorrow with Congressman Adam Schiff, and maybe it'll be a doubleheader too. We'll see. And then tomorrow I'll turn 21. We'll script another show. We'll play charades up in the Chelsea. Drink champagne, although you shouldn't be.

We'll be blind and dumb until we fall asleep. None of our friends will come. They dodge our calls and they have for quite a while now It's not a shock, you don't seem to mind And I just can't see how we're too old But I'm old, old, old Just too old Just take me home When I'm home

Just take me home When I'm home The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.