The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: March to Dictatorship

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Trump and his people have used the summer months to up the despot game—sending armed troops into the streets, taking over the police in D.C., and promising to export the same tactics to even more blue cities. And the attempted deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda shows the lengths the administration will go for not submitting to its coercion. At the same time, Vance sounds downright Orwellian on the John Bolton matter, while the White House eyes other major corporations to extort. Plus, Wes Moore punches back, the injustice of the trans military ban, and the emerging signs of a broad Democratic coalition. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes Kinzinger on how Trump is undermining the Second Amendment Bill's 'Bulwark on Sunday' with Col. Bree Fram Mark Hertling on the purging of military and intel leaders Just one of Gov. Moore's recent punchy tweets The book Tim mentioned, "Diary of a Man in Despair" Bulwark Live in DC and NYC at https://www.thebulwark.com/p/bulwark-events. Toronto is SOLD OUT

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. So I've got editor-at-large Bill Crystal back from a very non-vacation vacation. You know, people do vacations differently in the summer. Myself, JVL, others decided to check out from the news altogether. Bill Crystal was texting me more than ever last week while he is with his grandchildren. So maybe that's a comment on.

the grandchildren maybe not i don't know no no quite no comments on the grandchildren i have to have explicitly and emphatically and truthfully we're about that we did have the hurricane which was out of the at the atlantic obviously had spillover effects at bethany beach so there were two days of basically you know pouring and stuff so a little more time in the in the house and therefore text prone i suppose and also the news maybe you didn't notice this since you were working so hard all last week but the news was not all great in terms of the health of the liberal democracy in america so On that point, you return with the newsletter this morning saying it's not democratic backsliding, it's a march towards dictatorship, despotism, one or the other, both.

Talk about the biggest picture there, and then you kind of list a couple of the things that happened that we'll get through. I mean, this term democratic backsliding has become pretty common in the last 10 years, I guess, in the U.S., but it really was invented, I think invented, or certainly you popularized to describe the troubles in central and eastern Europe and actually Russia and the Soviet and former Soviet Union itself, after 1989, the tendency, the difficulty of getting rid of the old authoritarian habits, the old authoritarian people, of getting democratic institutions solidly embedded quickly enough and democratic habits. And it's a very reasonable political science concept,

and there are different countries that backslid more quickly than others, and some haven't. So that's, that's not an inevitable thing. But the impression it gives, and I think it's especially true, what it's, well, and why I think it's misleading now to apply it to the U.S. is, you know, there's sort of, there's just this pull away from democracy in countries that haven't had it for a long time. It's kind of an old habit to die hard. Yeah, yeah, which is perfectly reasonable. And then you'd be an idiot to go to Poland or Bulgaria or something and not spend a lot of time thinking about, how do we get rid of those old habits, how do we change them, how do we embed new ones? But that's not the case in the U.S. It's a, I mean, it's a complicated

way you could say it's a sort of the case in the U.S. We have some old habits that have died hard and that are authoritarian and that didn't go away and are now, we're backsliding towards, you might say. But that's not the real story here. The story here is less backsliding in war. A genuine, purposeful march towards despotism, dictatorship. I use the terms kind of interchangeably. I don't really, authoritarianism seems a little too, I don't know, too fancy and too nice,

almost. And as I said in the piece, there are authoritarian. tendencies in every society and every individual and every group and every and they don't go away they can be managed they can be limited at times they have to be you know part of just life and the government obviously at different institutions so that's not that makes it authoritarianism makes it sound like it's kind of there's a little too much of that stuff and too little of the liberal stuff that's true as far as it goes but that doesn't capture what trump and his people are up to doesn't you you go through a list of various things have happened over the past couple weeks uh military

leaders, intelligence professionals purged. Critics' homes rated. Obviously, John Bolton, that happened on Friday. He mentioned the continued Epstein cover-up. The major corporations extorted. I want to get to that. Presidential control of law enforcement in the nation's capital, intensified with promise that it will expand to other places. The list goes on. Which of the, I'll give you a dealer's choice there. I want to go through most of those. Where do you want to, what is the most acute for you? I do think, don't you think the takeover of the D.C. police force, the guard, the use of troops in LA, and then the kind of open-ended promise by Trump that he's just going to do this elsewhere in the country. That's a pretty standard marker. You know, that's

if I'm not backsliding. That's Trump choosing to embrace an authoritarian and predictatorial, as it were, a method. And then an awful lot of people, awful lot of people going along with it, including the entire Republican Party. I mean, that's one thing that strikes me. I said in the piece, I was being a little careful, something like almost no, I've heard almost no, Republican voices objecting to any of this. I actually, I think I originally wrote, I've heard no Republican voices objecting to any of these things that I thought, I don't know, maybe one of them was but objected to

by one member of Congress. But it's really kind of amazing. It is. Yeah, I think on the military thing in D.C., and a couple of things have happened as we last talked about it. And Trump explicitly said they're planning to expand this into Chicago and New York. He went on a strange Trumpian rant about how all the black ladies in Chicago go, we're very excited, we just really want him to come save them, which has some psychological

questions, I think that, you know, maybe it would be better explored with a therapist. But he's doing that, the New York, there's kind of a subtle Zoron kind of threat there and how, you know, we'll see what they decide to do. Maybe we'll have to send the military in there. He's gone back and forth with Westmore about sending the totion to Baltimore. I want to get to Westmore in a minute. But, like, all of that, I mean, to me, like, this is. what a lot of us that were sounding the alarm had said was going to happen and warned about it.

And I think that the playbook here is the most straightforward of all of the other one, of all of the things he's doing. And I thought, Kinsinger posted something this morning yesterday, I forget, that that it was interesting on this point about how, you know, in addition to just kind of gathering, you know, whatever, military, got federal government power in these big cities. By using the National Guard in these other states, he's also, you know, kind of undermining this whole Second Amendment, this is the other part of the Second Amendment, the, you know, part of the need for a well-regulated militia. Like, essentially the states have these rights, like, have, you know, their own forces.

And Trump is, like, kind of slowly just, you know, gathering up those forces. I don't want to, you know, catastrophize about what that's for immediately. But as you look at, you know, the march towards despotism, the combination of that, to take over the cities and also the co-opting of the Guard, I think, you know, those go together. And ice. That probably should be one category. I think I split it up in my little piece. But, yeah, I mean, that's just a huge expansion of ice.

A lot of what's happening in D.C., it strikes me most of it, actually, is basically a giant ice raid with some other. stuff going on on this side. And I, because that is so central to their agenda. And kind of like a fascist play. Yes. It's like a, it's like play acting with ice raids together. Yeah, totally. No. And the play acting part is really striking. I had something on this and took it out of the, of the traffic later this week. I'll just say it here that, I mean,

it's also ridiculous. As you mentioned, the Trump, the tweets and the rants and the, you know, getting peeved at people was there on TV or something like that. And one tends to dismiss it as kind of ludicrous and ridiculous. But then, you know, one has to remind oneself that things can be ludicrous and dangerous at the same time. I don't think we normally think that, and I don't know. I mean, normally one thinks dangerous is serious, ludicrous is comical, you know? And maybe it's annoying. It's not healthy for the country, but it's not really dangerous.

But I went back around a little bit about the 20s and 30s in Italy and Germany in particular. And, of course, they all thought Mussolini was farcical, giving those speeches, pretending, reinstating the greatness of the Roman Empire or something like that. and Hitler obviously was made fun of by many, many people, including Charlie Chaplin. And so it's very, but it's hard to get one's head around that a little bit, I find. Maybe it's just me, but I mean that the kind of the ridiculousness and the dangerousness go hand in hand. And maybe it actually helps them, unfortunately. It makes it entertaining, you know, the dictatorship becomes more entertaining.

Yeah. Diary of a Man Despair was a little homework book reading for people if they want on this point. That was the most, at the beginning of the Trump era, this was something I read. It was really striking to me. It was written by, you know, maybe a John Bolton type. I guess he wasn't really in the government, but like a conservative traditionalist type in Germany who was writing a diary about, you know, the barbarians at the gate, apparently, and how kind of goofy and ridiculous they were. And I'd always got this, right, like, there was a general impression that Hitler was kind of silly and, you know, clownish. but like the degree to which it was the case from people inside.

Interesting. It was interesting. I want to keep going, checking through your list here on our march towards despotism. This, I don't think I even talked about last week. That's the problem with kind of, you know, there's just so much this stuff is happening. So I wanted to spend a second on that because Mark Hurtling writes about it in the

Bullwark this morning as well. And that is the military leaders, intelligence professionals purged item. Just a couple of the examples. There have been more than this, but a couple of the recent ones. Lieutenant General Jeff Cruz was the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was removed. All indications are because of the intelligence assessment about how the Iranian nuclear facilities were not obliterated, like Trump said. It was more nuanced assessment.

Air Force Chief of Staff, David Alvin, he was kind of pushed out into an early retirement. Again, I guess he had offered some criticism of the focus of the administration. These are just a couple of the latest examples. And, yeah, I mean, again, like these are like not, this is a category difference from the Bolton's, I guess, an important way, right? That it's like it's not just the regime critics that are being targeted, right? It's anyone offering dissent. Right. And this goes back to very early in excess tenure where he fired the chairman of the Troy Chiefs and others.

Really, just for the sake of firing them. There was no evidence of, unlike in these cases, they hadn't said anything particularly. Maybe they did when they were before Trump. They said things that Higgs had found offensive because they, but they were very careful, honestly, and not political is my sense from talking to people. Anyway, they got fired. So part of it is getting rid of people, as Mark Hurtling says in the Bork, who might offer a, you know, unbiased and honest opinion. They don't want that. But a lot of it is the message that says to everyone else to shut up.

And a lot of it is bringing in their own people. I mean, I don't think one should, we shouldn't forget that the practical effect of firing A is that you get to a point B, you know, and these are important jobs. And so it's not just that he got rid of a guy who's going to tell the truth about a U.S. military action when testifying to Congress, but also they're putting in someone who's not going to. So I guess a very important flip side of the firings. To the Bolton part. Well, I guess I haven't really, we haven't spoken since this, since it happened on Friday. So, so what just give me your top level thoughts? then I'll go into a couple of things.

I mean, it's ridiculous. I mean, that is to say, whatever, I don't believe there are any legitimate concerns. If there were legitimate concerns, they know where John Bolton lives. He's not flinging the country. They can call him up. He has lawyers. They can arrange a meeting. He's not going to, they can surveil his house if they're worried he's going to sneak out with some documents.

For all I know, they were already wiretapping his phone. One thing that our friend Ryan Goodman pointed out to me is Bondi had loosened the rules for phone wiretapping quite a bit early. two or three months ago. I don't really know the details of this. I don't hold me exactly to it. But he thought it was not impossible that they were doing that. And maybe they've got one sentence somewhere where, who knows, right? And then, of course, there's these weird stories about foreign intelligence. Who knows, again, where that comes from. We've been down that road before. So with the Russians and so forth. So, yeah, he wanted to, again, he wants to punish Bolton. I don't think we should ever underestimate the retribution part of what Trump's doing. He wants

to send a signal to people. You're a real vociferous. critic of mine, especially if you worked for me once or knew me a little bit enough to give yourself extra credibility as a critic, which Bolton certainly had, as opposed to, you know, people who've just been anti-Trump like us as 2015. You know, you're going to get especially targeted. And the rest of you just, you know, be a little more careful. I think it has a real chilling effect. I think that part, everyone's focused on Bolton, but I think people are underestimating that side of it. I think that just to your point on like the ridiculousness of it, it's just worth sitting on that for a second like yeah we'll see what they are claiming to have or whatever right

but or we necessarily or we may not that is like it could this thing could just be left open for months they don't quite ever go to court they never produce you know the affidavit and so forth but it sort of hangs over and they're they're working on it they've got some worrisome things they're looking into right so sorry it's a fair point no no it's fair point and and like you could just imagine there are other trump administration officials wrote books You know, it's like, it's impossible to imagine Mark Meadows, for example, like his home being raided, right? Like, it just, it's like on its face farcicle that this was necessary, like, in this, in this situation. And all you have to do is just think about any basic counterfactual

about how they would act if it was a pro-Trump person that, like, wrote a, wrote a memoir from the first term that's, you know, they had some notes or whatever they'd come up with. And this was, I want to shout Aaron Blake over at the post, because he flagged this quote, which I think who was pretty striking from Ed Martin back in May, where he said this. There's some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. If they can be charged, we'll charge them. But if they can't be charged, we'll name them.

And we'll name them in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed. You would think that Ed Farton would know that doesn't work since he should have so much shame. But anyway, it's a tell. It's telling about where they're going with all this, right? That it's like, okay, we're going to use the DOJ, we're going to hassle people or to shake them down. Maybe we'll charge them. Or if not, like, we're just going to create problems for them. Yeah, this, you know, the solid head show trials, of course, famously.

I think it was, was there a friend Ben W-W? Someone else who came up with the term, show investigation, S-H-O-W investigation. The point of it is demonstrating to others what can happen. It's not an actual, you know, sincere investigation of a secret that has gotten out from, what, seven years ago that our enemies were taking advantage of, you know? Yeah. Do you, I mean, do you get a sense for the, I mean, it's not like you and John Bolton are close friends, but like what the level of concern is among him or others in that world at this point? People very close to him are saying, you know, he's calm and not worried. He didn't do anything wrong.

and this was, he expected something like this, and I think it won't come to trial, and I suspect they may think that, too. And Bolton's a tough guy, and he can, but look, it's going to be, he's got to keep quiet, or it has to, but I suppose he will choose to, as prudent, I'm sure his advisor, his attorney is telling him to,

keep quiet for a while. Now, does John Bolton not being on CNN, you know, once a week for the next two months, change the fate of the Republic? No, but, you know, it's a step, right? It's a step. Yeah, it's still a chilling effect throughout the entire, you know, like this stuff is expensive.

Like, we've talked about this in the past, Like, with the chill from CEOs, which can get into the Intel thing next. Like, a lot of business leaders don't want to speak out, you know, administrators don't want to speak out. And, like, there are a lot of, we did a joking way. I think it was a couple weeks ago about how my guys, Oasis are coming on tour this year. And their band manager told them not to speak out. Like, all of that stuff is, in an individual is not that important, but in aggregate it is.

Yeah, very much. Someone I know with very good intentions, someone I think very highly of, experienced person. I texted John literally at one sentence out of, you know, look, I hope everything's fine and let me know if you want to talk or something like that. And I offered to give him a forum on the bulwark. I threw your name in there, but that's the entire text. You are welcome on the bulwark, John Boland.

And I mentioned this. Formal invitation. I mentioned to someone else who said, look, you know, they probably tapping, they probably got his phones and they probably were tapping them already. And I don't know, do you want to be asked, do you want to be called in and asked, why were you in touch with him? And do you know what? And of course, I don't.

I don't know anything, and I haven't been in that much such for them, and I have nothing to say if they called me in. But it sort of does make you think for a minute, right? And then, you know, maybe you shouldn't. Maybe I shouldn't be talking to John Bolton because he's under FBI investigation. And again, it's the most trivial thing, obviously, whether I talk to John Bolton. Multiply that by many, manyfold.

And as you were saying about the business community and stuff, it really is, yeah, it's bad. Yeah. And J.D., in his Kristen Welker interview this weekend, which I did a standalone take on if people want to do that. I'm not going to make you listen to his voice on the podcast today because he was, you know, has condescending and haughty. You were accidentally, I did listen to that last night.

You were excellently. And indignant, but perceptively so. It's not just that he's a jerk, but he's, anyway, go ahead and say what you're going to say. He's clever. He's clever about what he's doing. He doesn't want to defend the worst of their behaviors. So he plays a lot of these tricks where he does, you know, he does condescending lecturing and, you know, of the critics and, you know,

he puts up straw men that he knocks down with the worst, you know, you know, possible interpretation of what they're doing. But on the Bolton thing in particular, I mean, A, he kind of slips and says, we are investigating him. It may have just been a slip of the tongue, but is a bad one. And, you know, when you were chief of staff to the VP, if Dan Quayle had said that, you might have said, sir, you know, we're going to use a different, like, you're supposed to say this, because this is an important distinction.

Right. So that's one. But the other is just that he, he basically lays out this playbook. where he frames it in an Orwellian way about how this is the non-political way to do the business. He goes, we're not going to do what the others did. We're not going to politicize the Justice Department and go after people. What we're going to do is we're going to investigate. And if we find anything, then he'll be charged.

And if we don't, then he won't be. And that's the neutral way to do this. And that's like demonstrating, like, what they're really doing, which is like we're intimidating people. We're going to intimidate you. We're going to investigate you. and maybe you won't be charged, maybe you will, but the punishment is the investigation. Now, you're so right about that we're investigating.

I mean, it wouldn't simply be that Vice President Quaylor, anyone from any other administration wouldn't have said that. His only answer would have been, I can't comment. This is being done by the Justice Department. I can't comment on it, obviously, on any kind of criminal investigation.

Maybe it had a sentence. I don't know anything about it, but which would have been true, incidentally, you know. And so it wouldn't, but yes, but Bolton, but Vance feels entitled to, you know, kind of lay out this fake, you know, explanation, you know, based on his great

experience in government and being a Yale law graduate, I suppose, you know, this is how the system works and we're just kind of looking into this. But the Ed Martin thing puts the light of that, right? I mean, they're, you know, funny how they're just looking into Bolton. They're not looking into all the, as you say, Mark Meadows and the Trump defenders who wrote books, gave interviews, said things that probably actually did, you know, compromise national security in certain ways the moment they were out of office or when they were in office for that matter, if we can be honest. So anyway. They're not doing a review of the current president's documents that he had in his bathroom, the best I can tell. I don't think that's happening. Yeah,

I believe that case was dropped on January 20th, the 21st. Yeah. Okay. I think that tells you what you need to know. This is an ad by BetterHelp. If you're Bill Crystal, going on a family vacation and spending the time texting me about the John Bolton raid, I don't know if that's a sign that you need therapy, but for some of us, the modern world creates some challenges. It's good to find people to talk to. It's good to work through your demons, your shadow side, your challenges, you know, with somebody. I don't want to dump it all on your spouse all the time. I know I feel that way. And if that's sounding like you, BetterHelp offers therapists that you can talk to in no time with over 30,000 therapists, better help us the world's largest online

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Back to the corporation extorting, the Intel 10% equity stake that the government is taking. I was intrigued by your friend Kevin Hassett this morning on CNBC saying this. So I'm sure that at some point there'll be more transactions, if not in this industry, than in other industries. Trump posting about the stock price this morning and how it's up and how he's happy about that. You know, their defense about why this is not communism is that they are not actually going to be, you know, taking controlling stake in the company and there'll be a silent equity partner of the U.S. government will. But, like, there's a reason why we don't do this, you know, because there are a lot of other ways for the government to bully, intimidate, cajole intel, their customers, their competitors. if the President of the United States has an emotional and financial stake in Intel stock price going up. This wasn't just like Intel as a company that has a lot of dealings with China and, I guess, controversially exports or doesn't export, I can't remember, chips of some sort that are important.

It was that Tom Cotton attacked the head of Intel, right, who's Chinese or of Chinese origin, at least. And Trump saw that on TV. Immediately echoed the attack. he came in and they cut a deal so in effect he'd be back in trump he and the company would be back in trump's good graces if he gave 10% of the company to the u.s government um that's so that makes it even worse i mean it's not just the the generic arguments against the u.s government owning 10% of random companies or even non-random companies it's that you need to be nice to trump or he's coming after your company and not in some complicated way that you mentioned even of you know going after your

customers crack a barrel type thing you know he's coming right at you and he and the price will be a fairly substantial chunk of change and obviously total silence and subservience for the next three and a half years i mean again what is i mean i don't know i really the business community has already been pretty abject but i don't know it's the business roundtable objected to this the chamber of commerce all those conservative economists i mean if you have to be fair the real yeah sure but is there a dc ad campaign again as we've done done this once before, but like, we were both in this world, right? Like, back during the Obama era. Right. You know, you had actual campaigns to push back against what the president was doing.

The business community did if they did not like the policy. And what was the name? Didn't Obama have some firm that I believe we, people like us, made famous? I don't know. It was like some solar energy thing. Yeah, salindra. You're thinking it's cylinder. Yeah, the federal government took a stake in it or helped it out, but it was going back around. I can't remember. And that was like an outrage. You know, it was initial. It was one of the stimulus. I don't know. I'm going, we'll have our listeners fact check me if this is wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it was part of the stimulus and that it was like a startup money. It was not the government taking a stake in it or bailing out,

but like they gave, they made these bets in green energy companies. Some of them succeeded. Some of them failed badly. You know, tax, so the argument is like taxpayers lost their money, which this is a legit policy argument, like whether the government should be doing this or not, but it's not, it wasn't social that, right? It wasn't like the government taking over a company. It was the government was investing in these industries and some of them didn't work and the money was lost.

And Obama didn't call in the president of Salindra and say, well, if you're nice to me, I'll, you know, we'll give you more. Just here, Lip Bhutan is the CEO of Inton, I don't get this right. He was, he was born in Malaya, but to an ethnic Chinese family of Malaya. So again, this is like, the attack on him is that like he was some Chinese crypto, you know, asset or whatever. Like Tom Cotton is going after him about this. And, you know, now we have to take a stake in the company. We're going to take an additional stake in other companies. And now imagine if you're, it's not just a chilling effect on Intel and their CEO or their customers.

It's if you are any of the companies that got money from the Chips Act, from inflation reduction act, right? Like now, like a precedent has been set. It's like, oh, if you, if there was, you know, a loan provided, a government back. and loan provided, now someone goes on TV and gets grandpa mad, like the government might come in and turn that loan into their desire to have a sovereign wealth fund. You know, just on the defense sphere, let's talk about that for a minute. I learned this last week. I don't know this has reported much, though I don't believe it's confidential, exactly.

One of the big defense firms hired a new consulting firm set up by former Secretary of Defense, the Lord Austin, very standard kind of inside the beltway thing, for consulting, whatever, presumably Austin has good relations with Senate Democrat, with some Democrats, whatever, or he knows a lot anyway. Anyway, it's a totally standard thing. We can all talk about maybe they shouldn't be this kind of stricter rules against people sending up these firms and being hired by Lockheed Martin or Raytheon or wherever it was. But anyway, it was totally conventional.

It wasn't a huge amount of money. They have like 30 other firms on retainer. This wasn't, I don't think Trump personally, but someone in Trump in the administration knew about this. maybe it was X-Seth or some of the DoD, and apparently made a tiny fuss about it, and the defense firm dropped, canceled the contract.

And so again, just at this level even, right? I mean, again, it's who cares in a certain way? Lord Austin will do fine, you know, but I mean, and his colleagues there in that firm, but the degree to which, and that is permeated down, that's not, so people are saying, well, Trump, stay off Trump's radar screen, you're okay. No, there are a lot of people who are,

a lot of little Ed Martins there trying to effectuate the Trump is, agenda in all these ways. No doubt. I'll talk about some other news we have this morning regarding Kilmore Abrega Garcia. He went to his ICE, Baltimore check-in, I guess backing up. He was dismissed. He left, went back home to Maryland, had to check in with ICE about his status. The Trump administration during their conversation with his lawyers were trying to coerce him to come in to plead guilty for the charges he's facing.

He would serve a, I think, a short prison sentence and then be sent to Costa Rica. That was the deal. The alternative was that he would be sent to Uganda. Rodriguez's lawyers rejected the plea deal. It filed a new suit this morning, attempting to block the White House for immediately shipping him to Uganda. DHS says he's being processed for removal to Uganda. So that's where things stand as we tape this morning. This person, Kilmer-Briga-Garcia, has become kind of,

this lightning rod. Andrew wrote about this morning in the newsletter that like Trump has these two kinds of groups that he targets essentially. One is marginalized people you've never heard of who, you know, don't have any power to push back on him. The other is regime foes that, you know, can be used, you know, as as a wedge or as, you know, something to push back against that his maga people can rally around. Abreuosi ends up falling in both categories in this case because he initially is the former and then becomes the latter. I don't, you know, the details of this, like, kind of are irrelevant of a regular regga Garcia's case because they're irrelevant to the government, right?

Like, it's not as if, you know, in a different world, the different president or different DHS, you know, you could at least trust that they were trying to, you know, get justice. And if the Gregory, if it did not commit any of these crimes and was here and it was fine, then then the process would go forth. and otherwise he could be deported. That's not what's happening here. They're sending him to a war-torn country in Africa where he has no ties, obviously doesn't know the language, that won't have any money.

I mean, it's an unimaginable way for our country to treat people. It is, and this is because he won't plead guilty. I don't know that they're so confident if they went to trial that they would be able to convict him of anything. And he hasn't been, to my knowledge, charged in a criminal proceeding. with anything at this point, right? He's been charged in immigration court and then sent to this school, Agadel, Salvador. I mean, any normal administration would be,

I've apologized to him and be leaving him alone. Whatever the details of his overstaying his visa, right? But this is in a way, Trump, this, again, is very characteristic of despotism and dictatorship. You really don't let people get away with winning against you, you know, if you can, if you can solve them. Just for like what the facts about what happened because I was kind of murky, too, on the lead-in.

So when they brought him back to the U.S. DOJ did indict him in Tennessee for unlawfully transporting illegal immigrants for financial gain, right? They kind of using the word human trafficking, because I think it sounds like people in their mind when they hear human trafficking, they hear like young girls or whatever being tracked into sex slavery. But it was really happening, I guess, as he was pulled over when he was driving across the country with other people who were here undocumented. And so that was the DOJ charge.

And then fast forward a couple of months, his lawyers moves, I have the case dismiss on the argument that it was selective or vindictive prosecution. And he was released on August 22nd and returned to Maryland. And here we are a couple days later where the government's going to send him to Uganda. So I like this, another thing just is like context. This is a massive controversy in Britain a couple of years ago now, like where they were trying to deal with the migrant issue there and like rather than sending people back to their home country or sending people to some third i forget it was sudan or i think it was

sudan and and it became like a for a good reason like a massive humanitarian pushback um in the UK like this is not the way that you can you treat people you treat humans um and like we and the very Garcia case now maybe this will just be the one that people know and remember but we've we're doing this now. Like there are other cases, other examples of people that the government has accused of crimes not been able to demonstrate, and rather than going through with the court, have now deported the person to somewhere in Africa. Under these non-public agreements for the governments of those countries, so we don't know under what conditions he would be there, would he be able to work there? Would he be able to save some, get some money from some relative and fly to?

Costa Rica. I mean, normally one can do that, I suppose, but not if you don't have papers, I guess, or a visa or a passport. And I, someone I was talking to sort of thinks, knows a little bit about this, perhaps, by the scenes of saying that he thought there were all kinds of conditions. Trump doesn't want to look stupid and have the Ugandan government turn around, let him get a check from his family and catch a flight from Uganda to Costa Rica. So they probably are conditions where they can't just let these people fly to other countries that are willing to take them. So it is obviously very punitive and vindictive, to say the least. Yeah.

We also don't know the other side of these deals. Like, what is Trump getting out of the governments? I mean, tariffs have been explicitly on the table with Uganda. Yeah. In the Uganda case, like a lower tariff, right? Yeah. Some of these other cases, I mean, who the hell knows? This goes back to like the Trump black box of corruption, right?

Like, are there investments into the crypto fund, you know, are we buying a stable? coin from Trump, right? Like, you know, it's not, none of this stuff is, is being done in a transparent matter. So, kind of thrust into now a little bit this, Gilmar-Briga-Gar-Garcia fight because it's happening in Maryland, but also, what we mentioned earlier about the militarization of police is that Maryland governor, West Moore, Trump has been talking about sending military into Baltimore. Westmore sent him a letter, basically saying, you know, things are getting better in Baltimore. Actually, why don't you come to Baltimore and walk through the streets with me. He's doing maybe a more kind of a hybrid version between the,

uh, between the Gretchen Whitmer and the Gavin. You know, I'm not going to troll you, but I'm not going to submit, but I, you know, maybe we can, you know, do some political gamesmanship here. And then Gavin goes on the Sunday shows. Trump like freaks out, starts, you know, sending multiple tweets attacking him, including one where he says, also I gave Westmore a lot of money to fix his demolish bridge. I will now have to rethink this, that decision. So it's grotesque on several levels and a lie that the money for the bridge came during the Biden administration, so Trump didn't give them anything. Even if it came during the Trump administration, it wouldn't have been Trump to give them the money. It would have been, you know,

congressionally authorized money. And, you know, you don't get to punish the people of the state because you don't like what the governor said on the Sunday show. That would have been behavior that was resoundingly condemned in any other administration. Almost impeachable. I mean, we're so used to Trump, you know, I gave him the money. That formulation was Trump uses it for everything, my generals, and I did this and I did that. But of course, it's deeply undemocratic and contrary to the rule of law. And I just, no one else would have said that, right? I mean, literally, you know, and no matter how much, you know, how high your self-esteem was as president or how much you sort of deep down kind of thought that you should have the ability

to do that, it didn't occur to anyone that you would publicly say, I gave him the money so he should stop criticizing me. Leaving aside the fact that he wasn't even appropriated under his administration as you say right i mean the other thing is just you know these counterfactuals get tired but it's like you know i mean if obama had been like i'm not going to give money to louisiana to rebuild after a hurricane uh because the governor said something mean about me on tv i mean like why they's just the kind the condom it just it's about the asymmetry right like obviously fox would still be talking about that two decades later they'd be bringing that up, you know, and how they don't care about flyover country. They don't care about

regular people and they want the people to not have bridges that work. But, like, the mainstream, rightly, like, you know, the mainstream media would have condemned him by, oh, well, their own party would have condemned him, right? Like, the, you know, pundits, you know, balls and strikes, pundits would have attacked him, right? And Trump, and like, I just, this wasn't even covered this way, really. I mean, like, Wes is on the Sunday shows, but, like, they don't, like, that particular threat is just lost kind of in the wash. Oh, terrible. Terrible.

I was thinking, you mentioned, thinking Maryland, Governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, whom we know some, and I don't know, it would be nice if he said, maybe he has, honestly, so I should be careful about it. I shouldn't assert that he hasn't, but if he hasn't said anything, it would be nice if he said something about how wildly inappropriate this was and how he stands with the governor of Maryland and believing that Trump should not have any control over the funds that were appropriated by the United States Congress

and a bill assigned by the president. Would be nice. I'm not seeing anything that he said on a quick glance. I don't know. Who knows? Maybe he said something in a private event. Just on the Westmore thing, do you have any, like, just on the politics of West, how he's kind of handling this? I don't know if you saw any of the Sunday show. I didn't see much. I think he's doing pretty well.

What do you think? I mean, I feel like the Center of Gravity has moved in a news some direction from a Whitford direction in the last month. Yeah, I think so. Look, I don't, I don't know. He has such a positive kind of countenance. You know, he is a smiley, optimistic person, which traditionally in politics is kind of what people said, you know, you want is a happy warrior, right? Like that was something that's kind of a common cliche in political commentary, like the happy warriors do better. And so maybe that will still remain true. I like the fact that he's being more visible on this stuff. He could have not weighed in at all, right, on the Baltimore. You know, I mean, it wasn't like there's an imminent threat of all of the troops coming to Baltimore said that was coming, right? So he chose to weigh in, just to win kind of a clever way.

And, you know, he did sort of a more chill, Gavin version, making fun of Trump for draft dodging after Trump attacked him on Twitter. So I don't know, I think that there's something to it. I think that, you know, what we're asking. for is for people to stand up to him. He's doing that. I think that there's kind of this emotional need that people have to either make fun of him or to be really, like, visibly angry. And I don't know whether that actually matters politically or whether that's, you know, just kind of satisfying resistance liberals like need for some emotional gratification. I feel that way. I need some emotional satisfaction at times. I don't know how much that actually matters. Like, he's not really doing that

part of it but um but i don't know and i think on balance it's it's better or sanction some other people on issues and he did punch back on the topic on which trump attacked him i kind of amazingly since he has a bronze star and so forth but he you know for somehow not deserving it i don't know uh trump said that and and i give i think it was very wise of more and i think a very important example you don't let that sit you don't dismiss it as he does know anything what he's talking about you say he's mr wasn't he president bonespurs and you know whatever whatever line more you used. And that, I think, is good. It shows you not intimidated. It shows you're not pulling any punches. And you're willing to hit back pretty hard when he hits you on Jusely. Well, we're doing politics. One of our other never-trumper's, Jeff Duncan was the lieutenant governor of Georgia.

You might remember, I thought he gave a really great speech at the DNC convention that we're all kind of trying to wash from our memories to not deal with any trauma. But I thought the Jeff Duncan speech was good. I don't think we can blame the L on that one convention speech. And he did something that I've, well, we'll see how he actually executes it. But he seems to be doing something that I've been encouraging people to try. I'm not sure if it's going to work or not, but I think it's worth a try, which is to have somebody like a socially conservative, traditional Republican, try to run not as an independent and not as a Democrat where he says, I've changed all my views and everything. and now I'm just a generic Democrat, kind of like the Charlie Criss model, if you will, but saying, I'm going to run it as a Democrat.

I can still have some views on issue X, Y, and Z, and that might be out of step with the progressive base. Here's how I would deal with that. And see, like, would that work in a Democratic primary? I don't know. Would that work in a general election better than a generic Democrat? I suspect so, but we don't know. So I'm intrigued that he's thinking of trying.

And he hasn't announced he was he had an interview. this weekend where he said he was looking at it. I'm running for governor, that is. And Brian Kemp is term-limited out. And I don't know. What do you make about that possibility? I also have been, my minor way, encouraging people to do this or think about doing it. I guess he's thinking about doing it at this point.

And I think, look, even if you don't win, it might have a very positive effect. What if you get 20%? What if you get 30% of the vote? Then you're part of the coalition and you bring, quote, bring your voters over to support presumably the Democratic nominee. and you have some say, perhaps, in some of these policies. So this is how a party expands, right? The challenger, the outside element that's being recruited to the party

doesn't necessarily win its first race. But so many people have talked themselves out of doing this, it seems to me, because they probably won't win, you know, left very strong, a Democratic primary. It is, and you probably won't get to 51%. And maybe he won't. But I think there's really a case for people doing this at every level of government and every, you know,

both in running for office, but also in, you know, a point of office and the like. The state level offices, I think, also provide potentially a little bit more room to have some heterodoxy and opinion. And so it's an interesting way to kind of test that out. Like it becomes challenging if you're, you know, going to be, if you're going to be in a 50, 50 Senate. And it's like, are you going to be the last vote to do this? So you're going to be the last vote to do that, right? Like, the stuff gets nationalized where I think this kind of model becomes a little tougher on the Senate side.

than it does in the governor's races. So, anyway, I hope he gives it a shot. And it would be interesting to see exactly, you know, what, what that campaign looks like. We're seeing it a little bit in other places. And, you know, David Jolly is doing this. I think in Florida, and what's the right way to put this? Like, the path of least resistance in these sort of cases is to say, scales have fallen from my eyes, some switching sides.

And, like, here all the, you know, I'm told, I'm like the Democrats' strongest warrior now or the Republican's strongest warrior, Jeff Van Drew did this. this the other way going in New Jersey. And I think that there is conceivably some room for that, and if that's authentic to what you really believe, then great. But just as a political matter, particularly in these red states, that Georgia's kind of a purple state, but particularly in red states, I'm more interested in people trying this if they hold on to some heterodoxy.

And I think it'll be healthy if progressives say, look, we prefer, I don't even know who's running, but X who's a more progressive candidate, if that's what they prefer. But, of course, we'll support Duncan if he wins. And we would expect him to support our favorite candidate. I mean, it makes the big tent and the coalition a little more real, maybe going both ways. Yeah. Speaking of which, yeah, going both ways, exactly.

It's like, oh, if Zoran Mondani wins, maybe we should just endorse him as well. And identify the party as a broad coalition. Just so we have right, there are a bunch of other decrees. candidates in the Democratic race, which maybe helps Duncan, frankly, in a way that you don't have to get to 51, but Kishelands Bottoms, the most famous former mayor of Atlanta, who I think probably seems like she would be a very strong candidate and a bunch of state legislators as well. So, anyway, we'll keep an eye on that. Just two other quick things, Bill, that I want to make sure we touch this morning reports out of Israel. This is from Axios. 20 Palestinians,

including four journalists, were killed in an IDF strike at the Nassar, hospital in southern Gaza. It's the only open hospital, I believe, in Gaza right now. There was one strike, and then notably several minutes later, a second strike took place that resulted in the deaths of reporters and some in a rescue team who tried to reach the casualties of the first strike. I'm just curious at this stage. I talked to this a little bit with Tommy on Friday. Like, and obviously there's the humanitarian concerns, and this appears to be a Reuters reporter and this is really tragic and and that's something that it's legitimately concerned about i'm just scoping out to like even the generous view of what israel is doing now it's kind of like hard to see

what the outcome is that's like going to be amenable to like the region to them to the global community. Anyway, I think that this is developed to, you know, to geopolitically something that is like a massive problem for them. I don't know if you have updated thoughts on what's been happening. I mean, I agree. It's doing huge damage to support for Israel around the world. And then here in the U.S. and, you know, strong supporters are becoming weak supporters and weak supporters are becoming doubters and doubters are becoming hostile. And it's, you know, that's very important. Israel is a small country and does need some help and support, you know, various kinds with economic trade, but also with the UN and so forth.

So just generally, no one wants to be isolated. And so it's terrible in that respect. You know who thinks it's terrible? Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were demonstrating against the war in Gaza at this point. And a huge chunk of the Israeli security establishment, very well respected former Jesus staff and head of the Assad and head of the Shinbet, the FBI equivalent. And so, and they're against it. And they're against, they're not against doing anything in Gaza, necessarily.

Some of them probably are. But they're against the way Nizhenyahu has been conducting and certainly is now conducting that war. So it's not a bunch of doves. And then some of the pro-Israel commentary here is very either foolish or disingenuous or offensive, I would almost say. You know, if you're not for this, you're somehow don't care about the interest of Israel. Or you're some dupe of Hamas.

And you believed in some photo was not. taken where it was taken or whatever and that's why you're as if one you know as if one is if these people is if the former head of the IDF is making his decisions his judgments based on that i saw someone kind of very pro-eastern militant type you know dump oh the IDS been wrong about everything for 10 or 20 years really i don't know it seems like a pretty impressive military organization you know and uh so i don't know it's very no the gaza situation is very bad i think the other iran hasbollah you could give this njahu credit for doing a lot of things that strengthened Israel, and I think we're legitimate things to have done and important things maybe

to have done. You can give him some credit for all the Abraham Accords and all that stuff. But this Gaza is a real stain, and I think maybe an indelible one. And of course, people don't separate, he is the government. He is the prime minister of Israel. They don't entirely separate this government from the country. Yeah, we talked to David French about this. And the one thing that I really stuck with me in that I've been feeling since the beginning, like, even as a non-military expert, but as a novice, just looking at, like, you can still assess and say, okay, well, if you have a mission, if you have a war, to even a just war, to, you know, respond to when you are attacked, like, there has to be a strategy for, for ending it, like, bring it to a conclusion

for extricating yourself from it. And, like, there never really seemed like there was one, right? I mean, like, in various times, it's very just different things, you know, and, And, like, in this case, like, we're at this point now where that is very murky. And it makes the case of, oh, you know, we're doing our best to, you know, to tamp down civilian deaths. Like, we're doing our best to taking humanitarian concerns, you know, about, like, we need to achieve this end of X, Y, and Z so we can get that. I, that, you know, without that, you know, A, I mean, I think people rightly start to, you know, the humanitarian questions take on more weight. But B, it's like, well, what's the point of this now?

Like, you know, where, where are you going? I mean, there's some in the government who clearly want to say they want to retake Gaza. That's not even a good, all secret or hidden. And they really want kind of ethnic cleansing of Gaza and to just get them out somewhere to Egypt or Jordan or something. And so that, and I wouldn't say, Nisunyahu is to say of that camp, but he certainly hasn't repudiated. very hard. Now it's this coalition government and all that, but again, the price that's being

paid for these people. And there's some justice to say that if you don't have a clear or alternate strategy, you tend to default maybe to this, in practice almost, to this strategy, which it's a strategy, but to this goal, which does not have support in Israel or outside. I found out of you did a Sunday conversation with brief on about the transgender military ban. And I think this is, I just, I like to keep coming back to this issue from time to time. I think it's an important one to bring up, in part because it's just such a clear injustice and so despicable that you have this for draft dodger kicking people out of the military for no reason. Like there's not, not even a pretense for another reason. And secondly, because it's both wrong in the merits and I think it's good politics.

And I think those are good things for Democrats to talk about. I think they can be encouraged to talk about them because I think there are parts of the trans debate, sports. et cetera, that are pretty thorny, to say the least. I don't think this one is. And so, you know, I think it should be made an example of. But anyway, is there anything else that you took away from your conversation? I mean, I don't really know, agree from. Well, we've talked a couple of times on the phone, and I actually agreed to do this.

She's really impressive. And her account of why she joined after 9-11, her account of a military career of coming out in 2016, when the transgender ban was lifted, it was finally done away with. and the support she got from her colleagues and superiors in the military and in the Defense Department. She made it through the first Trump term. There was all that back and forth, as you recall. They ended up banning new people from coming in, but she was there. She's a colonel.

She's had serious responsibilities. She's an Air Force colonel and now Space Command. Serious responsibilities in many areas. And it's just, and no problem. I mean, all the arguments that were once used that, you know, had some credibility perhaps or plausibility, maybe was a better way. way of sitting at unicohehesion, women in combat, that's different from, you know, elsewhere in the foxholes, different from sitting around the Pentagon. Literally, I mean, it's not even plausible that any of these could apply in her case,

or many of the other cases of her colleagues and peers. And so it is pure, I mean, I don't know what it is. I mean, she's an adult, she's transitioned, you know, she's not, we're not talking about complicated issues of 12-year-olds whose parents want one thing and the doctors recommend something else or high school sports i mean yeah there's no reason to do it except if you want just eliminate basically transgendered people from i don't know from public life from national life you know really is kind of a it is in that respect the totalitarian side of it is really horrifying i've got to say i think 100% agree um bill crystal appreciate you as always we'll see you back

here next monday and everybody else We'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the bulwark podcast. See you all then. Peace.